Subhash K Jha turns the clock back to 2003 and revisits Suneel Darshan’s Talaash, an action thriller which starred Alshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor, along with Raakhee.
Like a spicy masala pizza, Suneel Darshan’s thriller combines Mission Impossible with the most time-worn ingredients from the commercial kitchen. The end-result? A pungent pickled spicy meal-on-the-floss with all the formulas scattered enticingly across a maze of drama and action.
Talaash is essentially a one-line story stretched into three hours of skidding wheels and smoking guns battling the spinning karma of an urgently woven high drama shot in sleek smoky places. Suneel Darshan ladles out the formula without tampering with its essential inviolability. Hence, there’s a tumultuous preamble in which Raakhee , trying to bring subtle shades into a role reeking of convention, loses her mind after her husband Suresh Oberei is killed and their little daughter is kidnapped by a vicious goon named Chota Pathan (Kabir Bedi). All we can say about this Pathan is, there’s nothing Chota about him or his evil doings which stretch from the prelude to the climax without missing a beat.
For a major part of the lavishly mounted drama, the kidnapped girl’s brother Arjun(Akshay Kumar) runs all over the globe trying to locate his sister before she’s sold in the flesh market.
Some years before, Deepak Shivdasani had made a film on a similar theme called Pehchaan where Sunil Shetty searched hell and high-water for his abducted sister. There , the sister (Madhoo) was a part of the plot’s central drama. In Talaash she remains a faceless blur till the end. When she’s finally united with her frantic brother the purported pathos of the moment is tragically lost.
Then again some parts of the second-half bear an uncanny likeness to Abbas-Mustan’s Soldier .
Suneel Darshan, collaborating with Akshay Kumar for the third time, makes Akshay Kumar the fulcrum of his full-cream action. Stalking across the screen with well-measured steps Akshay seems to squeeze every drop of dynamism from his character. The filmmaker who projected the star as an actor in Jaanwar and Ek Rishta: The Bond Of Love , here brings a dollop of Mission Impossible into Akshay’s character’s design. There’s an element of Tom Cruise’s panther-like espionage in the leading man’s personality well tapped by the director in scenes where Akshay handles guns gadgets and girls , not necessarily in that order.
He’s also comfortable in his emotional scenes with his screen mother, but surprisingly stiff and selfconscious in a jacuzzi scene with Pooja Batra where he’s stripped to his shorts. Kya bath hai!
How you wish Suneel Darshan had focussed on the principal drama of a distraught mother, her missing daughter and the frantic son. Regrettably the formulistic elements impinge rudely on the main drama. Kareena Kapoor is brought in, and with her come Sanjeev-Darshan’s cacophonic atonal songs .
The discrepancy between the songs and Amar Mohile’s background score, or for that matter the difference between the scenic locations and the poor characterizations, is so steep and sobering, we wonder why the director allowed these anomalies to mar what was potentially a terrific suspense thriller.
Technically Talaash is a very polished product. The roasted browns of Rajasthan and the pristine white sands of the South African coast make an interesting contrast between the two halves of the narrative. Cinematographer W. B. Rao uses the lenses with a lingering luminosity that brings depth to a plot that’s as skimpy as the clothes that Pooja Batra wear. Or doesn’t wear.
Ambitiously, the director has shot a chunky part of the first-half on the Palace On Wheels. What’s potentially an engrossing journey through a rugged hinterland is plunged into synthetic slapstick with assorted comedians and buffoons infesting the posh train. They make you wonder if there are no regulations about who gets on the Palace Of Wheels.
The performances are even and largely inoffensive. Prominent actors like Raj Babbar and Kabir Bedi play villains with a snarling emphasis which goes well with the narration’s tone. Kareena and Akshay make a handsome pair . Unfortunately, they’ve no business being together in a plot that demanded the taut . The amazingly camera-friendly Kareena does make a delectable distraction. Wrapped in a sari and around Akshay she’s clearly in her element. But Kareena needs to shop for a new set of expressions , and also outfits in some of the garish dance numbers.
To director Suneel Darshan’s credit he pilots the paper-thin plot through a a well-woven labyrinth of villainous misdemeanours. It’s interesting to see the director-actor team make intermittently absorbing use of the space provided by the baggy narration. Seen as a traditional Good & Evil fable Talaash does make its point rather slickly. But somehow after Ek Rishta we expect a little more from Suneel Darshan than just a slender plot about sibling sobs reverberating through a gauntlet of ghastly villains who are scarily comfortable with mayhem.
