In this edition of This Day That Year, Subhash K Jha revisits Nana Patekar’s Vadh as it clocks 23 years.
Though Vadh (assassination) aspires to be a slick thriller about a serial killer on the prowl, the plot is as pacy and elegant as a Chinese Puzzle with several missing pieces.
The cast, though uniformly unattractive and laughably stilted, features the once-revered Nana Patekar in his first major role since Wajood two years ago. Nana plays a shrink presiding over a shallow and shrunken menagerie of characters. The plot seems stage-managed by an invisible hand that thinks it knows what it’s doing.
Except for the denouement, which succeeds in surprising and shocking the audience, nothing about Vadh is the least convincing or exciting. Patekar, who openly admits to having taken over the directorial reigns from the original director, has earlier directed Prahaar, a film about an army man’s disillusionment with the system. Patekar seems to have piloted Vadh through an astonishing gauntlet of financial and creative crises. But we wonder if completing and releasing such a film makes any sense.
Patekar seems to have taken over a dead project. The characters appear to limp across a cartel of cliches without stopping to catch their breath. For a whodunit to be convincing, the suspects have to make us believe in their innocence. The people in Vadh walk around with a chronic look of guilt on their faces. It probably comes from being involved in a project that gives a bad name to mainstream Hindi cinema.
The plot opens on a rain-splashed night when a psychotic patient from a mental asylum escapes. Then begins a chain of bloodcurdling screams and slit throats, not necessarily in that order. Everyone except the butler seems to have ‘dunnit’. Besides the psycho on the run, the primary suspect is a dopey-eyed playboy(Puru Raj Kumar) who has a knack for being in all the wrong places at the wrong time.
The performances are parodies of cloak-and-dagger stuff. Nana Patekar’s arrogant self-regard shines through in the nonchalant way he treats his complex character. In trying to make the shrink’s character look easy, Nana ends up trivializing the part most of the time. Anupama Varma is completely miscast as a sari-clad devoted wife who changes cushion covers in the bedroom while her self-important husband deals with psychopaths and other seemingly normal lunatics who infest this foolish fest.
The film’s younger lead pair is played by Meghna Kothari (who was Fardeen Khan’s heroine in his debut film Prem Aggan) and television star Nakul Vaid. Meghna and Vaid were seeing one another during those days. Wonder where they are now!
There are two ostensibly titillating song-and-dance numbers by Meghna Kothari and model-dancer Shweta Menon, which are as seductive as a dip in chemical waste.
The work’s complete absence of inner conviction is further underscored by tacky technical values. The prolonged period under production shows up in the faded colours of the frames and the jumpy editing. The vain effort to sew together an irreparably tattered work is heartbreaking. But we cannot bring ourselves to spare any sympathy for a film which relies more on the audiences’ perennial curiosity for murder mysteries than on any intrinsic merit.
Most murder mysteries over the years have featured attractive songs and music. Vadh lets us down on that score as well. Vishal-Shekhar’s songs act as unwelcome intrusions. Except for a Ghazal, which has been intelligently, pleasingly filmed on Patekar and Verma, the rest of the film lacks basic common sense, let alone the chutzpah to hold audiences in thrall for over two hours like all whodunits are supposed to. But the background score by the late composing genius Salil Chowdhury’s son Sanjoy Chowdhury is interesting in parts
Whoever directed the film comes to grips with the narrative only in the last fifteen minutes when suddenly, the whole tangled mess comes together in a convincing clasp. But by then, it’s too late. If you’re addicted to spin chillers don’t waste your time over this film. See CID or Crime Petrol on television instead.
