BLACKMAIL

Every night, between 8:30pm and 9:30pm, long after everyone has left their office, Dev Kaushal (Irrfan Khan) goes through a five-minute ritual. He nicks the picture of a fellow colleague’s wife, takes it to the men’s room and indulges in self-gratification — that, thankfully, the camera shies away from. A series of shots and the song “Sataasat” play up Dev’s indulgence: a bobble-head toy atop a cubicle wiggles its head as if in on the joke; posters advocating hand sanitisers and tissues litter office walls; a lone drop of water struggles to drip from a tap.

Dev works in a toilet paper company run by an America-inspired boss (Omi Vaidya) and his ritual, despite being reprehensible (yet isn’t, due to director Abhinay Deo’s canny astuteness) is a lone-man’s quiet defiance to his office life. A middle finger to his co-workers and the management with a ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ attitude that ramps up and links directly to the narrative in the second half of the film.

Dev’s decadent exercise also has a second, far deeper relation to the story. Every night when Dev gets home, he peeks at his sleeping wife Reena (Kirti Kaushal) through a secret peephole in his kitchen. The status of their relation is grave, even though he fancies her. With the peephole divide between them, the audience contemplates if the two are even together. They are, at least on paper.

Bollywood’s latest offerings have twists and turns galore. But while Blackmail is a wicked and funny applause-worthy entertainment, Missing is a run-of-the-mill thriller

Dev leaves for work the next day, watering a withered plant. The action is enough to give you the gist of their back-story. Then one day, Dev decides to return home early on his friend’s advice (after his daily routine, of course). Mustering the courage to restart his “withered” relationship, he peeks at his wife through the secret hole again, and finds her with another man (Ranjit, played by Arunodhay Singh). Rather than confronting his wife’s lover, Dev blackmails him for 100,000 rupees. The amount is just enough to cover a laundry list of everyday items.

This one simple blackmail turns into a twisting series of extortions and escapades, involving Reena, Ranjit, Ranjit’s forever-drunk millionaire wife Dolly (Divya Dutta), Dev’s co-worker Prabha (Anuja Sathe) and the office-creep Anand (Pradhuman Singh). Neither of these individuals (including Dev) are nifty or devious; their goals are explicit, naïve and non-criminal.

Deo and screenwriters Parveez Sheikh and Pradhuman Singh Mall heavily invest in a calm, long-drawn-out pace and linear narrative. Anyone can follow the story’s mind-boggling contortions without a hitch, and later ponder on small details. For instance: Dev’s daily ritual at his office is dependent on his fixation with other people’s wives, and not the unmarried female co-workers; in a sense, the act is his own version of infidelity. Insights such as these make Blackmail a wickedly funny, applause-worthy entertainment that’s directed and acted with just the right balance of whimsy and realism. Highly recommended, but this decidedly dark, black comedy isn’t for everyone.

MISSING

Manoj Bajpayee hams it up without restraint in Missing — a pretzel-like mystery thriller of a philandering man who lies through his teeth, his loopy, wobbly wife (Tabu) and their kidnapped baby called Titli. Debuting director Mukul Abhyankar had written the story in 1998 as a final-year college project. This final version twists and turns every few minutes, leading to a conclusion anyone can guess from its first five minutes. The hook isn’t in the fore-knowledge of how it may turn out; it’s about the nature of the people on-screen.

As soon as he enters frame Bajpayee’s character starts spinning an awkward and amateur web of lies that have an unintentional, screwball tone. That weirdly off-centre timbre, coupled with jarringly apparent acting is enough to glue any layman’s attention on the screen. As if Bajpayee and Tabu weren’t enough, the pretend-acting amps up to crazy heights when Annu Kapoor joins the movie 30 minutes later as a cop with an impeccable track record.

Dev’s daily ritual at his office is dependent on his fixation with other people’s wives, and not the unmarried female co-workers; in a sense, the act is his own version of infidelity.

I was fortunate enough to catch the film in a 3pm show at a single screen cinema. Elements that come off as eyesores for us film critics, worked up the audience. Someone directly behind me called out Bajpayee’s bad playacting, dubbing him an “over-actor”. For his on-screen character, that’s a compliment. By the post-intermission break, the audiences’ attention was caught, hook, line and sinker. They laughed at the idiocy and reveled in the twists. That is an achievement.

Sudeep Chatterjee’s cinematography, however, is the movie’s anti-achievement, with long, loosely divided frames and unappealing lens choices. Chatterjee’s credits — Guzaarish, Bajirao Mastani, Padmaavat, Kaabil, Baby, Chak De! India, Dhoom 3, Iqbal and Dor — prove that his compositional flair relies exclusively on the dogged insistence and aptitude of his director.

Shot mostly at a luxury resort in Mauritius, with God-given scenery and the already-in-place production design of the hotel at the producer’s disposal, Missing has a cheap ambience. Coupled with unrefined directorial skills and a cast waiting to go overboard, Missing is that rare run-of-the-mill thriller you can’t help but recommend — if only for all the wrong reasons.

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 15th, 2018