In IRaH, a Bollywood film made in the UK that makes it to Pakistani cinemas on a technicality, Rohit Roy plays Hari Singh, a multi-millionaire who gets killed on the eve of launching an advanced artificial intelligence-backed application. The app steals every last bit of people’s data — including their photorealistic digital likeness — and uses it to provide “better service.”

This Google-like service, called IRaH version 5.10, and its supercomputer data centre, nicknamed “the brain”, is revolutionary and very much in demand by the English government, the mafia, and a malicious hood-wearing hacker who has broken into the unbreakable system and uses it to selectively kill key members of IRaH’s board, each worth millions.

The lot includes Tiya (Tina Sharma), Jasima (Karishma Kotak), Imrul (Rakshith Bhandarry) and Rafi (Ameet Chana) — all relatively bad, immoral, corrupt and uninteresting people in their own right. Hari, also as bad as the others, however is kept alive and made witness to the killings by the hacker.

Hari, who also has a son, a mother and a very shady past, isn’t the guy one should be rooting for in IRaH, but then again, no one in the film — including the honest officer played by Rajesh Sharma — is worth rooting for…and herein lies the problem.

IRaH’s biggest issue is that, in a mob of dubious, despicable characters, there is no one one wants to cheer for

In a mob of dubious, despicable characters that includes the Russian Mafia’s somewhat nice mob-boss played by Nayef Rashed, who should one be cheering for?

That decision-making is alleviated somewhat by director Sam Bhattacharjee and screenwriters Sara Bodinar and Luke Hetherington. Set firmly in a ticking-clock narrative, with the sentient version of the app, and the company’s public stock, set to launch in some 40-odd hours, the plot whizzes between the past and the present in a bid to keep the pace engaging enough to not question the loopholes of the shaky premise.

The tactic works, irrespective of derailment by the unexciting songs and the constricted production budget.

There is little mystery on who the masterminds behind the kidnapping and ransom are, but in the ridiculous, far-fetched scope of the film, that doesn’t matter much. IRaH is fairly adequate — even good-enough — at times, and it does justice to its techno-thriller genre, the premise and the statement it wants to make against handing over one’s identity to artificial intelligence.

Now, only if the cast was better — Rohit Roy and Rajesh Sharma are the only good actors in the line-up — this would have been a better film.

Released by Eveready Pictures, IRaH is rated PG by the Sindh Censor Board. Other than some brief instances of fake-sensuality, a song featuring dancers with little clothes, and scenes that affirm the sexual indulgences of characters, there isn’t much to worry about here. Actually, now that I think about it, keep the kiddies away from this one

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 23rd, 2024