New Delhi: The movie starts with a gas explosion in a house killing Rishu (Vikrant Massey) and making his wife Rani (Taapsee Pannu) a crime suspect in the case. Jwalapur’s Rishu is an electrical engineer, he is a shy and hardworking man with no relationships in his past. However, Rani had few broken relationships and now, she decides to marry Rishu in an arranged marriage.
Rani, who is the suspect in the case of her husband's death, tells story to an officer (Aditya Srivastava), the timeline jumps back to six months, as Rani leaves her home at Delhi and begins a new journey in a small town Jwalapur with Rishu.
The movie is shot in the Jwalapur, a small town of Uttrakhand. All of us have seen numerous Bollywood films that discovered its accounts in the small towns of India. The entertainment world of India has a long fixation on making stories in small towns. New movie makers are zeroing in on more modest towns like Jamshedpur, Allahabad, Banaras, and Gorakhpur in different movies. Popular movies like Bareilly Ki Barfi, Tanu Weds Manu and Raanjhanaa were also shot in small towns.
Seeing past films like Manmarziyaan and Judgementall Hai Kya, we can make out that writing dark and deranged relationships is now Kanika Dhillon's space. Along with the murder mystery, Dhillon has put some hilarious jokes. It is very funny at times when Rani is bossing Rishabh around, or frustrating her mother-in-law, (“Oh, chai,” she trills, when she descends for breakfast interestingly, late and unbothered). In a scene, Rani tells her husband's performance on bed to her mother on a phone call. Rani drops her saree’s pallu to seduce Rishu. However, his mother caught it many times which made her uncomfortable, and said, “Raat ko kya saanp seedhi khelte ho jo din me tumhe pallu girane pad rahe hai.”
The movie begins as a romantic comedy and ends up as a thriller. The story also uses the name of an author Dinesh Pandit whose book Rani reads in the movie. Dinesh Pandit is a hidden character whose name was referred many times in the movie. While narrating her story to the police, Rani had also used the hidden character many times. Rani picks up sentences used in the Dinesh Pandit's book very often. It looks very enticing.
If we talk about the screenplay and the direction, Vinil Mathew does a good job. The direction is effortless and that’s the reason why everyone gets attracted to the movie. Mathew’s direction is on point and makes the story gripping. However, few of the scenes looked unreal, like Rishabh and Neel (Rani's ex-lover) sat together for a drink after confronting each other in an ugly fight.
As far as music composition is concerned, Amit Trivedi disappoints a bit. The songs in the movie are not that good, which is contrary to the stature of Amit Trivedi. On the other hand, the background score was relatively good and creates an impact in many of the scenes.
The script of the movie sometimes looked like a typical script of a Bollywood movie. The film had many memorable characters. While the makers invested a lot of energy in making the characters of Rani and Rishabh interesting, the other characters were subdued. The role of a cop played Aditya Srivastava fails to touch the chords of people. On the other hand, Yamini Das, who played the role of Rishabh's mom, makes this a comedy thriller. Vikrant Massey and Taapsee Pannu did a great job in acting. You will find how easily they change their character in second half of the movie.
The movie is streaming on Netflix, here is the trailer of the movie:
