EK VILLAIN: An intense love-story or unintentionally funny thriller? [2/5]

Negative attracts. Villains get most of the claps. Well, mostly. So in case, if you make it to resist yourself from falling over your current heartthrobs on screen; Shraddha Kapoor riding high on AASHIQUI 2’s success and the cute-faced, no-nonsense and impressively the most sincere looking student of Kjo’s school Sidharth Malhotra respectively for boys & girls; you have also on board one of the most deliciously mystified villain played by Riteish Deshmukh. A perfect casting, quite enticing in this case is a fool-proof strategy to bring big numbers in theatres and at the box-office both. Half battle is won.  

Now, let’s have some crisp, meaty, tense, on the edge plot that could have the audience seated for longer than interval at least. Plot? Really? Aren’t we asking for much, especially in Bollywood? But why to worry if there are plenty of inspirations floating all over the cinema-world! And the team chooses South Korean revenge thriller I SAW THE DEVIL.  With added melodic music that includes an item number too, anyone would have predicted ages before going on the floor that the film will be a success in all respects. It looks. It sounds. It appears but sadly and only on paper. It’s time to face some reality. Mohit Suri’s EK VILLAIN is a mishmash of a love-story that tries hard to be intense and an unintentional revenge drama that thrills only at one occasion or two.

Ethically, there is not much to unravel in the plot as it being a suspense thriller, though you can easily predict it from a mile away. So, let’s stick to the characters and not the major events. Shraddha Kapoor plays Ayesha- a girl in high spirits with her bucket-list of dreamy wishes like watching peacocks dancing in the ‘first’ rain of the season, catching a butterfly and you can go on & on with a wide-eyed expression of ‘How romantic!’ on your face. She also loves to talk in a manner tried & tested well before by all prominent Bollywood heroines from Hema Malini in ‘SHOLAY’ to Asin in ‘GHAZNI’. She comes last in the list of ‘who performed well’.

In execution of one of these silliest wishes, she seeks help of a cold-blooded murderous henchman Guru, played by yours truly Sidharth wearing a grumpy look on face from the acting rulebook. What happens next? Any guesses? No, he doesn’t kill the girl. No, the girl doesn’t kill him for what he’s done but they both fall in love. I bet you haven’t had it in your weirdest dream. Enters Riteish playing Rakesh, a simple-sober-soft spoken regular guy who doesn’t want much in life but to be a hero for his son and wife! With a nagging, beating & harassing wife [played by Aamna Sharif], it is quite an impossible task. So, the constantly piling anger, frustration and rage arouse the violent streak in the guy. How the three cross each other’s path is better left unspoken.

At best, EK VILLAIN is a melodramatic average Bollywood thriller with predictably ridiculous storyline that barely imposes any sense of emotional connect to any of the characters. They are loud screaming hard to make themselves noticed. The twists and turns are some relief in order to infuse some excitement. In one of scenes, Kamaal Rashid Khan of ‘DESHDROHI’ is seen justifying domestic violence on women as a part of common middle-class men’s stress-release process. If a writer could come up with such character on screen that too without giving him a proper lesson at the end, I mourn the death of sensibility in such creative area of work. Even my anger is piling up for obvious reasons! Let’s end it here and here! [2/5]