How one does not root for Hritikh Roshan in Sanjay Gupta’s Kaabil. He plays a visually impaired young man, who systematically plots revenge on those who brutally violated his blind wife. Hritikh puts a committed performances but the film is weighed down by many contrivances. The most evident among them is glaring dichotomy at its core. The director of the movie gave us leads who refuse to be pitied because of their visual disabilities.
They have jobs, they are independent and seek companionship and love. It is a refreshing upgrade from the old cliché where handicaps were shorthand for helplessness in movies. But then the script places these characters in a landscape straight out of eighties Bollywood. One that is dominated by smutty eve teasers, political baddies and corrupt cops.
This movie is kind of film that plays out the abandoned warehouses and whose characters do not deliver dialogues but punchlines. All these things are so outdates that you cannot help but croon. The plot sees Hritikh’s character Rohan Bhatnagar and Supriya played by Yami Gautam fall in love and tie the knot, shortly after they set up on a date. The script does not bother with any back story of how they became blind or why neither has any family in their lives.
But talking about it, I am nit-picking. If one watches the movie’s trailer one can easily predict the story. Rohan sets a plan to playback perpetrators, after a barbaric incident they commit, which shatters Rohan’s life.
Namely the neighbourhood bad apple played by Rohit Roy and his corporater brother Ronit Roy, who are protected by thuggish cops Played by Girish Kulkarni and Narendra Jha. There are sharp surprises in the manner the director executes Rohan’s revenge plan and shrewd twists, build around seemingly innocuous values. But the novelty wares off when the same trick is employed over and over again. Plus the film is written with plot holes which are as huge as crators.
Some of these might have been easy to overlook if the film had anything new to offer. But this is a B movie from the eightees which neither includes subtext not nuance.
Yami Gautam has a nice presence, but Rohit and Ronit Roy are characters plucked straight out of a handbook Of Bollywood clichés. The film then is redeemed to some degree by the sincerity and conviction of its leading man. Hritikh makes the audience care and makes them invested in their pain. Even when the film turns increasingly violent and practically implausible, his commitment does not falter. He is the soul reason the flick does not derail and is very much worth watching!
