Ittefaq Movie Review: No-nonsense, whodunit Hindi mainstream murder mystery

IttefaqDirector Abhay ChopraActors Akshaye Khanna Siddharth Malhotra Sonakshi SinhaRatingItd take a lot of guts to put together a tightskinned songless mainstream film starring top Alisters and to top that begin the picture with a wholly unrelated trippy psychedelic multicoloured rotating animation stinging your eyes in a dark hall for almost three minutes at a stretch even before the frickinrsquo opening credits have begun to roll Wait what was that for Well justSonakshi Sinha and Sidharth Malhotra in a still from the song Raat BakiThat incidentally was Yash Choprarsquos Ittefaq produced by BR Chopra from back in 1969 starring Rajesh Khanna at the peak of his career no less This is a funfact to bear in mind for millennials who either unfairly believe Yash Chopra was simply the lsquoking of romancersquo or that experimentation in popular Hindi cinema began with the late lsquo90s bratpackmdashAnurag Kashyap etcmdashviscerally inclined towards the dark side This film produced by Shah Rukh Khan Karan Johar among others marks the directorial debut of BR Choprarsquos grandson Abhay and so far as thrillers go the first thing it gets right is that it packs up in under two hours flat an hour and 45 minutes to precise Which is perfect duration to give the screen your undivided unwavering attention for a whodunit that otherwise might leave you with more questions than it answers Before your mind wanders in those directions yoursquove had your fill of the popcorn and the pic and yoursquore good to go Im going to set aside the ItteFAQ Frequently Asked Questions yoursquore likely to have since that would inevitably mean giving the movie away Much like Hitchcockrsquos Psycho the promotion of this picture itself is pretty much hinged on urging audiences not to reveal the endmdashitrsquos the only one theyrsquove got As for the beginning all you need to know is therersquos a cop Akshaye Khanna in superb form looking to solve two murders that ittefaq se or coincidentally to the point of disbelief take place over the same night and involves one person Siddharth Malhotra being present at both crime scenes The two murders or if they were even murders in the first place on the face of it have nothing to do with each other except that in one case a hotel room a wife is found dead Malhotrarsquos while in the other a super fancy apartment a husband Sonakshi Sinharsquos Malhotra plays a popular crimefiction writer based in the UK Looking at him the cop immediately says ldquoHey but you donrsquot look like a writerrdquo Well he doesnrsquot but then again who does Hersquos a quiet sort of bloke though at the centre of a murder mystery that as per diktat has to be solved in three days no more Which is as long as this film needs to pack audiences in theatres and walk away with a hit Does this movie hit you in the way it should though Honestly you wish it wasnrsquot so overtly productiondesigned even sanitizedmdashand there was more lsquoMumbairsquo in a movie so lsquoBombayrsquomdashfor a grimy thriller But it keeps you thoroughly glued to your seat and that for a payoff is pretty much worth whatever you paid for Thankfully I donrsquot remember Yash Choprarsquos Ittefaq that this is a remake of poor memory has its benefits Itrsquos available on YouTube I rightly stopped right after the premovie psychedelia It was evidently inspired by a Gujarati play Dhoommas which in turn was based on the play Signpost To Murder that had already been made into a film by the same name Given the number of hands the first script has passed with sufficient changes made each time Irsquom told in the beginning there was only one murder instead of two itrsquod be fair to consider this a fully original version by now I also donrsquot remember the last time I watched a fullon nononsense whodunit Hindi mainstream murder mystery in a theatre with no way to talk about it but to urge you to see it because thatrsquos the only way we can discuss it any further I think you should check it out just so we can take this conversation offline to start with