The Maverick in Action
I remember reading Nagesh Kukunoor was an environment consultant before. His movies always got the flavour of the ramblings of a maverick! I remember watching 3 Deewarein which was an offbeat type of suspense thriller which was not much familiar with those who are baptized and inducted with the typical bollywood way! From Hyderabad Blues onwards, Kukunoor was considered to be a maverick got great aspirations to come up with excellent painting on the celluloid.
But he was not consistent, sometimes got trapped between the delicate balancing act between commercialization and commitment to quality product! 8 X 10 Tasvir is a classic example of the same! He wanted to try out something different but miserably failed while accommodating big star cast, a well known rock band etc.
Plot Summary
Jai and his super natural power! The story is based in Canada. Jai Puri (Akshay Kumar) is a forest ranger with EPS who got a strained relation with his father Jatin Puri (Benjamin Gilani). Jai is not business minded and did not appreciate the way in which his father manages his empire. Jai is endowed with super natural power that has got roots with a personal tragedy in his life (which is revealed during the later part of the movie). He can go back to past events of any photographs concentrating on the any one individual in the photograph. During the process, he will experience a near death experience and the moment when he returns back to real world, he will be collapsed! He need blood transfusion and other medical support to survive.
Death - Jatin Puri met with an accident in his private boat and dies! Those who were there in the boat where his stake holders in the business. They are, Savitri Puri (Sharmila Tagore), Jatin’s wife, Sundar (Anant Mahadevan), Anil Sharma (Girish Karnad) who is having an inclination towards Savitri and Adit (Rushad Rana) who is a good friend of Jai. Everyone saw Jatin falling from the boat to the sea and while rescuing him, he got myocardial infarction (heart attack) and he dies!
New Characters - We have an estranged cop with peculiar mannerism “Happy with an Eye” (Javed Jaffrey) who got an intuition that Jatin was murdered. Jatin’s will got provision to make his wife as his heir. Jai was left with no fortune. But Savitri told Jai that Jatin wanted to transfer all his fortunes in the name of Jai’s organisation EPS! In the mean time, Jai decided to marry Sheela (Ayesha Takia) with whom he had a living relation and they got married.
Here comes the clue - Just before death, Savitri clicked photograph of Jatin, Sundar, Adit and Anil. Jai got bad dreams where in his father wanted to convey some message to him. He decided to use his super natural powers to get into the individual in the photographs to unlock the mystery! Happy with an eye – comes up with his observations. Together they started their investigation in search of the murderer. By the time he reaches close to the murderer ------ the tragedy strikes, unexpected and gruesome tearing of many lives apart.
Who is the murderer? Is it so easy to reach up to him through Jatin’s super natural skills? At what cost you can reach up to the truth? ---- Well, this is 8 x 10 Tasvir for you!
Over all feel - Nothing extra ordinary about the script but acerbic and elegiac by turns and potent in its portrayal of the suspense thriller with high degree of fiction in all its allure and menace, it confirm Kukunoor’s prodigious skill and range as a story teller. The blending of superb camera shots, background score and editing remains safe with Nagesh. Till the first half, the movie will definitely grab the attention of the viewers. No major flaws and being a total fiction, even viewers won’t be obsessed with logical conclusions of many events.
Climax - But from second half onwards, we will feel definite strain in the flow of the movie. Towards the climax when we were looking for some high voltage drama unfolding several mysteries with a chill in the spine – Ahhh it disappoints a lot. Absolute derailment of logic, delicate and fragile handling of the theme and “beating around bush” type action scenes totally spoil the overall feel of the movie. By now, viewers might be quite acclimatized with the “screwing up of climax” (classic example being Delhi 6).
Suspense Element Well, it is kept to a great extent but in the coming days, the same will be discussed at length for sure. If you got the suspense thread, honestly there is nothing much to look forward from the movie!
Music Introduction of “Bohemia” was much discussed. The Indianised version of the song is not much appealling. Salim – Suleiman’s music score was also quite ordinary! Nothing much to discuss about the same.
Finally --- I think there are no major releases this week. So, if you are keen to watch a movie, this is the only choice. So, just for timepass - 8 x 10 Tasvir is a good choice. But do excuse the climax! That remains as a horror still!