Zeher
Producer: Mukesh Bhatt
Director: Mohit Suri
Cast: Emran Hashmi, Udita Goswami, Shamita Shetty
Are Indians no longer capable of creating original thrillers?
All they have been doing recently is copying and plagiarizing foreign movies and stories.
Zeher belongs to such a genre.
What makes it different is the treatment debutant director, Mohit Suri has given it. He has tried to indianize it to the best of his ability.
Siddharth Mehra (Emraan Hashmi) is a a drunk and raging police officer estranged from his wife Sonia (Shamita Shetty), a special task force officer.
Siddharth has not been able to take his wife’s success well. This has created cracks in their relationship. A severe communication gap isolates the two even further though they are always in love with each other.
Siddharth has a chance meeting with the lusty Anna (Udita Goswami). He drops her home on a late night and also leaves his contact number, for her to call if she needs help.
Anna does call him but with a purpose which will have far reaching consequences later. Her criminal and wife-beating husband Shaun (Sameer Kocchar) is absent at that time. Siddharth though reluctant is seduced by her. Anna is diagnosed with cancer and also becomes pregnant with Siddharth’s child. Without thinking twice he gives a huge sum of money (which he retrieved during a drug raid), to Anna and asks her to go to Bombay for treatment. In turn Anna makes Siddharth one of the nominees in her life insurance policy.The next day, Anna’s house is burnt down; with Anna presumed dead, all clues point towards Siddharth. To make matters worse Sonia is assigned the charge of investigating the case.
Emran Hashmi, though wooden, plays well the role of an agitated and stressed cop. But Ninad Kamath, as his close friend James is brilliant.
Shamita Shetty neatly portrays a woman caught between her man and her career .
Its quite wonderful the way its explained time and again in the movie how she still loves Siddharth and longs for him.
Udita Goswami has given what the role exactly wanted from her. She plays the perfect seductress.
The scene is set in Goa and two specific themes are dealt with, in the movie.
One is the marriage under strain of Sonia (Shamita Shetty) and Siddharth and also Anna and Shaun(Sameer Kocchar).
The other is the murder mystery.
The first half shows Siddharth suffering with compunction on his liaison with Anna.
The second half finds him making a desperate attempt to find the truth and hence save himself from law.
’Woh Lamhe Woh Baatein’ (Mithun Sharma, Naresh Sharma) is a well shot song and is a relief from the Bollywood eyesore group dances.
The intimate scenes between Emran and Udita at times looks unnecessary and over done.
Zeher brought to mind so many movies. Among them whats worth mentioning is ‘Out of Time’ and ‘U turn’.
I wish I never saw them because no amount of aesthetically shot songs and good cinematography can cover for a movie that shamelessly borrows its format, mood language and theme from another source without a hint of acknowledgement.