Ittefaq Movie Review

04/11/2017

01/CR/Hindi/UA

Ittefaq - a Bollywood Crime thriller directed by debutant Abhay Chopra and produced by Red Chillies Entertainment, Dharma Productions and B R Studios jointly. Starring Siddharth Malhotra, Sonakshi Sinha and Akshay Khanna in pivotal roles and is loosely based on 1969 Bollywood film by the same name.

Plot:
* A NRI British Author, Vikram Sethi was accused of two murders - one was his wife's murder and the other was a lawyer named Shekhar. His wife, Maya somehow got the help of police and arrested Vikram, who said himself as an innocent. The investigation incharge was handled to a police officer named Dev. Then the story followed how could Dev solve the case that had two perspectives within three days.

Performance:
* Siddharth Malhotra as Vikram Sethi essayed the character well. Unlike his previous movies, this movie was moreover concentrated on his performance and he did at his level best. He lived as the character. His level of enacting emotions to prove his innocence and his different shades in Sonakshi's narration, all was fine. Vikram Sethi is one of his best performances in his career.

* Akshaye Khanna as Dev was the gem of this movie. He driven the whole movie as an investigating officer. Everyone knows that he's one of the most underrated actor in Bollywood but undoubtedly, after watching some of his portrayal in his recent released movies, actually he could utilised well by the directors, that level of acting was evident in the entire movie. He made the spectators confused as well as to think about what could be the possible climax of this film and he succeeded in it.

* Sonakshi Sinha as Maya did her role at her level best. Even though she had the grace for the character, the first portions at the police station when narrating her portion, her acting seemed a bit artificial but later on, she came back on track. Her acting in two versions was also fine and good.

* Other actors did essayed their roles according to what the movie actually required. Every actors did their role well.

Technical Aspects:
* Directed by Abhay Chopra succeeded in directing his debut movie in a well manner. He did the direction with the ease that could even made the spectators felt that this was a debutant's film and special thanks to the producers who kept a confidence on him.

* Written by the director Abhay Chopra himself, Shreyas Jain and Nikhil Mehrotra was the main asset of the movie. The script was well-crafted and logical and was rid of usual Bollywood masalas. That gave a relief to the audience, for sure. The screenplay was well-written and the dialogues were crisp and it wasn't like filmy dialogues.

* DoP by Michal Luka was good. His angles and shots were pretty good and tried to showcase some realistic and raw shots. Also there were some routine shots that used to capture during usual interrogation scenes but cinematographer tried his best to be realistic and non-clichéd.

* Editing by Nitin Baid was crisp and sharp. Unwanted scenes wasn't found. He cropped and edited the movie according to the pace that the screenplay demanded. There were slow paced scenes too but that didn't effect the spectator. The running time itself was another plus point which was less than two hours.

* Music by Tanishk Bagchi did his part well. There was only one song and that too, a promotional song. The movie didn't had any song and was gave more importance to background scores. That's one of the major plus points. His background scores gave the spectators the effect of a double perspective thriller and there weren't any unnecessary musics that could distract from movie.

Final Verdict: Watch Ittefaq if you wanna watch an unusual Bollywood non-commercial thriller with a good script. Go for it. Probably one of the best Indian thriller movies of 2017 (strictly my opinion).
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