'Red', which comes with a punchy tagline 'The Dark Side',
is an erotic thriller and murder mystery rolled into one.
It marks a departure for Vikram Bhatt from his earlier style
of filmmaking. This time he has attempted a tale of love,
fear and deception.
Neel Oberoi (Aftab Shivdasani), a billionaire suffers from
a fatal heart disease. His world is dark. But then fate brings
a new hope in his life in the form of a girl. Anahita Saxena
(Celina Jaitley) is a beautiful and sexy woman, but lonely.
He realizes that Anahita is leading a life full of tears,
sorrow and depression. Not only does he fall in love with
her but he also ends up killing Rocky (Amin Hajee) who, according
to Anahita was her husband's murderer and was now out to kill
her too. She also hates Ria Malhotra (Amrita Arora) who, according
to her is her friend and who was in love with her husband.
As Neel is irresistibly drawn into a passionate love affair
with Anahita, he discovers some facts from her past. He also
gets involved with Ria in an unexpected way.
The film has several dull moments and instances of convenient
screenplay writing that the charm of a suspense thriller is
lost completely. Even the identity of the killer becomes obvious
very early in the film. The drama lacks novelty as films on
similar subjects have been seen earlier. Even symbolism of
showing red flashes does not connect and the title is not
justified.
Vikram Bhatt's direction is fairly average. Although he has
tried to treat the plot with style he has not been able to
come up to the mark. The viewer gets the impression of having
seen similar stuff in Jism. Even the love making scenes between
Aftab and Celina don't provide much to the viewer.
Himesh Reshammiya's music is very good. The 'Aafreen' song
is a hit. 'Aamin' and 'Junoon' are foot-tapping numbers. Song
picturisations (Raju Khan and Shabiba Khan) are alright. Action
(Abbas Ali Moghul) is quite good. Background music (Raju Rao)
is okay. Cinematography (Pravin Bhatt) is of high-quality.
Editing is neat. Dialogues are adequate. Technically, this
film is nice.
Aftab Shivadasani is pretty good. Celina Jaitley looks gorgeous.
Amrita Arora does reasonably well in a limited role. Sushant
Singh as a cop is excellent. His performance deserves applause.
Kishori Shahane, Amin Hajee, Melissa Pias, Monty and Ajay
Jadhav fit the bill.
On the whole, Red will have the going very tough. Although
it offers more titillation than thrills, it will fail to set
the cash registers jingling at the box-office. Even its popular
songs will do nothing to save the film. A big downer.
|
