<p>Film: Andhadhun</p>.<p>Rating: 3.5/5</p>.<p>Cast: Tabu, Ayushmann Khurrana, Radhika Apte</p>.<p>Language: Hindi (U/A)</p>.<p>Whether the director of the best film is the best director is a debate that comes up every year, usually around the time of the national awards.</p>.<p>With the general populace usually paying little attention to anything more than the "story" or the "message", the change a director can bring to a script is overlooked.</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> is a fantastic bone to throw in to this debate. The film is not consistently great, but Sriram Raghavan's direction is a spectacle in itself.</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> tells the story of a blind pianist (Khurrana), his feisty girlfriend (Radhika), a washed-up actor (Anil Dhawan), a femme fatale (Tabu) and her beefcake (Manav Vij).</p>.<p>The script is a work of genius for a little over the first half. Raghavan sets up the life of the blind musician very carefully, parallelly telling the story of a yesteryear's (somewhat) star (Anil Dhawan), his gold-digger and their evidently gross chemistry.</p>.<p>These parallel storylines meet at a point of crime, one to which 'blindness' makes all the difference.</p>.<p>Raghavan, however, is not interested in using blindness as a theme — he instead uses it as a prop. Crimes committed in the presence of a blind man never assume the usual seriousness of noir (Raghavan's specialty), but rather the ironic seriousness of old silent films.</p>.<p>In Raghavan's films, with an obviously prodigious knowledge of cinema, these must be allusions and not accidents.</p>.<p>The overall result is a great, darkly comic neo-noir that Bollywood sometimes aspires to, but doesn't pull off.</p>.<p>But not so fast. A little into the second half, <span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> loses steam as the plot gets unnecessarily complicated. Before you know it, there's blackmail, the hospital mafia, some good-guy talk, backstabbing-the-backstabbers, all of which will make you groan: "Oh no! Bollywood!"</p>.<p>And in case you didn't notice that Khurrana and Tabu are fantastic actors in the beginning, the way they pull this sputtering vehicle forward at this point will.</p>.<p>So the final verdict is: a little more than half of <span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> is one of the best crime films in years; from there, it's an above-average Bollywood film.</p>
<p>Film: Andhadhun</p>.<p>Rating: 3.5/5</p>.<p>Cast: Tabu, Ayushmann Khurrana, Radhika Apte</p>.<p>Language: Hindi (U/A)</p>.<p>Whether the director of the best film is the best director is a debate that comes up every year, usually around the time of the national awards.</p>.<p>With the general populace usually paying little attention to anything more than the "story" or the "message", the change a director can bring to a script is overlooked.</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> is a fantastic bone to throw in to this debate. The film is not consistently great, but Sriram Raghavan's direction is a spectacle in itself.</p>.<p><span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> tells the story of a blind pianist (Khurrana), his feisty girlfriend (Radhika), a washed-up actor (Anil Dhawan), a femme fatale (Tabu) and her beefcake (Manav Vij).</p>.<p>The script is a work of genius for a little over the first half. Raghavan sets up the life of the blind musician very carefully, parallelly telling the story of a yesteryear's (somewhat) star (Anil Dhawan), his gold-digger and their evidently gross chemistry.</p>.<p>These parallel storylines meet at a point of crime, one to which 'blindness' makes all the difference.</p>.<p>Raghavan, however, is not interested in using blindness as a theme — he instead uses it as a prop. Crimes committed in the presence of a blind man never assume the usual seriousness of noir (Raghavan's specialty), but rather the ironic seriousness of old silent films.</p>.<p>In Raghavan's films, with an obviously prodigious knowledge of cinema, these must be allusions and not accidents.</p>.<p>The overall result is a great, darkly comic neo-noir that Bollywood sometimes aspires to, but doesn't pull off.</p>.<p>But not so fast. A little into the second half, <span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> loses steam as the plot gets unnecessarily complicated. Before you know it, there's blackmail, the hospital mafia, some good-guy talk, backstabbing-the-backstabbers, all of which will make you groan: "Oh no! Bollywood!"</p>.<p>And in case you didn't notice that Khurrana and Tabu are fantastic actors in the beginning, the way they pull this sputtering vehicle forward at this point will.</p>.<p>So the final verdict is: a little more than half of <span class="italic"><em>Andhadhun</em></span> is one of the best crime films in years; from there, it's an above-average Bollywood film.</p>