A thrilling ride

Cast: Vidya Balan, Arjun Rampal

Director: Sujoy Ghosh

Producer: Sujoy Ghosh, Jayantilal Gada

Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh

There’s a reason why Kahaani occupies a special place in everyone’s heart. Unlike most Bollywood movies set in Kolkata, the film didn’t romanticise the city but rather showed its gritty, dark, unpleasant part of the society. And the story too was a fantastically thrilling ride, unpredictable till the very end.

However, the sequel isn’t half the movie Kahaani was. Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh has a plot that is too convoluted but in a nutshell, it’s about a mother whose dark past comes back to haunt her when her daughter is kidnapped by foregone enemies. Vidya Balan plays Durga Rani Singh or Vidya Sinha and she shines in her role. Her eyes convey the troubled life she goes through, her every nuance beautifully captures her strengths and weaknesses. She builds a character for whom all of us start to feel and it is on her shoulders that the whole movie rides.

Arjun Rampal plays the cop Inderjeet Singh and his character provides the exposition on Durga’s haunting past as her story is slowly unfolded through his reading of her diary (Bridges of Madison County alert) and does justice to his role. The Bengali cast of Tota Roy Chowdhury, Kharaj Mukherjee and many more play their parts well but the person who is unexpectedly great in her role is Naisha Khanna who plays the young Minnie Dewan with acting chops that are way beyond her years.

Kahaani 2 is a movie, with every frame capturing the grimy, gloomy and disturbing mood of society wonderfully.

The cinematographer, Tapan Basu has done a brilliant job of setting the mood of the movie in such fashion that even David Fincher will be proud of it-dark and scary with sudden bursts of colour. The editing is highly fast paced and gives us no time to breathe in the first half. The sound design is terrific, adding to the thrills but the music isn’t anything special.

The story is highly predictable for anyone who has watched the works of David Fincher. There’s an unnecessary sub-plot regarding Inderjeet’s family that hampers the story. Jugal Hansraj’s acting isn’t half as scary as it should be. The climax does a good job of turning the story around but that is totally ruined by a horrendous epilogue, unnecessary and overlong.

There are certain thrills that fail to heighten the tension. In a nutshell Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh could have topped its prequel but a very weak second half and a terrible final act ruins that possibility.

(Shahim Sheikh, Class XI, Coordinator, Julien Day School, Kolkata)