Taapsee Pannu deserves better and this doesn’t even come close to that
Blurr Movie Review Rating: 1.5
Star Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Gulshan Devaiah, Abhilash Thapliyal & ensemble.
Director: Ajay Bahl
What’s Good: Abhilash Thapliyal even with just his silhouette and mid-riff manages to be the best thing about this movie.
What’s Bad: A thriller trying so hard to be a thriller that it completely forgets it is supposed to have a conversation with its audience and not just with itself.
Loo Break: Nothing here feels connected actually, take one at any point.
Watch or Not?: Only if you don’t have any other option and that is not even a rare case scenario now.
Language: Hindi (with subtitles).
Available on: Zee5
Runtime: 126 Minutes
User Rating:
One of the twin sisters ends her life under some very strange circumstances and the alive one is left with the task to find out if it was a suicide or a murder. The investigation leads to some dark alleys and the bad man is a maniac.
Blurr Movie Review: Script Analysis
Whodunits in cinema are one of the most demanding kinds of films regardless of the language and landscapes they are made in. It does not just demand ultimate attention from the maker and the crew involved in creating it, but even the viewer because they have to understand and dissect it. In this barter, if the investment of the viewer is wasted due to the lethargy of the product, it irks more than a normal film would. PS: Malayalam movie Bhoothakaalam is a fine example of how to make a thriller in the recent times.
Taapsee Pannu starrer and produced Blurr is a classic example of how not to structure a thriller anymore. Directed by Ajay Bahl, and also written by him with Pawan Sony, the movie is a remake of the 2010 Spanish film Julia’s Eyes. The premise of the movie is quite complicated. A blind girl hangs herself in the presence of a mysterious someone and her sister has to now find out who while jumping in the same muck. It even opens with a very haunting scene, and then leads to the unfolding. But Bahl and his co-writer chose to go the staple way with the word go itself.
There is no visible effort to introduce any new or improvised way of storytelling. It’s the same technique we have seen over the years. Convenient plot twists, everyone is at the right place at the right time, or wrong place maybe, you get it. For example, Taapsee enters a room full of blind women and guess what, they are discussing her sister’s death with the most intricate detail including the name of the hotel she went to, what possibility! Many such instances lead to killing the urge to get a unique film.
The rest of it is killed by the pace that is not bothered about the emotions of its very protagonist who has lost her sister, husband, and is about to lose her eyesight. She is never given space to grief so she at least looks humane enough so we can connect with her. The movie is so hell-bent on jumping from one scene to another that it even introduces some points and forgets about them completely. The dead sister was a musician who hated rap. Why was she is musician? How does it even serve a purpose to the story if you have highlighted it so visibly?
Credit where it’s due, the idea of not showing the faces of the people around Taapsee after she loses her eyesight is good and something fresh. But the build-up to it dilutes the impact. Yes, the movie is trying to talk about our lack of attention to the people around us and their intentions, but the track it chooses to drive the point home is now jam packed.
Blurr Movie Review: Star Performance
This is Taapsee Pannu’s third remake this year. The last two were pretty good and deserved every bit of appreciation for how fresh and pumped up they were. But this is not the Taapsee we deserve. Her performance as both Gayatri and Gautami is restrained and feels like she isn’t opening up entirely. There is scope for so much more and you don’t need to have any master sensibilities to see that. The actor has done way better and needs to get back to that.
Gulshan Devaiah gets to play a husband who is also a potential culprit but also disappears in between. His part is written so abruptly that nothing about it makes any sense to the script after a point.
Abhilash Thapliyal though is in an altogether different film. With a very confused purpose, the actor is convinced about being bad and put a whole lot of effort into acing the material he is given.
Blurr Movie Review: Direction, Music
Ajay Bahl relies a lot on the landscape he has set his movie in. Full marks to Sudhir K Chaudhary for building the gory environment with his camera, but that is not enough to create an entire movie. Also, why is the editing of the movie so abrupt? Scenes jump from one to another without any transition element involved most of the time. If it was a device to create any impact, it didn’t work for me at least.
Blurr Movie Review: The Last Word
Blurr is how not to make whodunits anymore. Taapsee Pannu deserves better and this doesn’t even come close to that.
Blurr Trailer
Blurr releases on 09 December, 2022.
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