Review: 'Kis Hudh Tak' is a good idea badly executed

Kis Hudh Tak (A)

Cast: Shital Shah, Pavan Sharma, Sujata Kumar

Director: Tarun Dhanrajgir

Rating: Are you joking?

 

Kis Hudh Tak sets out to be a tale of justice, conviction and sacrifice but, sadly, turns out to be an insensitive bag of wannabes trying to prove a point: a rape, in this case.

 

Item numbers are passé. I think everybody knows that by now. Still, director Tarun Dhanrajgir takes the risk to begin the film with an item number with lead actor Sharad Bhutani (Sharma), a move that backfires. Our preening hero (Sharad keeps running his fingers through his hair ever so often) is the typical spoilt brat who leads a 'colourful' life (tell us something new). The mother is a control freak (of course, with no control) with political ambitions. Our heroine Dia (Shah) is a law student whose charm floors Sharad and they start dating.

 

'Rape is a crime… if you can prove it,' says the film's tagline. As predicted, Sharad is put behind bars and even his politically powerful mother cannot save him from the proverbial 'kanoon ke lambey haath'.The story is about Dia and her fight for justice, for whom you know only in the end.

 

It’s strange how the filmmaker fails to realise how painfully repetitive and overused the dialogues are, especially the way the characters yell “rape”, completely trivialising a very serious subject and defeating the purpose of the film.

 

Talking about purpose, the film looks like the product of the confusion of many minds wanting to show many things in roughly two-and-a-half hours. As the filmmaker claims that the film has a “definite message”, you feel like asking him the meaning of “definite”. You don’t know whether the film tells you not to date, not to rape, or to go to any extent to prove that you were raped. The attempt may be sincere, but the approach and portrayal are trifling.

 

As for acting talent, there is none on display. Newcomer Shah shows some promise, but Sharma looks like a wannabe trying to make it big in Hindi cinema. I’m not sure how far he will go with this kind of performance. The best of the lot is Sharad's mother Nirmala Devi (Kumar) with her Indira Gandhi-like hairstyle and strict demeanour. She has been seen in television serials before. In fact, many of the locations in the film remind you of the afternoon TV serials.

 

I guess the film's producers doubted their own product (why shouldn’t they?) and so came up with a 'buy 1 get 1 free' offer on tickets for the film. In Mumbai, the film is releasing in only one theatre, Eros.

 

The filmmaker deserves punishment for bad treatment of a great subject. Don’t even think of wasting your time and money on this one.