Review

Tarkieb -- The near perfect murder
ONCE again, director Esmayeel Shroff and writer Moin-Ud-Din hit it off together. They show how good they are at their jobs with Jay Movies’ Tarkieb. The film, a whodunit suspense thriller, keeps one engrossed till the end. Unfortunately, we’re let down by the absence of a good musical score, which could have infused more commercial value to the film.

As always with a suspense film, the proceedings are quite heavy. They keep the audience on the edge of their seat, as was to be expected. But some relief ought to have been provided with a few catchy numbers. On the contrary, the director chooses to rely on the twists in the story and the performances from the cast, to keep the audience engrossed. The film doesn’t make for repeat viewing, and hence, may well end up being an average earner at the turnstiles.

The story unfolds with the discovery of a human limb from a pond. The body is later identified as that of an army staff nurse Roshni (Tabu). The police is under tremendous pressure from undisclosed sources to close the file but it is ultimately transferred to the CBI after protests from human rights activists.

Enter the upright and stern assistant director of the CBI, Jasraj Patel (Nana Patekar) to investigate the unsolved murder case. The ring of suspicion revolves around Roshni’s colleagues and friends. Patel interrogates her colleague at the army hospital, Capt. Dr Ajit Verma (Milind Soman), with whom Roshni had a brief romantic interlude. He discovers the strain in the relationship was due to Roshni’s unreasonable demand that Verma marry her sister. This is an unconvincing twist in an otherwise passable storyline. Patel also comes to know that Roshni dated a Dr Kamal Dogra (Ashutosh Rana), a casanova with a penchant for wine and women, to create a feeling of hate in Dr Verma. But the relationship doesn’t move much further as Roshni finds Dr Dogra in her roommate, Preeti Sharma’s (Shilpa Shetty) company. Dr Dogra is dismissed from service due to medical negligence on his part and Roshni testifies to his lapse.

Thereafter, Roshni moves out as governess to the children of rich businessman, Mohan Multani (Aditya Pancholi). But Dr Verma finds it difficult to forget his love for Roshni and tries to win her over with no success. When Multani also proposes to marry her, Roshni decides enough’s enough. She heads for her native village. Who accosts her at the railway station, why she gets killed and how supercop Patel unravels the mystery about the killer forms the element of suspense in the final reels.

Nana Patekar, as the cop on the trail of the murderer, has fully justified his role with a restrained performance. He manages to get under the skin of the character well. His instant one-liners are superb and raise laughter. Tabu is very convincing in the role of the army nurse, and plays her part to perfection. The entire story revolves around her, and she does not disappoint.

Shilpa Shetty ends up playing a poorly etched and inconsequential character. The surprise packet in the cast is Milind Soman, making his foray into the big screen, with a worthy performance. He looks much at ease and full of confidence in essaying his role. Ashutosh Rana, as usual, does a fair job although he appears to be dwarfed in certain scenes with Nana Patekar. Tiku Talsania and Akhilendra Mishra lend good support. Raghuvir Yadav raises some laughter in a brief comedy role.

One cannot find fault with director Esmayeel Shroff, in his endeavour to provide a near perfect narrative and characterisation. But he is hampered by the twists in the story, which look quite unconvincing. writer Moin-Ud-Din lives upto his reputation with an interesting story and screenplay, but loses the grip towards the end, which arrives quite abruptly.

Aadesh Shrivastava ought to have come out with some catchy numbers for a suspense movie like this one, but all his numbers appear out of place. There’s a pop, a ghazal and a qawali but it doesn’t suffice for a thriller such as this. Cinematography by Mazhar Kamran is quite imaginative. Sanjay Chowdhury does a competent job with his background score.

Padmaraj Nair