Neeyat

Vidya discards the usual a-woman-who-knows-it-all tropes and uses a low-key, unshowy acting style to convey a range of emotions in a role that allows her to traverse an impressively wide gamut. Vidya Balan makes a rather unconventional crime investigator in Anu Menon’s Neeyat – a laconic, straight-faced, hawk-eyed woman who does not waste her breath until it is absolutely essential. She employs silence as a shield and a tool as she ferrets around the ornate interiors of an opulent Scottish seaside castle after its owner jumps off a cliff.

That is about the only semblance of novelty that there is in the plot, which combines some genuinely clever twists with hackneyed hooks and contrived sleights to deliver a whodunnit that is only sporadically effective. The performances, too, are wildly uneven. While the likes of Neeraj Kabi, Shahana Goswami and Shashank Arora (in the role of a drug-addled drifter) do all that they can to raise the bar, not too many of the rest of the actors in the film are able to produce the sort of goods that could help the narrative offset its weaker stretches.

Genres:Mystery, Thriller

Director:Anu Menon

Cast:Vidya Balan, Ram Kapoor, Rahul Bose, Neeraj Kabi, Niki Walia, Amrita Puri, Shahana Goswami, Dipannita Sharma Atwal, Shashank Arora, Prajakta Koli, Danesh Razvi