Monday, December 23, 2013

8 x 10 Tasveer


Nagesh Kukunoor who gave us two back-to-back slices of inspirational cinema in Iqbal and Dor and then burned his hands with comedy Bombay To Bangkok now Nagesh enters a new zone with 8 x 10 TASVEER. Yet, 8 x 10 TASVEER goes wrong, horribly wrong.

8x10 Tasveer’ is the story of a young man with a unique supernatural gift of looking into the past of dead people. These inward trips, when repeated more than one can bear, elicit outward trips by viewers to the cafeteria. After all, if the hero needs adrenaline to stay alive, we need a shot of caffeine to stay awake. The film’s that bad.


So we have Jai (Akshay Kumar) living in with a girlfriend ( Ayesha Takia ) with whom he shares no apparent chemistry but whom he plans to marry. Jai has a unique gift of looking at people’s photographs and having a vision of the moments after the snap was clicked.

When Jai’s billionaire father (Benjamin Gilani) dies in an accident and a cranked-out detective ( Javed Jaffrey ) shows up and tries to convince Jai that his dead dad was murdered for wealth. This personal tragedy leads him to use his unique supernatural powers to unravel the mystery.

Armed with this photograph into which he keeps ‘going’ repeatedly, Jai digs deeper into the mystery even as the finger of suspicion keeps shifting from his mom and his uncle to two more characters close to his dad. There are so many gaps that remain wide open till the end.

Akshay pitches in a sincere performance. 8 x 10 TASVEER is a complete departure from the kind of films the actor is popular for and it only goes to prove that he's ready to experiment. Ayesha is natural. Sharmila Tagore is graceful. Jaaved Jaaferi is first-rate. Girish Karnad, Benjamin Gilani, Ananth Mahadevan and Rushaad Rana are perfect in their respective roles.


Nagesh Kukunoor seems to have completely lost it this time. As the writer and director of this sleep-inducing, ridiculously contrived film with half-baked subplots, he’s the one on whom the blame should fall squarely.

So many questions beg to be answered. If you are brave to sit awake through two-plus hours of banality. On the whole, 8 x 10 TASVEER disappoints. This tasveer is out of focus!

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