Remember Amnesia review: Memory loss, a dead wife haunt an NRI doctor in India

Dr Jay Singh, played by Dileep Rao, is an arrogant doctor living in Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania. We know this because the film spends its first 10 minutes establishing his hauteur as he puts down colleagues, his boss Dr Smith (Tovah Feldshuh) and his patient’s wife in rapid succession.

Jay has had a monumental change in his life after his marriage in India and hasn’t been the same after that. His exceedingly bad behaviour continues and Dr Smith sends him on a break to India to get his groove back (and maybe land some patients).

Back in India, Jay is trying to make his way to Mumbai to meet his uncle, a neurosurgeon, first by air and then by train, where he is robbed by a pair of crooks, played by Vijay Patkar and Aanand Kale. While they make off with his laptop, wallet and valuables, he is hit by a mile marker as he leans out of the train.

Unconscious and vulnerable, he is taken to a local hospital in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where he meets Dr Nina Joshi (Shruti Marathe). Jay can’t remember who he is but Dr Joshi feels a kinship towards him and helps him find his bearings.

Ravi Godse’s debut feature drops hints of a mysterious dark past for Jay. Whatever happened to his wife? Is she missing, fictional, or did Jay just bump her off as they were newly married? Smith recruits the hospital head of security Mr Marks (Curtiss Cook) to investigate, while Dr Joshi and her boss, Dr Sharma (Mahesh Manjrekar), allow Jay to stay at the hospital.

The confusing tale of a man finding himself again is hampered by the useless mystery of his missing and/or dead wife. The revelation at the end is also unsatisfying. The acting by lead actor Dileep Rao, known for his roles in Hollywood Avatar (2009) and Inception (2010), is all over the place. We never get to know the character or his motivations well.

The American cast is saddled with tedious dialogues while the Indian cast fares slightly better as the film perks up when in India. However, the Indian characters insist they don’t speak any English and continue to speak in it anyway. The comedic B-plot with Patkar and Kale just feels like a filler.

Marathe and Manjrekar seem to be the only ones taking their roles seriously. For some reason, a young Indian boy with an Americanized accent roams around with impunity. He exists in the screenplay to connect a few random dots.

Both the editing and the screenplay seem scattered. Streamlined, the story of Remember Amnesia had good potential. However, a lack of direction and undue indulgence by the American filmmaker lets the English-language film get out of hand.