Mayur Lookhar
Mumbai, 19 Jan 2018 12:52 IST
The first half is simply unbearable, as the shoddy screenplay and poor acting saps all your energy.
A title like Vodka Diaries is enticing for writers who gulp down a few pegs to get the creative juices flowing. Alcohol has served as great tool of inspiration for filmmakers to pen neo-noir psychological thrillers. Unheralded filmmaker Kushal Srivastava must have consumed a diet of Basic Instinct (1992) and Stanley Kubrick films, mainly The Shining (1980).
Srivastava's desi Vodka Diaries is set in the snow-clad hills of Himachal. The story begins with the protagonist running on icy peaks before he heads home, then sips his vodka on his bed as his wife Shikha (Mandira Bedi) gets poetic.
ACP Ashwini Dixit (Kay Kay Menon) gets a distress call from his colleague Ankit (Sharib Hashmi). A woman named Megha is found dead in her hotel room. One murder case has just opened, but Dixit receives more unpleasant surprises as the bodies of three more guests are recovered from different locations.
All the deceased were last seen at the night club. The one thing common to the murders is the victim possessing the book 'Vodka Diaries'. ACP Dixit then receives a call from his wife’s number, it’s not Shikha but one strange woman Roshni Banerjee (Raima Sen) who dares Dixit to crack the murders and find his wife.
A heckled ACP Dixit Iis unable to decipher what’s facing him, and the fear of losing his wife is driving him crazy. When the smoke clears, truth turns out to be stranger than ‘fiction’. There’s more to Vodka Diaries than meets the eye.
On the face of it, Vodka Diaries comes across as an intriguing, psycho-social thriller. However, Srivastava errs badly in his execution. The story, penned by Vaibhav Bajpai, is quite predictable and draws inspiration from a noted 2010 Hollywood thriller made by a legendary director, starring a superstar. Let's not spill the drink for Vodka Diaries by mentioning names.
The big problem is not the lifted plot, but the poor direction, screenplay and the abysmal show of its cast. If there were awards given for hamming then Kay Kay Menon would be a strong contender to bag the award this year.
Why did he choose to do such a film? Menon’s mushy melodrama with Shikha is an eyesore, and so is his bout of dementia. Menon has disappointed before, but it’s hard to recollect a film where the talented actor has just not turned up.
Menon's act is topped further by some members of the supporting cast, especially the murdered characters — Vivek Rajput (Rishi Bhutani) and Ronny (Harry Tangri). So bad are Bhutani and Tangri that their characters deserved to be assassinated.
One actor who takes the cake here is Sooraj Thapar. He makes you cringe with his nonsensical jokes playing the dimwitted, annoying hotel manager. Raima Sen’s poor attempt to imbibe the Basic Instinct (1992) characteristics of Sharon Stone falls flat on her face.
The actors weren’t up to the task, but the blame lies purely on the shoulders of the director and the writer. The first half is simply unbearable, as the shoddy screenplay and the poor acting saps all your energy. The film gains a sense of sanity in the second half, but the damage done earlier is irreparable.
Those familiar with the controversial tweets of filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma would recollect how Varma pinned the blame on his daily vodka for all his tweets. Did Vaibhav Bajpai and Srivastava borrow RGV's vodka before penning Vodka Diaries?
You’d be better off sipping your drink at a place you like, rather than flipping through Srivastava’s Vodka Diaries.