Sonam Kapoor in a still from Blind. (courtesy: YouTube)
A remake is only another remake when all that it manages to be is a slavish reproduction. Blind, written and directed by Shome Makhija, is just that – an unimaginative rehash that refuses to think for itself. It places all its eggs in a single tattering basket, which inevitably comes unstuck well before the two-hour film has wended its way to a predictable climax.
Blind is a replication without a vision. It is slick and taut but to no avail. Its undoing is that it expends no effort at all on putting a fresh spin on the original, a 2011 South Korean film of the same name. The Hindi version, streaming on JioCinema, contains nary a shred that could justify the film’s existence.
It is indeed difficult to see why this crime thriller had to be made when it is so loath to reimagine anything that went into the Korean film. In technical terms, Blind is near-perfect. The contributions of cinematographer Gairik Sarkar, editor Tanupriya Sharma and music composers Clinton Cerejo and Bianca Gomes lend superficial gloss to the film. Blind is good to look at but exasperatingly inert.
Sonam Kapoor’s comeback vehicle is a huff and puff show. The lead actor exudes a fair degree of enthusiasm as she goes through the motions of playing a doughty, sightless woman battling a dangerous foe. It is too much of a load to carry. The weight upon her snuffs out any possibility of a convincing portrait of an individual who is compelled to dig deep into her reserves of courage to ward off a murderous psychopath.
A Glasgow policewoman, Gia Singh, loses her eyesight as a result of a car crash that also kills an aspiring musician (Danesh Razvi in a cameo), a boy she grew up with in an orphanage outside the city. Several years later, when she is no more in the police force and has a guide dog to help her get around, she stumbles upon a crime.
On her way back from an orphanage run by Maria (Lillete Dubey), a woman she addresses as mom, Gia boards a taxi driven by a nameless Indian male (Purab Kohli). She hears noises from the vehicle’s boot. Giving the gut the slip, she reports the matter to the police. Nobody takes her seriously. How can a blind woman be a witness?
It is only when police detective Prithvi Khanna (Vinay Pathak) figures out that there may be a link between the taxi driver and the case of a missing girl he begins to realise how sharp Gia’s other faculties are. The cop doubles down to the task of trying to stop the deviant driver in his tracks.
A young man Nikhil (Shubham Saraf) claims to have also seen the car, the kidnapper and the victim. Both Gia and Prithvi are initially sceptical of the guy’s intention but they gradually begin to see that he is not be taking them for a ride.
Blind is a crime drama that revolves around a woman groping for a way out of darkness and dread when her path crosses that of a psychopath who will stop at nothing to wipe out any evidence of his crimes. She is being hunted but she isn’t a sitting duck by any stretch of the imagination. She isn’t one to be cowed down by the threat that the hunter poses. Her police training and her ability to hear and smell better than most other humans come in handy.
Early in the film, Gia makes an attempt to get her job back. The force nixes the suggestion. Her mom encourages her not to give up. Even with your eyesight gone, you are more efficient than most of them, she is told. Gia does possess exceptional powers of deduction – a trait she demonstrates repeatedly – but is up against a world that wants to write her off.
The plot takes its time to probe the mind of the woman and provides a clear enough glimpse of how she feels. But the man on the prowl who is out to get her remains in the shadows. The latter’s motives are barely established. He is a force of evil who goes about kidnapping and killing without any apparent logic.
We do hear terms like childhood trauma, abusive father and sexual frustration by way of a psychological context for the misdeeds of the maniac, but the film goes no further than that to offer an explanation or the slasher’s actions. What the audience is allowed a clear sight simply isn’t enough for the emergence of a clear picture.
The sketchy characterisation deprives Purab Kohli of any real scope of fleshing out the killer. Vinay Pathak has much more of bandwidth and he makes the most of it. Lillete Dubey is a peripheral presence at best, coming into her own during conversations that she has about faith and hope with her foster daughter, who has drifted away from God in the wake of the grave tragedies that have rocked her life.
The deeper ideas that the film touches upon are buried under the strictly generic nature of the narrative. Blind, bland and perfunctory, does not have the eye to see beyond the surface.
Cast:
Sonam Kapoor, Purab Kohli, Vinay Pathak, Lillete Dubey and Lucy Aarden
Director:
Shome Makhija
