Blind's drab narrative has no place for emotions or edge.
Its prolonged cat-and-mouse game goes on and on till it arrives at its (literally) eye-popping conclusion, notes Sukanya Verma.
Vulnerable woman taking on a killer psychopath against an atmospheric setting? South Korean cinema has mined and mastered it amply for horror and terror filled scenarios.
In the Kim Haneul-led 2011 thriller Blind, a former cop loses her sibling and sight in a car accident and hopes to find some sort of closure by protecting a young man her brother's age from the ire of a ruthless serial killer.
Despite a predictable premise, Haneul's perceptive performance rendered her shielding noona (older sister in Korean) an endearing quality we could root for. But its official Hindi remake of the same name directed by Shome Makhija suffers from a serious case of blahs and cannot shrug off the banality of the genre.
The new Blind unravels in the United Kingdom, now home to its leads Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and Purab Kohli awkwardly asserting their flimsy British desi identity across the screen alongside Vinay Pathak, Lillete Dubey and Shubham Saraf. Thankfully, we are altogether spared the brunt of bad accents.
Sonam plays a cop called Gia Singh.
More than her detective skills though, it's her didi dominance, when she pretty much drags her teenage brother out of a night club, handcuffs him to the car door and admonishes him for neglecting his studies that catches our eye.
But when a car accident leaves her blind and brotherless, Gia's glum atheist finds a purpose in nabbing a serial killer after he conveniently crosses her path.
Having achieved the sensory prowess of Matt Murdock overnight, Gia and her assistance dog Elsa instinctively know trouble when they smell one.
A previously sceptical police officer (Vinay Pathak) immediately buys her testimony when she tells him he's eaten Chinese for breakfast based on the soya sauce stinking out of his breath.
Blind's laziness has no bounds.
The identity of the serial killer is no secret.
Also, why provide motive or mental instability when you can sum it all up in that one convenient term -- misogyny?
Textbook psychology, scoffs Gia.
Clearly, Blind is not going for bright.
But did it have to be so awfully dull and dreary too?
Two hours drag on endlessly against the pitiful strains of a bored piano in vain hope of dread, tension or thrill.
Throw in Lillete Dubey's orphanage administrator Aunty Maria, whose sole purpose is to slip a cross in cynical Gia's hand and Shubham Saraf's secondary witness for whom Gia develops the most unconvincing fraternal feelings.
Sonam's digital debut is marked by a subdued performance. But it's such an agnostically written part and reveals almost nothing about her person.
Ditto for Purab Kohli. For all the psychological turbulence he projects, there's zero context or threat.
Who are these people?
What is their story?
What is their personality?
Blind's drab narrative has no place for emotions or edge. Its prolonged cat-and-mouse game goes on and on till it arrives at its (literally) eye-popping conclusion.
See no evil? You bet!
Blind streams on Jio Cinema.
