Sonam Kapoor delivers, but Blind falters with a slack pace and weak villain
Sonam Kapoor portrays a strong, blind ex-police officer hunting a serial killer who, sadly, lacks the menace of a villain, making Blind a passable watch.
Starring: Sonam Kapoor, Purab Kohli, Vinay Pathak, Shubham Saraf, Lillete Dubey
In her last full-fledged role four years ago in The Zoya Factor, Sonam Kapoor was a ‘cricket goddess’. Now, she’s on the hunt for a serial killer in Jio Cinema’s Blind.
Returning to the screen after a maternity break, Kapoor valiantly embodies the character of Gia Singh in Shome Makhija’s directorial debut. In what was expected to be an edge-of-the-seat thriller in the cold, empty streets of Glasgow in Scotland, Blind doesn't always keep you on your tenterhooks.
The movie does begin on a thrilling note. An ace police officer, Singh makes an error of judgement—cuffing her brother Adrian (Danish Razvi) to the car seat—and ends up paying a huge price. An accident leads to a huge tragedy, with Singh not just losing her eyesight but her job as well.
Three years later, she is living independently as a visually impaired person with her adoring guard dog, Elsa. The police force refuses to take her back on account of her illegal action to cuff her brother and the subsequent tragic turn of events.
Her fate takes a turn when Singh enters a cab and senses a girl kidnapped in the trunk of the car. The driver, played by Purab Kohli as the antagonist, counts on her blindness as a weakness and believes he can get away. But as they say, people who lose their eyesight often develop a more nuanced sense of hearing, smell and touch. Using her police training and intuitions, she identifies his traits and reports him to a sceptical police force, bringing the case to the attention of an Indian-origin police officer Prithvi (Vinay Pathak).
The rest of the film is a cat-and-mouse chase between the blind woman and the serial killer through a series of bloody incidents.
Blind is part of a sub-genre of neo-noir films that elevate crime thrillers with intricate storytelling and characters that either leave you scared or impressed. In most of these creations, it is the antagonist who is most fascinating (Silence of the Lambs, Black Bird, Seven, and Monsoon Shootout). However, not much of that is evident in Blind where the antagonist, simply called ‘the driver’, doesn’t match the madness of a serial killer.
Kohli delivers an uneven performance—at times controlled, and other times, so overdone that one wonders if the long flight to Glasgow might have had something to do with it. He proclaims himself to be a version of the ‘Devil’, quoting Shakespeare. But it doesn’t add up—there’s neither menace in his eyes not does he exude a sense of fear.
Pathak, on the other hand, is likeable as the snack-munching cop, as is Shubham Saraf, who plays the role of Nikhil—an Indian-origin boy crucial to solving the crime and finds himself protected by Singh. Lillete Dubey plays the part of the foster parent of Singh and Adrian efficiently, even though her screen time has a limited scope.
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Kapoor has worked hard to play this character, altering her body language and maintaining an alert posture of a cop throughout the movie. Her action stunts are well executed as are her moments of intuition and police instinct which feel real. In a more qualitative script, her performance would have made a greater impact.
Adapted from the South Korean original of the same name, this crime-thriller deals inadequately with crucial parts of the story. For instance, why has the antagonist become a serial killer that preys on women? The movie expects the audience to understand this through a short exchange of dialogue without revealing any background.
Blind falters because of an unstable plot. Key moments are papered over. The villain, a kidnapper and a blood-thirsty misogynist, never once feels frightening. His desire to hurt Singh, or his anger towards her, doesn’t emerge clearly.
Blind also slackens in pace and drops tension midway, making the narrative uneven. It falls prey to the trap of the interval, where Indian films often struggle to keep the viewer engaged during the second half of the movie.
Any good crime thriller requires the villain to be so smart and evasive that it seems nearly impossible to nab him. Somehow, this film never raises the level of tension to that scale. In explaining Singh’s guilt and emotional trauma, too, it short changes the character, limiting these explorations to a few dialogues.
Blind works solely for Kapoor’s fans. And though it falters, it is another popcorn-munching flick for fans of the crime thriller genre.
Rating: 3/5
Edited by Kanishk Singh
