TNI Bureau: ‘Talaash: The Answer Lies Within’ is a suspense thriller, presented perfectly in conjunction with an additional emotional sub-story that runs along with the main plot to make the story more interesting. Aamir Khan, playing the character Suraj Singh Sekhawat, a senior cop, is the pivotal character of the film, who is on his way to reveal a murder mystery that initiated from a normal car accident at the beginning of the film.
Armaan Kapoor’s (nephew of Rishi Kapoor) car dives into the sea one late night in Mumbai to meet with a fatal accident. Though it seemed to be a small accident, Inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat (Aamir Khan), who is investigating the case, finds it to be a planned murder and starts investigating the case. During the investigation, he comes in contact with Tehnur (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) a pimp and a prostitute named Rosy (Kareena Kapoor) who give him some thread to move forward.
Cut to Sekhawat’s private life. He is haunted by the sad thought of the death of his son, for which his wife Roshni (Rani Mukherjee) lives a silent life caging her inside the four walls of the house. The two stories run simultaneously and Aamir must be commended to maintain a perfect balance between the two till the climax, when all puzzles get solved.
Coming to acting, Aamir has again proved that he is the ‘Perfectionist’, despite sometimes the story runs slow. He has completely justified his role. Kareena Kapoor has also done very well and once you see her in the character of a prostitute, you’ll recall her ‘Chameli’. Yes, she has again proved that she hails from the Kapoor clan, the fast family of Hindi Film Industry, which has provided many talented actors to Bollywood.
Rani Mukherjee as the wife of a sad-trodden husband and the unfortunate mother of a deceased son has played well her part. Not adding glamour to her character is the best part of the story. Rest of the characters has also performed well and at par with their characters.
Reema Kagti, the director has presented a stylized suspense thriller and murder mystery. But yes, thriller means you don’t expect any fantasy of dreadful land here or a heart-thrilling treatment to come up sometime, but the story is a soft runner, for which it seems slow. I cannot tag her work to be a perfect one, but yes, the film is definitely a commendable package.
Zoya Akhtar and Reema have presented the same story (murder mystery) but in a perfect shape, though (I feel) performances have brilliantly overshadowed the story.
Music of Ram Sapath goes at par with the story. I am afraid, the music may not amuse you much, listening in individual numbers to compete with the blockbusters available in the market, but played along with the script, the music perfectly matches with the sequence.
Cinematography of Mohanan is also encouraging. Especially when it is hard to cage the brothel shots, he has done a great job there. And best part of the taking is that they have ignored the glamour part of the red light area to maintain the call of the script.
The film’s run time is 140 minutes which seems to be the usual span to tell the story. While the first half moves in a slower speed and takes long time to establish all the characters and the mysteries, the second half makes up the speed and one will be convinced that this is a must watch film till he reaches the end.
We have **** four stars from ‘The News Insight’ for ‘Talaash’ out of five.