These days, we receive so many spam calls that it is difficult to distinguish between the legitimate ones. You then tune in to FM stations where the programming is driven by prank calls while you’re behind the wheel. In this exciting battle against time, director Girish Kohli uses this strange everyday reality.
Doctor Abhimanyu (Sohum Shah), en route to the hospital to finalise an important transaction, receives an enigmatic phone call informing him that his daughter has been abducted and that he has till nightfall to save her life. Red herrings are dropped on the highway by Kohli as Abhimanyu pushes the pedal. We gradually learn that Abhimanyu is a bad father and a poor surgeon.
Presented as a one-character thriller with supporting actors only appearing as voices, the moral voice ultimately takes centre stage. Even before Tinnu Anand is presented as the doctor’s daughter’s instructor, it is clear that he is the one making the ransom call in his powerful baritone. Because of their past, the ex-wife (voiced by Nimisha Sajayan) questions the doctor’s motives. The ex-wife becomes the target of suspicion due to a current flame (voiced by Shilpa Shukla). Piyush Shukla’s character, Abhimanyu’s boss, believes the doctor is using the kidnapping as a ploy to get out of the agreement.
The conversations are sharp, meaningful, and engaging and create a sense of urgency as the characters sound crazy at one point and sympathetic and rational at another. The background score and cinematography generate an adrenaline rush and play with the mind. Girish cleverly uses Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic dialogue in Sarkar as a ringtone and, towards the climax, creatively employs the superstar’s Inquilab number to depict the dilemma of Abhimanyu. The highlight is the sequence where the doctor multitasks to meet two deadlines simultaneously. It captures the limits of human endurance and pulls us to the edge of the seat.
However, the ingenuity starts fading as Abhimanyu crosses the Delhi border. Girish expects the audience to go with the emotion and keep the logic out of reckoning. It doesn’t work. The curiosity veers off course as the enquiries become too many to handle. After a certain point, the plot functions similarly to those screenplays from film school that are based on a brilliant idea but end up collecting dust on a producer’s table due to a lacklustre second act and a laborious third. Over time, the movie turns into a showcase for Sohum’s acting prowess, which he also produced. Usually effective, he is reliable in this role as the doctor with conflicting morals. Sohum supported two wild ideas that enthralled us in Ship of Theseus and Tumbbad, but in this case, the initial promise and goal are lost. Girish informs us early on that the story takes place on April Fool’s Day, so you can’t really complain.
