Buildup: Right from the moment murder suspect-on-the-run Vikram Sethi’s (Sidharth Malhotra) car turns turtle in the middle of a busy Mumbai road and he winds his way into Maya’s (Sonakshi Sinha) apartment asking to make “Ek phone call”, Ittefaq keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, with director Abhay Chopra ensuring loose ends are rare to come by.
Narrative: Ittefaq uses a narrative not much in use in Bollywood (Talvar did it a few autumns ago). It uses different versions of the same story rendered by different characters — referred to as the Rashomon Effect in movie parlance — to craft an engaging thriller that goes back and forth between timelines and versions, making you wonder what Vikram and Maya are going to come up with next — the truth or a cooked-up story?
Atmospherics: The world of Ittefaq is very Hitchcockian, with atmospherics playing a big role in creating the tense and taut screenplay. It rains almost throughout the film, a device that not only helps Akshaye Khanna’s super cop Dev crack a part of the mystery (don’t worry, we aren’t revealing more than this!) but also contributes to the ominous look and feel. The run-down police station, the nooks and corners of Maya’s house that seem to be privy to many a secret, the perpetually flickering tubelight in the interrogation room, the dark clouds closing in on a tense Dev as the film approaches interval… this is a thriller that gets its mood spot-on.
Doesn’t dumb itself down: Many a Bollywood thriller loses the edge when it feels it needs to spell out the hows and whys behind its twists and turns. Ittefaq keeps the viewer guessing till the very end. It makes you work hard to piece the clues together and unceremoniously thrusts you back to square one when you feel you have got it all figured out. The twist to the final twist makes you go, “I didn’t see that coming!” and you revisit the film and watch the jigsaw puzzle satisfyingly falling into place.
Detailing: The mark of a thriller — in fact, of any good film — is the attention to detail. Ittefaq works on the smaller details. Like the laugh-out-loud scene in which a woman dresses to the nines thinking the interrogation by the cops is going to involve cameras. A strain of dark humour — with Dev getting the best lines — runs through the film. Also, food — from the cups of adrak chai that a cop rustles up at the crime scene to the conversations over soaked almonds and bhutta — is used as a leitmotif in the film.
No song and dance: Yes, we’ve seen an item number thrust into many a thriller. But Ittefaq, thankfully, skips that route. The remixed version of the Namak Halaal hit Raat baaki was used only to promote the film.
Priyanka Roy
