NOOR (U/A)
Director: Sunhil Sippy
Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Purab Kohli, Kanan Gill, Manish Choudhary, Shibani Dandekar
Running time: 116 minutes

Watching Noor at a south Calcutta multiplex on Friday morning, you realise after a point that the four other people in the huge empty theatre are getting more excited with the ‘vroom vroom’ sounds coming through from the Fast and Furious screen next door than what’s streaming in front. After all, paying attention to a quiet, lyrical film about a female journalist trying to cleanse herself and the city around her is a tough ask for a mainstream audience today. 

Evidently, Noor will also struggle to be the weekend dose for the masala Bolly buff. But filmmakers need to watch the film. Especially filmmakers like Prabhudheva, Milan Luthria, Shirish Kunder, Arbaaz Khan, et al. They need to see what Sonakshi Sinha can do and what they made her do. Not that the Rowdy Rathores and R... Rajkumars were forced upon her. But when you discover that the same egg can be turned into a stunning omelette, those greasy bhurjis stink.

Director Sunhil Sippy, making a comeback 17 long years after his much-talked-about-then Hinglish debut Snip (Nikhil Chinapa, Sophiya Haque), adapts Pakistani author Saba Imtiaz’s novel Karachi, You’re Killing Me! in Noor. The first half, more than half of which is narrated by Noor herself (Sonakshi, of course), is a breezy chick flick gloriously shot (by Keiko Nakahara) and beautifully written (by Althea Kaushal, Shikhaa Sharma, Ishita Moitra and Sippy).

It quietly gets inside the head of a 28-year-old girl trying to be someone in a big city like Mumbai even as there’s constant pressure to fit into that skinny jeans and get yourself a man. But it’s the workfront which is “killing” her the most. She wants to be an issue-based broadcast journalist but her boss (Manish Choudhary) wants her to interview Sunny Leone. Noor’s support system is her two school friends Zara (a less stiff Shibani Dandekar) and Saad (Kanan Gill in a confident debut). 

But how can a Bollywood movie just be content being a chick flick? It needs to be so much more. And so enter the organ harvesting racket which instantly cuts the breeze, decafs the froth and transforms Noor into a dead duck. From what was a fun ride with an endearing heroine turns into a laboured, self-serious tale which is as much of a struggle for the protagonist as it is for the audience.

Sonakshi is a delight to watch, though. First there was Lootera. And now here’s Noor. Proof enough that she is capable of so much more than those come-hither facial gesticulations that she is routinely made to do. As Noor she is funny without trying too hard and even when things get serious, she holds her own keeping the performance restrained yet impactful.

Noor could have been a great girls’ night out weekend film or a fun girls’ night in home view later but the second half is a monumental bore which is guaranteed to kill the joy. One only hopes these women-centric films failing back to back at the Bolly box office do not put the Sonakshis back in the sun wearing rainbow saris and maaro-ing endless thumkas for their heroes.