There is one in every love story, the film's tagline
proclaims. Not true at all. Ek Villain has one too many,
both among the dramatis personae on the screen and
the men behind the scenes.
The biggest of the villains in Mohit Suri's Ek Villain is
the screenplay itself.
It is as muddled as a serial killer's twisted mind and
just as destructive.
A vapid love story dovetailed into a confused
psychological thriller, Ek Villain revolves around three
characters that are severely damaged in varying ways.
The male protagonist, Guru (Sidharth Malhotra), a Goa
goon's sleep-deprived hatchet man, has deep
lacerations on his soul.
The young man's inner turmoil is sought to be reflected
on his deadpan visage and in his frosty demeanour.
The heroine, Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor), is consumptive
and her days are numbered. Her body is afflicted by a
disease whose precise nature the film does not care to
divulge.
Not that it would have made any difference to the final
outcome, but it does go to show that for the writer of
this film the devil does not lie in the details.
The devil or the shaitaan, call him what you will, plies
his trade everywhere else in this film.
The principal antagonist of Ek Villain, Rakesh Mahadkar
(Riteish Deshmukh), is a repressed telephone repairman
saddled with a psyche seriously dented on account of
being continually nagged by his wife (Aamna Sharif).
Together, the threesome wreaks havoc on themselves
and on those at the receiving end of their depredations -
the audience.
Ek Villain is all empty flash and flourishes. Its plot, the
essence of which is lifted from the 2010 Korean thriller, I
Saw The Devil, is riddled with trite contrivances.
The pretty girl with a scrapbook of fancy last wishes
hands out homilies to the ruthless hit-man. The lady
aims to pulling him out of the darkness that he wallows
in.
The bad guy has no room for redemption. He is a
mentally mauled married middle class man on the prowl
with a deadly screwdriver.
He directs his frustration at unsuspecting women who
he picks out randomly in the course of his professional
peregrinations.
On its part, the hero's heart is, of course, the site of a
fierce battle between the demon and the do-gooder.
Love transforms him and he abandons the gun for the
dreamy idyll the angel in his life creates for him.
And then, his world collapses yet again as the shadow
of evil creeps back into his home and shatters the
peace.
Ek Villain is, in the end, a revenge drama with a
laboured closure whose utter farcicality is in keeping
with the rest of the film.
Mohit's storytelling style teeters on the edge of excess,
pulls back occasionally, but eventually opts for the path
of no return.
The result is that the thrills - in other words, the violent
action sequences, of which there are many - do not
serve the intended purpose.
There are a couple of things in Ek Villain that are worth
taking note of, though.
One, with the exception of a part of an unusually soft
item number that a sultry Prachi Desai gyrates to
towards the end of the film, Ek Villain has no staged,
lip-synched songs.
Unfortunately, the soulful songs are rather disruptive
and are at variance with the sinister ambience that Ek
Villain seeks to generate.
And two, gangly chocolate boy Sidharth Malhotra and
comic romp regular Riteish Deshmukh are both cast
against type.
Sidharth is turned into a brooding, brutal avenger, while
Ritesh is Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde reincarnate.
As they explore the dark territories of the mind, they are
let down rather badly by wild twists and turns that are
devoid of logic.
The two have reason to see red all the time - so they
go about shedding lots of blood.
Shraddha Kapoor, in contrast, manages to make a mark
despite being called upon to do no more than spout
some pop philosophy and crack stale jokes when the
going gets tough.
As a whole, this film, besides its surface flair, does not
have too much to fall back upon.
Watch it only if that is good enough for you