7 Khoon Maaf

Expectations!!!

This is what defines, for me, the failure or success of a movie in today’s times. Setting the expectations correctly should be the new success mantra. How many movies in the past few years that were ‘not so bad’ have turned out to be mega disasters at the box office simply because the expectations were sky high due to the names/brands associated with those movies.

7 Khoon Maaf (7KM), based on a short story by Ruskin Bond (Susanna’s Seven Husbands), almost falls in this category. Boasting of names like Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, Annu Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Neil Nitin Mukesh, … John Abraham in order of acting abilities and headed by Vishal Bhardwaj as director & music composer; one expected the movie to be a gripping version of the short story authored by one of India’s iconic writers. Adding to this, the fact that Vishal Bhardwaj is one of the very few directors in the world who has made commercially & critically brilliant movies based on some of the best literary pieces in the world – Omkara, Maqbool, apart from these pieces of art, he also has one of the best career defining cult movies for an actor to his credit – Kaminey.

The movie starts with Susanna (Priyanka) shooting herself and the remaining story, like many other recent Hindi movies, is narrated in flashback; in this case by Vivaan Shah (Naseer’s real life youngest son) who plays the role of Arun, a son like figure to Susanna and a witness to most of her life. Susanna is shown as a girl in constant search of true love since her mother died at a young age and in the process getting married 7 times. Her first husband, Neil Nitin Mukesh, is an army Major who loses his leg in battle and starts suspecting his wife. Later when he learns that he may not be able to father a child his frustration results in him blinding his horse keeper in a fight. These events trigger the urge in Susanna & her team of her butler, maid & horse keeper to remove the Major from their path which happens during a panther hunting expedition. Susanna then gets married to a small time musician, Jimmy aka Shamsher (John) whom she happens to meet during the Major’s funeral. They get married and John starts to climb the ladders of success with hit songs which Susanna later finds out are not his, but his earlier band mate’s. What Susanna also learns is that John is cheating on her & a drug addict. She brings him to her house and tries to treat his addiction but soon realizing that it’s all a waste. So she decides to take the ‘only’ way out, kill him.

Her third husband, Musafir (Irrfan Khan), is a poet in Kashmir who is calm, serene & thoughtful but a complete opposite at night when he becomes a woman dominating monster who needs his dose of violence to arouse himself. Susanna bears the violence for few nights, but then decides to end this marriage as well not by leaving him but through murder. The fourth husband turns out to be a Russian spy/double agent who as Susanna later discovers is two timing her which as expected leads to his death by Susanna’s pet snakes. Annu Kapoor, who is earlier shown as the inspector who investigates John’s murder and later as an officer from intelligence bureau investigating the Russian spy’s murder, becomes Susanna’s 5^th husband and soon dies due to an overdose of Viagra, thanks to his wife. Naseeruddin Shah, a brilliant doctor, is the sixth husband who saves Susanna from dying after she tries to commit suicide. One night she is attacked by a masked man who she suspects to be her husband, later when her butler dies by consuming poisoned soup prepared by Naseer, her suspicion is confirmed leading to another murder.

These are the six murders in short, seventh murder & husband is a mystery and I will not reveal it here. Would advise you to go and check it out yourself as the movie certainly deserves a watch; however, the disappointing part for me is the screenplay. It seems like a clear lift & shift of the original short story (which I haven’t read yet) and the entire movie till the last 20 minutes is predictable, straight & unexpectedly BORING, something I would never have associated with a genius called Vishal Bhardwaj. Watching Priyanka in all the different avatars & her husband and their similar stories made me actually remember What’s Your Rashee? Each of the six stories follows similar pattern of love, song, disappointment, hatred & murder. Agreed that this is how the original piece of work may have been, but the screenplay & direction could certainly have added another dimension and keep the audience engaged which is exactly what Vishal had done in his earlier movies.

In terms of performances, Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Annu Kapoor are their usual reliable self and couldn’t have done anything more in their limited screen time & roles. John, I think probably had the most scope for a performance than any of the husbands, but he could not do a Shahid’s Kaminey here and is just average. Priyanka Chopra was ok, though I think she could have done much better portraying a woman right from the age of 20+ to 50+, but the nuances in body language, etc were missing. Vivaan Shah makes an impressive debut but I did not really like his voice over. Cinematography is very good and fits the dark tone of the movie perfectly. The music by Vishal Bhardwaj is brilliant and gels well with the feel of the movie, the song O mama is a gem and distinctly different from the recent hits, though the background score could have added a lot more to the feel of the movie. One thing to note is the make-up. For some strange reason, the make-up is not consistent, for eg. In the opening scene Vivaan Shah looks really old, but in the next with his wife looks pretty young.

In all, a movie worth watching once, but don’t expect A VISHAL BHARDWAJ film and you won’t be as disappointed. There would be few people who would love this movie as it’s ‘different & Vishal Bhardwaj’s’ but somehow it didn’t click well for me despite being few of the people who actually liked Dhobi Ghat.

PS – I think Aishwarya Rai would have suited Susanna’s role better instead of Priyanka, and NO I am NOT an Aishwarya fan. But she seems to be doing all roles trying hard to seduce people, so this one would fit in well!

My Rating - 6/10
(Script - 5/10; Direction – 6/10; Performance – 6/10; Entertainment - 5/10; Music – 8.5/10)

Starring: Priyanka Chopra (Fashion, Kaminey, Dostana), Naseeruddin Shah (Sparsh, Iqbal, A Wednesday), Irfan Khan (Haasil, The Namesake, Yeh Saali Zindagi), Neil Nitin Mukesh (Johnny Gadar, New York), John Abraham (Jism, Dostana, New York), Annu Kapoor (Tezaab, Hum), Vivaan Shah (Debut)

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj (Kaminey, Omkara, Maqbool)

Producer: Vishal Bhardwaj & Ronnie Screwala

Writer: Vishal Bhardwaj (Ishqiya, Omkara)& Matthew Robins (Bingo, Blood Brothers)

Music: Vishal Bhardwaj (Maachis, Satya, Maqbool)