Visfot movie review: Corrupt cops, gangsters, damsel in distress in love with one of the gangsters, lovemaking scenes, an encounter, the end – I have just described a random Sanjay Gupta film to you. And Visfot (which he has only produced), is no different. 

What's the story?

Kookie Gulati brings to us this directorial set in the slums of Mumbai (because filmmakers think this is the hub of all crimes, not cool). Shoaib Khan (played by Fardeen Khan) is a man who wants to leave Dongri, but his friend Manya (Nachiket Purnapatre) leaves a jacket containing illegal substances in his car, and later comes back to retrieve it. Due to a fire at their house, his mother (Sheeba Chadha), suffering from dementia, misplaces it.

Another track runs parallel – Akash Shelar (Riteish Deshmukh) has caught his wife Tara (Priya Bapat) cheating on him. His son Paddy, meanwhile, is also missing from the café he had left him at, as he chases his wife. The two lives converge due to both misplacing something, and that’s the rest of the story.

How does the film fare?

The cracks show early in Visfot (a remake of the 2012 Venezuelan film Rock! Paper! Scissors!, and written by Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal) when you already know what’s going to happen next. There’s no attempt made to be original, because the story follows the same pattern we wrote about in the beginning. One waits for some twist which is going to blow our minds, but there’s nothing here you haven’t seen before. The only good bit here is the casting, which again doesn’t get to rise above this boring screenplay. It is proof that only signing good actors minus a good script leads to a mess.

There is so much wasted potential. The extramarital affair track has been written so poorly that you feel bad for Riteish, who has proved himself as a consistent actor otherwise. In the midst of tensions running high, the dialogues boil down to ‘yeh mera bachcha hai’ ‘nahi hamara baccha hai’ ‘mera baccha kahaan hai?’ ‘Voh mera bhi beta hai!’… you get the drift. It’s all there in these scenes supposed to make you feel bad for this couple – the close-up shots, the breaking down – but there’s only so much that can make up for the amateur writing.

Casting Seema Biswas as a ruthless ganglord was a win in itself, because she’s convincing from the word go. As a viewer, I was eager to know her backstory, and that’s what defines a good actor. They make you feel for them, there’s a connect. Riteish is unfortunately not given a deserving role to dig his teeth into. Fardeen, who was supposed to make a full fledged comeback with this, is strictly average in Visfot. Khel Khel Mein, which released in August this year, is a shining example of how good content and smart writing can even elevate the impact of Fardeen’s performances. Please note that I write the ‘impact’ gets improved, not the performance itself.

Visfot, overall, ends up as a whimper instead of a banging time at the movies. It's streaming on JioCinema.

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