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Join UsBusiness rating: 0.5 star
Star cast: Anupam Kher, Pawan Malhotra, Tena Desae, Rushad Rana.
What’s Good: Hardly anything.
What’s Bad: The weak script; average performances; blurred camerawork.
Verdict: Yeh Faasley will prove to be a resounding flop at the box-office.
Loo break: Several.
Watch or Not? It is best to keep distance from Yeh Faasley.
Bhawani Pictures’ Yeh Faasley (UA) is a thriller about a mysterious murder that had happened 20 years ago.
Arunima (Tena Desae), the young daughter of a wealthy builder, Devinder Devilal Dua (Anupam Kher), returns home after completing her education. Although her mother had passed away in a tragic car accident when Arunima was only two years old, she is happy to be back home with her loving dad.
Arunima starts preparations for her friend, Nisha’s, marriage, and her father even funds the whole wedding. Even though Nisha’s brother, Manu (Rushad Rana), refuses to take monetary help from Dua, Arunima convinces him otherwise.
In a chance encounter, Arunima also meets a former prince, Digvijay Singh (Pawan Malhotra), who runs an orphanage for children. Although Digvijay, a.k.a. Diggy, is a proud man, his days of princely glory are over. Diggy had known Arunima’s mother because they both shared a passion for music. To her surprise, Arunima discovers that her mother had been an accomplished musician in her prime.
When she questions her dad about why he didn’t tell her more details about her mom, like the fact that she was an acclaimed musician, Dua tells her that it was just a coincidence. Arunima also learns about her dad’s anger problem when, at Nisha’s wedding, he brutally beats up one of the baraatis who tried to flirt with Arunima. Dua also coerces Diggy not to meet Arunima further.
Due to all of this, Arunima suspects that something is amiss in her dad’s story about her mother’s death and starts snooping around, trying to uncover more details of what had exactly happened when her mother had died. She stumbles upon an old audio cassette, in which her father is accusing her mother of seeing someone else. Extremely ruffled, Arunima suspects her father of having killed her mother, but he assuages her when confronted. The very next day, Dua sells off all the old belongings of his wife.
Watch More: Yeh Faasley Promo
Further, Arunima, by chance, discovers that her father has been secretly sending monthly money orders to someone. He has also been using an alias, Shiv Narayan Singh, for the same. She follows the address on a money order form and reaches a deserted bungalow on a hill station, where she accosts the caretaker, asking him to tell her the truth about her mother’s death. The caretaker tells her that on the fateful day, her mother and father had fought and that her mother’s death was not an accident. Instead, Dua had deliberately killed her mother by pushing her car off a cliff.
Emboldened by this knowledge, Arunima files a case against her father in the court of law, but the case falls flat due to her father’s crafty lawyer. Deceived by the lawyer’s arguments, Arunima accepts defeat and reconciles with her dad. In the meantime, several new facts emerge that force Arunima to sue her father again. This time, however, the court pronounces Dua guilty of the murder of his wife and sentences him to death. Now, a distraught Arunima tries to reconcile with the fact that her father was a murderer. Her friend, Manu, who is a trainee lawyer, conducts his own small investigation to uncover the truth. What is the truth? Under what circumstances did Arunima’s mother really die? Will Dua’s fate be sealed at the guillotine? The rest of the film and the climax answer these questions.
Story and Screenplay – Yeh Faasley Review
Atul Tiwari, Rajen Makhijani and Yogesh Mittal’s story is ordinary and rather unbelievable. The trio tries too hard to evoke excitement in the drama but fails. Whatever little potential the plot had is dissipated by the film’s poor screenplay, also penned by the trio. The story has many loopholes. For example, how does the judge, who acquits Dua initially, suddenly change her mind to declare him guilty, although the evidence against him is flimsy, at best? Even if the viewer is expected to overlook the nitty-gritties of law, one cannot help but be amazed at the contrived climax of the film. The viewer is also expected to believe complete flip-flops on the part of Dua’s character, who is shown to be aggressive and repentant in turns. The writers have unsuccessfully tried to weave a screenplay which would confuse the audience, but it is evident, from the way the story unfolds, that the writers themselves were confused.
The use of repeated flashbacks of the fateful day, when Arunima’s mother died, bore the viewer after a point of time. Moreover, the central premise of the screenplay, Arunima’s quest for the truth, does not resonate with the viewers at all. Neither does her budding romance with Manu. Even her relationship with her father seems too convenient. The various twists and turns in the end are clichéd and do not entertain. A couple of songs in the film (lyrics by Manoj Muntashir and music by Deepak Pandit) add no value. Dialogues, by Atul Tiwari, Rajen Makhijani, Yogesh Mittal and Manurishi Chaddha, are below average.
Star Performances – Yeh Faasley Review
Anupam Kher is good but he can do little to rise above the weak story. Tena Desae is no heroine material and she can’t emote well enough. Rushad Rana delivers a good performance but looks odd with a beard throughout the film. Pawan Malhotra is alright. Kiran Kumar (as Dua’s lawyer), Suhasini Mulay (as Arunima’s maternal grandmother), Sudha Chandran (as judge), Seema Biswas (as the friend of Arunima’s mother), Rajendra Gupta (as Dua’s friend), do average jobs. Jagat Rawat (as the caretaker of the bungalow), Satyajit Sharma (as Arunima’s lawyer), Mazhar Syed (as young Dua), Natasha Sinha and Rachita Bhattacharya do not add much.
Direction, Music and Editing – Yeh Faasley Review
Debut-making director Yogesh Mittal’s direction is nothing to write home about. Production values of the film are so-so. Background score (Deepak Pandit and Santosh Mulekar) is stale. Amitabha Singh’s cinematography is truly bad. Many crucial scenes are out of focus. Pradumanya P.K.’s action is fair. Suvir Nath’s editing is poor.
The Last Word
All in all, Yeh Faasley is a botched thriller. It will fail at the box-office on account of its extremely weak script and lack of face value.
