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Star cast: Shubh Mukherjee, Sabina Sheema, Milind Soman, Anupam Kher.
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What’s Good: Nothing really.
What’s Bad: The script of convenience.
Verdict: Nakshatra is a thriller which absolutely fails to thrill or chill.
Loo break: Anytime!
R-Vision’s Nakshatra is a thriller. Ajay (Shubh Mukherjee) is an upcoming film writer who is waiting for a break. While waiting for a break, he whiles away his time by playing video games. His girlfriend, Jiah (Sabina Sheema), gives him an ultimatum of two months to get serious in life, failing which she would go away to Australia to pursue her career without marrying him. Just as the two-month period is about to get over, Ajay is signed to script a film for a group of newcomers. He pens a thriller for them, replacing their story of a bank robbery by a theft of an expensive diamond necklace from a museum. He is inspired to make the necklace and the museum the subject matters of his story because he had, a few days back, gone with Sharad Sir (Anupam Kher) for the opening of a museum where he had seen a costly diamond necklace enclosed in an invisible glass box which would open with two passwords, one of alphabets and the other, numerical.
Soon after the script is complete, Ajay and Jiah decide to get engaged but their engagement ceremony is rudely interrupted by police inspector Gupte (Milind Soman) who has come to arrest Ajay for the theft of the expensive necklace from the museum. The closed circuit TV cameras in the museum had captured Ajay frequenting the museum and spending a long time there everyday because of which he is the prime suspect in the theft case. Ajay tries to convince the police that he had frequented the museum for research work so that his script could be authentic, but the police arrest him. Ajay escapes from police custody as he realises that the film’s producers had carried out the theft by using his film script in which he had mentioned the two passwords, which had turned out to be the actual passwords!
Even as Ajay tries to prove his innocence, he fails as, one by one, each of the four producers is killed by unknown people in mysterious circumstances. Police officer Gupte soon realises, Ajay may not be the thief as he wouldn’t kill the very people whose arrest would prove his innocence.
Is Ajay able to prove his innocence? Who is the real thief? Is the police able to reach him? These are the questions answered in the pre-climax and climax.
Mohan Savalkar’s story and Marmbandha’s screenplay are kiddish, to say the least. Whoever said, a writer must crack Internet passwords to write a good script? Would the thriller, which Ajay was scripting, be any different if the passwords were not the same as the actual passwords? And how could he just dream of the two passwords by researching in the museum? What kind of research led him to know the two passwords? Probably, Savalkar and Marmbandha are not even aware of what comprises a film writer’s job. Also, why would any owner of a museum announce the fact that two passwords are necessary to lay one’s hands on the necklace, in full hearing range of the invitees at the opening of the museum? But the owner (Gajendra Chauhan) of the museum under reference does exactly that. This is clearly a convenient hook put in the script in the beginning so that it can be used later. Similarly, the producers appointing Ajay as the writer so that he would provide them the passwords of the actual museum was too convoluted an idea to strike anybody. For, as mentioned above, cracking the secret passwords is not a script writer’s job, in the first place.
What is equally worse is that when Jiah is fastened with bombs in the climax and Ajay is challenged to diffuse the bombs by entering two passwords in the laptop computer kept nearby, to save his girlfriend, the passwords turn out to be exactly – or almost exactly – the same passwords which he had mentioned in his script and which were the actual passwords of the museum. Would anybody be such an idiot as to make things so easy for Ajay?
The necklace thief, at one point, also explains that he did not kill Ajay so that the police would think, he (Ajay) is the jewel thief and arrest him. How could the necklace thief think so? A better option would’ve been for him to kill Ajay so that the police would close the file of the case, taking the thief to be dead. Obviously, the writer wanted to keep Ajay alive to further the drama but couldn’t think of a valid reason for the thief to not shoot him down – and so, came up with the lame excuse as above.
All in all, Mohan Savalkar and Marmbandha’s script is silly, childish and written without proper application of mind. Perhaps, the only nice part is the chase sequence towards the end.
No care has been taken to establish how the main characters in the drama are connected to each other. Like many other portions of the drama, even the track of the thief stage-managing Ajay’s meeting with the new producers so that they could sign him and also so that he would help them with the passwords to carry out the theft in real life, is too convoluted.
Shubh Mukherjee is alright in his debut role but he is no hero material. Sabina Sheema also acts quite well but she, too, lacks the requisites of a heroine. Milind Soman performs ably. Anupam Kher is good. Suresh Chatwal stands out in a small role. Suhaas Khandke and Mahrru Shaikh pass muster. Gajendra Chauhan, Anant Jog, Abhay Bhargav and Mithilesh Chaturvedi pass muster. Roza Catalano adds glamour in a song-dance number (‘Sulag sulag’).
Mohan Savalkar’s direction is as dull as the script. The film looks like a novice’s job. Bapi-Tutul’s music is functional. The ‘Sulag sulag’ song is okay. Camerawork (Roopang Acharya) and other technical aspects are okay. Dialogues (Rajat Vyas) aren’t anything to shout about. Action and chase sequences (Pradyuman Kumar) are quite exciting. Background score (Bapi-Tutul) could’ve been far better. Editing (Sanjay Sankla) should have been crisper.
On the whole, Nakshatra hardly thrills or chills. A non-starter, it will go largely unnoticed.
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