𝐑𝐚𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐤𝐞𝐥𝐢 𝐇𝐚𝐢 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: A mostly promising, nail-biting premise falls prey to its duration.
Honey Trehan’s directorial debut Raat Akeli Hai begins on a spine-chilling note with a gruesome ‘double murder’ sequence and this sets the ball rolling quite effectively. The gore over here isn’t too literal or ‘in-your-face’. Rather, it is mostly left to the viewer’s imagination. This isn’t the case with most of the dark-themed Indian content being churned out by the leading OTT platforms. Primarily set on the outskirts of Kanpur, the screenplay of a ‘police investigation’ like this had many opportunities to exhibit graphic violence, unnecessary sleaze or abundant profanity. Trehan, the celebrated casting director and a regular collaborator of Vishal Bharadwaj and Abhishek Chaubey, steers clear of this route and instead, follows a more ‘old-school’ approach that fares better than most would like to expect. Even then, the real masterstroke of Raat Akeli Hai isn’t even its screenplay. It is the phenomenal casting that works wonders for the film even if it falters in many places.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, plays Jatil Yadav, a police investigator sent to deal with the violent killing of a rich patriarch named Raghuveer Singh. Much like his name which means ‘complex’, he too is unpredictable, short-tempered and narrow-minded. As one of the earliest sequences play out in the film, we see Jatil stating to his mother, played with a flamboyant ease by Ila Arun, that he would only settle for a decent, ‘sanskari’ woman and wouldn’t marry otherwise. And in another scene, he holds a tube of ‘fairness cream’ in his hands. Nothing much more is said, but a few subtle moments like this help flesh out the character of Jatil Yadav, a man who despite being incredibly sharp, is insecure about the possibility of getting rejected by women owing to his ‘complexion’. Much like the women in the film, played by Radhika Apte, Shweta Tripathi and Shivani Raghuvanshi (of Titli fame), he too is a victim of oppression — a victim of his own mind and the society at large. Contrary to popular expectations, the film doesn’t deify the male lead and takes its time to explore various shades of the character of Jatil.
All other key players in the film shine in their respective roles. Besides Nawaz, Radhika and the others I have mentioned before, the stellar cast also includes dependable performers like Tigmanshu Dhulia and Aditya Srivastava, and each and every one of them is at the top of their game. Thanks to the brilliant ensemble, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of Faizal Khan and Ramadhir Singh meeting in a parallel universe. Even when the film occasionally falters as it meanders to the same edgy terrain overcrowded by Bollywood ‘whodunit’ tropes you could anticipate from a mile, the performances help to keep the narrative somewhat on the right track and saves it from being a horrendous trainwreck.
Playing out like a classic ‘whodunit’ murder mystery, the plot thickens deliciously as it progresses. Replete with numerous twists and turns in the pursuit of the perpetrator/s and their motives, the screenplay by Smita Singh (Sacred Games) bears indirect allegiance to many of the classics in its visuals and overall structure, namely Polanski’s Chinatown and Hitchcockian murder mysteries. The character of Radha, played by Radhika Apte, appears to be a ‘femme fatale’ who is much more than that. Just like the title of the film, Pankaj Kumar’s cinematography is dark and deceptive. Even the colourful, decorated interiors of Raghuveer’s mansion-like house is shot with an unnerving gloom that successfully maintains a sense of dread.
The weak points include its runtime, standard tropes it set out to avoid initially and music. Running at 150 minutes, it feels way longer than that. While it is commendable that it takes time to explore some of the characters and mainly, the themes of patriarchy, toxic masculinity and family dysfunctionality, it falls prey to the age-old Bollywood convention of a romantic undercurrent between the two characters played by Nawaz and Radhika, which doesn’t work in a taut thriller like Raat Akeli Hai. Here the film loses its grip and the moment when other ‘whodunits’ actually begin to get more interesting, Raat Akeli Hai starts dragging and the thrills dissipate towards the final hour and by the time, the ‘who’ is revealed, you lose your interest in the proceedings.
Sneha Khanwalkar’s background score is unexpectedly underwhelming. While it works in a few places, the score doesn’t have the usual ‘zing’ associated with Khanwalkar’s work in films like Gangs of Wasseypur I & II and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! which were unconventional and cutting-edge. The score tries to spoon-feed some of the sequences as if it is directing you how to feel. One of the songs particularly, sung by Sukhvinder Singh does nothing for the film instead of being obnoxiously loud.
Even while Nawaz has played many such characters in the past, it is one of his better performances in the recent past if we consider the lacklustre 2019, except for maybe Photograph. Despite its shortcomings, the film is good enough to warrant a watch, primarily because of the interesting character arc of Jatil as he truly ‘comes of age’ with the film nearing its climax.
Streaming on Netflix.
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