{"id":25462,"date":"2014-06-27T13:12:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T17:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/?p=25462"},"modified":"2014-06-27T13:15:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T17:15:11","slug":"ek-villain-movie-review-by-rajeev-masand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/ek-villain-movie-review-by-rajeev-masand\/","title":{"rendered":"Ek Villain Movie Review by Rajeev Masand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rating<\/strong>: 2.5<\/p>\n

June 27, 2014<\/p>\n

Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor, Ritesh Deshmukh, Aamna Sharif, Kamaal R Khan, Shaad Randhawa<\/p>\n

Director: Mohit Suri<\/p>\n

Five minutes into Mohit Suri\u2019s Ek Villain, and a major character is killed off. Great way to get your attention. The rest of the film is divided between flashbacks of a charming love story, and a somewhat unconvincing revenge mission.<\/p>\n

Guru (Sidharth Malhotra) is a hot-headed, cold-blooded assassin working on the orders of a Goa don. He softens under the influence of Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor), a cheery chatterbox and selfless do-gooder, who gets under his skin despite himself. Meanwhile, Ritesh Deshmukh is Rakesh Mahadkar, a mousy lower-middle class MTNL employee, who vents his frustration over his nagging wife at the unfortunate women who make the mistake of locking horns with him. These two narratives intertwine predictably, setting off the payback plan.<\/p>\n

Suri, a competent director, who has a knack for ripping off foreign films and \u2018Indianizing\u2019 them by adding a romantic subplot and a superhit soundtrack, employs the same formula here. The victim on this occasion is the Korean revenge saga, I Saw The Devil. Suri and his writers tone down the violence, amp up the melodrama, throw in a love story, and give the psychotic serial killer a justification for his misogyny. It\u2019s all very Hindi filmi, complete with corny lines that\u2019ll make you roll your eyes in disbelief.<\/p>\n

To give credit where it\u2019s due, Suri makes the most of this flawed script, delivering a consistently watchable film even if it isn\u2019t always satisfying. The plot is plagued with logic issues, and there\u2019s virtually no suspense in the cat-and-mouse chase between villain and avenger. Yet each time the thriller element fails, it\u2019s the romantic track that returns to resuscitate the film.<\/p>\n

Shraddha Kapoor has a luminous presence, and it\u2019s hard to take your eyes off her when she\u2019s on screen\u2026although you may want to shut your ears from listening to her constant chappad-chappad. She shares a warm chemistry with Sidharth Malhotra, who does very well as the silently simmering type and gets a few nice moments to show off his brooding intensity. It\u2019s Ritesh Deshmukh, though, who springs a surprise, delivering a compelling performance, both as the browbeaten everyman, and in his volte face as the stonehearted killer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame then that despite the uniformly impressive performances, and Suri\u2019s nifty directing skills, the film is only moderately fulfilling. I\u2019m going with two-and-a-half out of five for Ek Villain. If you\u2019re still wondering, the real villain here is the lousy script.<\/p>\n

Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating: 2.5 June 27, 2014 Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor, Ritesh Deshmukh, Aamna Sharif, Kamaal R Khan, Shaad Randhawa Director: Mohit Suri Five minutes into Mohit Suri\u2019s Ek Villain, and a major character is killed off. Great way to get your attention. The rest of the film is divided between flashbacks of a charming love story, and a somewhat unconvincing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5231,5],"tags":[5632,2619,74,6202,43,2617,3646],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanqeed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}