The Body Movie Review

 Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Emraan Hashmi, Sobhita Dhulipala
Director: Jethu Joseph

Director Jethu Joseph has built his career around thrillers that help push the boundaries of the genre. When they are successful, they make for highly entertaining mainstream cinema. His all-India fame is primarily based on the 2013 Malayalam film Drisham, starring Mohanlal. It was produced by another director in Hindi with Ajay Devgan and in Tamil (Papanasam, 2015) by Joseph himself playing the lead role alongside Kamalasan. The Body, which marks his debut in Hindi films, is a natural career progression for the Vipul director.

It is disappointing that The Body is not the film she could have been. Joseph plays safe and he exposes this murder mystery that has many layers but not enough depth. Not only does the director stick to try and test, but he is also doubly sure that he does not do wrong by choosing to adopt the Spanish film El Cuerpo (2012), written and directed by Oriole Paulo. (Body is the second Bollywood remake of the Oriole Paulo film to hit the screens over a period of one year. Sujoy Ghosh's film Billa, a version of The Invisible Guest was the first).

The cast is effortlessly led by Rishi Kapoor as Jayaraj Rawal, a Mauritius police investigator investigating the disappearance of the body of a wealthy businessman from a forensic laboratory morgue. Joseph keeps twists and turns on a tight leash in this 103-minute film. If only The Body had a little more meat it would have been an unqualified winner. Parts of the film were somewhat outrageous, and maybe more affluent.

Rishi Kapoor is once pungent and taunted as a policeman, who does not strike punches when an accused struggles to strangulate him in front of him. At the end of his incredible pressure tactics, the man is played by Emraan Hashmi. For the latter, The Body represents the familiar hunting ground.

Emraan Hashmi is cast as Ajay Puri, husband of deceased woman Maya Verma (Shobhita Dhulipala). Maverick sleep assumes that Ajay was not only involved in taking the body out of the morgue to carry out the autopsy but also in cardiac arrest that his wife was hurt after a long flight from Los Angeles to Port Louis was.

The woman, who owns several businesses, is no pushover. In fact, her husband has putty in his hands. Dhulipala undoubtedly details the role with a mixture of charm and ruthless sturdiness, the strength of projects and indomitableness. It is easy to assume that she would not have gone down without a fight. And, given Rawal's stubborn stand against Ajay, it soon becomes clear that he knows something that we, and the new character

The film places most of the major cards on the table within the first few scenes, only holding back a couple of perspective-changes for the climax. For example, we are allowed the big secret of Ajay: an extra-marital affair with Ritu (Vedika Kumar). Now he has two reasons to bump into his wife: a new love and the former's material possessions. But nothing can be as open and closed in a pod unit.

When the cranky police officer was questioned, Ajay showed no signs of emotional distress. Rawal finds it very strange. He reminds his deputy Pawan (Anupam Bhattacharya) that his wife Nancy died in a car accident over a decade ago but has still not recovered from the shock. But that was an accident, Pawan intervened. It was not an accident, Rawal says, with no room for an argument.

The thriller plays out in one night - over an eight-hour period, to be precise. Rawal kept Ajay in the police station for questioning until after sunrise. During the desperate hours that she is forced to face Rawal's stated questions, Ajay begins to wonder if Maya is truly dead. She feels that she is playing a Mind game with him.

Every little sign of Maya's presence that Ajay sees leads her in a flashback that makes reference to the fears and suspicions that anger her. But instead of instilling a sense of guilt that is troubling him, these joys often slow down the police process. The film has been linked to several love songs, both before and after to emphasize Ajay and Maya's love-hate relationship or to reveal the depth of trust and affection Ajay and Ritu have towards each other.

The body has no scope for Bollywood-style romance, but it emphasizes banking, built against the picturesque backdrop of the prologue in the Indian Ocean nation where the story is set. It is the type of thriller in which the incoherent wickedness and playful performances of physical passion would have worked infinitely better than the treacherous love. The male shares moments of intimacy with the two women - the screenplay reveals marked differences between the two relationships with some clarity - but they do not serve to underline the intensity of emotions that only Ajay's measures resort to. It can cause trouble.

In one scene, the protagonist calls a girl who waits at a table in a nightclub that he had mixed with his wife. He inquires about Maya's mobile phone. He is dead, he can be alive, it is complicated, he blindsides. The girl at the other end of the line is quite intelligent. so are we! The body is left alone.