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HomeOpinionBadla is a thrilling whodunnit delivered effortlessly by Taapsee Pannu & Amitabh...

Badla is a thrilling whodunnit delivered effortlessly by Taapsee Pannu & Amitabh Bachchan

A lawyer and a businesswoman sit down to talk about murder in Badla and leave you wanting for more.

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Thrill master Sujoy Ghosh is back at the box office with Badla starring Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu.

The duo is seen together for a second time after their hit courtroom drama Pink (2016). Coincidentally, Badla is a remake of acclaimed Spanish murder thriller The Invisible Guest directed by Oriol Paulo that the same year.

Badla is the story of revenge. In a fancy uptown apartment in UK, lawyer Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) and entrepreneur Naina (Taapsee Pannu) talk about the latter being accused in a murder. The camera goes out of this apartment only to show flashbacks.

Naina reveals that on the day of the murder, she found herself unconscious in a hotel room with her partner, Arjun, lying dead. Arjun is played by Tony Luke who starred in the Malayalam hit thriller Oozham (2016).

We are also told that Naina is lying. The whole film is framed as a whodunnit.

Justice is blind and believes in the truth it sees, says Badal and the film refers several times to blind king Dhritarashtra in the Mahabharata.

Naina and Badal take turns to tell the audience how the murder could have taken place.

Bachchan and Taapsee ably recreate their chemistry from Pink. Their acting is effortless and it is clear that there’s more to the story than these two let on.


Also read: Sonchiriya’s narrative brilliance mixes caste and gender to produce something rare


Pannu’s Naina never demands sympathy from us – that itself is refreshing when it comes to women characters in Hindi films. At every turn, she manages to surprise us with the twists in her tale.

In Badla, we see a younger Bachchan who is quite competent and convincing in his role.

However, the screenplay fails to keep you at the edge of your seat like Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012).

At the beginning of the film, we are told Badla is a remake. But what the audience yearns for is actually an adaption, to make it more than a remake. One can only wonder what stopped Ghosh from changing the original setup and bringing the story home. But then Ghosh had himself admitted that he wanted it to be an honest remake with little fiddling on his
part.

An exotic vintage hotel amid snow-capped mountains, forest roads and a sombre colour palette are some of the mood elements used by Ghosh to fit into the thriller genre.

Badla moves at a fast pace, dumping one possible truth after another on you. This is a smart tactic to keep the audience engaged, but my guess is Ghosh does it because slowing down would give the audience a chance to discover loopholes in the narrative.

The film invites to guess who’s the murderer, but if you are a thriller buff, you won’t have a hard time spotting him/her.

The thrill then falls apart.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Total ripoff of the original. They gave credit to the original but lifting the same scenes, dialogues(!) , similar Locales is too much!!

    But then it’s red chillies , so how can one mention that..

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