Movie - Anusuya
Year - 2007
Director - Ravi Babu
Starring - Bhumika Chawla, Ravi Babu, Abbas, Nikita Thukral
In 2003, former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen gave what is clearly the performance of a lifetime in the Hindi film Samay, playing a no-nonsense cop who it put at her wit's end in solving a series of bizarre murders. Loosely based on David Fincher's Seven, the movie, which had no songs, no romance, and no handsome heroes, received acclaim by critics and audiences alike.
Leave it to Tollywood to turn the idea on its head, several times over. 2007's Anusuya applies similar modifications to the original storyline. The tough cops are now replaced by a single good looking heroine, Bhumika as the title character. She is a bright young journalist assigned to find out the secrets behind a series of serial killings in which an organ has been removed from the victim. Like Sushmita, Bhumika's acting abilities are put to the test, and she applies them in a way that could only be on par with seasoned veterans.
At this point, all similarities to Samay come to a disappointing close. Enter the first major fault, Abbas as Anand, a handsome guy and love interest who is supposed to be an efficient cop and all-around good guy hero, but winds up falling on his face both in term of acting and character development. Anusuya puts the cop to shame in every situation, and his character finds himself hanging in mid-air - literally - when the heroine meets the villain in the climactic closing to the movie.
The villain is a nut-job foreign-returned surgeon known by the - faint of heart, take note - Gulaabi Govind. He is played by the man who actually has enough courage to bill himself as the producer/director/writer of this fiasco - Ravi Babu. Anyone who does that has got to be crazy; so crazy in fact that he actually gives his villainous character away way too early on in the film, and goes one step further in putting together this noir flashback for us, about guy who wants his only love so badly, he is willing to slash HER wrists for it. The flashback heroine is Pooja, played rather averagely by Nikita. She is a likable college girl who somehow can catch no man's attention, except for the aforementioned foreign-returned nut-job surgeon. So, to get him back for his attentions, she takes the ultimate step - she signs on as an organ donor.
And just when we are thanking the heavens that the picture is over, we get a soliloquy from the heroine on the noble reasons for organ donation. Have I scared you, enough?
Mohan's Measure - *
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