A few films reveal their casual, research-less writing and execution in the first scene itself spoiling the entire experience of watching it in the theater. And that becomes even more painful, when it happens to be a film that looked quite promising as an investigative crime thiller titled KAASHI.
To give you the exact scene without any spoilers, the film opens with a dark sequence of an asylum for mentally disturbed people (rather a jail) and the protagonist is shown scratching his cell’s wall with a spoon of steel. The behaviour is properly seen and discarded by the guards/authorities saying that at least he’s not creating any nonsense. Whereas in reality, any inmate of such asylum (or any jail for that matter) is never allowed to keep anything like a steel-spoon, with which he can hurt himself or the others.
The next 30 minutes or so get lost in the repetitive romance shot in the backdrop of picturesque Varanasi (Banaras/Kaashi) and then the writing again brutally stabs the film as the mystery begins.
From here onwards KAASHI goes on adding one sequence after another defying all the logic which includes a missing girl, a sudden insane murder, a local wannabe politician not showing any remorse for his lost son and the police closing the investigation of a body found without any postmortem.
The script continues taking logic for a ride from the first scene to the last and this even includes many pathetically conceived court-room sequences, wherein lawyers and the judge keep arguing on all bizarre things in a highly inspired comical mode of JOLLY LLB series. Besides, the language in its dialogues remains confused between Bhojpuri, local Varanasi lingo and typical Mumbai dialect.
Despite having a few talented actors in its supporting cast, the execution never cares to exploit their talent turning them into a laughing stock. At times many even look like over doing it just to bring in that small-town feel in their performances that never works for the film. As a result you feel pity seeing Sharman Joshi as the only one, trying hard to convert this poorly written and conceived film into a fairly watchable one.
In the technical department, the city of Varanasi is just there to add some artistic look and charm capturing the famous Aarti, Manikarnika Ghaat and more, and the songs as well as the background score fail to make any kind of impact on the less interested viewer. In fact every department struggles as the writing betray them pretty badly trying to present a deceiving kind of mystery following a very lame approach.
Giving the credit where due, the story idea did have a big potential and the mystery could have been conceived with many interesting and surprising layers placing various clues in the scenes for the keen viewers. However the highly flawed writing simply ruins it all, wasting a fine opportunity. To be honest, Sharman Joshi and Banaras are the only two things in KAASHI that somehow keep you engaged apart from Sharman’s bright yellow scooter named “Ram Pyari” that fondly reminded me of Amitabh’s car in AKAYLA having the same name and colour.
So you should only opt for KAASHI on an online portal soon and that too just for its basic story premise, Varanasi and Sharman Joshi.
Rating : 1.5 / 5
