To be fair with the first time attempt by director Behzad Khambata and debutant Karan Kapadia playing a significant role along with Sunny Deol, BLANK has a decent plot and shows some sparks too in its various sequences shot well. But unfortunately the writing happens to be its weakest part, which eventually turns the film into a big disappointment, post an impressive trailer raising the expectations.
It starts off right away coming to the point showing some focus, narrating two parallel plots of a suicide bomber being caught with his bomb connected to several other suicide bombers in the city and the ATS officer’s (Sunny Deol) son getting caught in a rave party taking drugs. But just after 20 minutes, the writing starts adding illogical sequences into the narration taking huge cinematic liberties losing the important focus. In fact such are the silly twists added into the film (just to shock the viewers) that at times they make the otherwise fine execution by the director look amateurish, hugely affecting the overall impact of the film and its basic plot.
But before coming to those, would like to add that sadly BLANK is yet another film suffering and promoting Islamophobia in its presentation, wherein every Muslim is a terrorist including the kids and teenagers, and every bearded man is evil, resembling Osama in a similar get-up.
Moving over to the performances, though Karan Kapadia courageously debuts playing a major unconventional role, he only manages to impress through his fights but not through his dialogue delivery or emotional portrayal in particular. On the other hand Sunny Deol tries hard but keeps struggling, looking tired in a badly written character of an ATS officer and a father. In fact Sunny is one actor in Hindi cinema, who still can deliver a monstrous hit but somehow the writers and directors here are not able to figure out how to present him on screen. So he is once again wasted in BLANK doing a stereotyped role and the same can be said about the supporting actors around him, who more look like the officers from the famous TV serial C.I.D.
In short, though a bit loud, I only found the background score and action as the two noteworthy merits in this avoidable thriller. But let me share the moment from where I completely lost the interest in the film lacking the much required depth and logic.
Within the first 30 minutes, an officer successfully nabs a suspected terrorist with a bag. Opening the bag he finds a bomb in it. He looks at the bomb, takes it out from the bag and hands it over the officer standing behind saying, “Take this bomb to the bomb squad”. And the bomb is taken to the Bomb Squad.
Now I couldn’t even laugh on this scene while watching, as was simply stunned thinking about both the writer and the director conceiving, writing and shooting this particular scene along with the actors saying nothing or objecting to the absurd thought.
Anyway, that was the moment I completely lost interest in BLANK (which is just about 100+ minutes in duration) and it further got painful to watch when a song just started before the crucial climax attack and every single officer in the ATS team sitting in the truck was shown hitting the palm with his fist, right on the beat of the track playing in the background. God knows how this particular sequence was shot with Sunny also doing the same right at the beat of the song. Anyway the absurdities did not end here as just after the climax, another song started featuring Akshay Kumar singing Ali Ali as if every film based on terrorism or nationalistic theme in the present scenario should have Akshay as a must.
Overall that was my experience and thought process about BLANK, as I found both the innovation and vision displayed in its posters completely missing in the film. However, the choice is still all yours, as always.
Rating : 1.5 / 5
