When I first read about the Indians planning to make a movie adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 bestselling novel “The Girl on the Train” a couple of years ago, I was pretty excited. Then when I read Pareeniti Chopra would be starring, the excitement waned a little. I’m not sure but maybe that’s what happened to most of the audience as the film opened on Netflix on February 26 without the slightest buzz, before or after.
Ribhu Dasgupta directs and writes the Hindi-language adaptation of the British whodunit produced under the banner of Reliance Entertainment. With a huge banner backing up the production and a tested story set in London, the film could have been molded into an unsettling thriller for the international audience. Instead, the makers chose to take a narrow path and tried to Bollywoodify the movie, making a harrowing caricature of a mystery film, one of those that are quickly forgotten by the audience.
Mira Kapoor (Parineeti Chopra), a London-based criminal lawyer has an accident that causes a miscarriage and changes her life forever. Because of the trauma, the otherwise strongheaded Mira gets diagnosed with anterograde amnesia—a condition where the patient cannot convert a short-term memory into long-term memory. The condition worsens as Mira takes to alcohol to deal with the stress and hence her relationship with her husband Dr. Shekhar Kapoor (Avinash Tiwary) comes to an end.
A distraught Mira then spends her time traveling around in the local train every day, watching the world outside from the window. On her multiple journeys through London, Mira one day spots Nusrat John (Aditi Rao Hydari), at her home in Greenwich. In Nusrat, Mira sees her past. She sees Nusrat as a woman living a perfect life. Given her condition, Mira attaches herself to Nusrat’s life and when she senses that Nusrat’s perfect life might have an anomaly after all, she decides to take matters in her own hands. That’s when she gets involved in a murder she has no memory of, and is pursued relentlessly by Inspector Dalbir Kaur Bagga (Kirti Kulhari).
This will probably sound strange but The Girl on the Train, a film made by Indians in England, lacks diversity. In Bollywood’s England, everyone is Indian. Or at least everyone understands Hindi perfectly, be it brown, black or white folks. The makers of this film seem to come from the same schooling. And this is not the only creative blunder that the filmmakers partake in.
The film’s characters are so banally written that almost everyone seems like they’re acting in a spoof. Take Kulhari’s Inspector Bagga for example. Inspector Bagga is a London cop who functions like she’s in Mumbai or Delhi. She starts interrogating suspects whenever she pleases and even slaps them at will. And in a crime mystery with multiple suspects, there’s not a single mention of a lawyer. The filmmakers seem to forget that OTT audiences have access to international cinema and these yesteryear Bollywood theatrics will not go down well with them.
Maybe bad writing is the reason behind the otherwise talented Kulhari’s lackluster performance. Kulhari tries too hard to become a strict London cop. So hard that her struggle is both visible and painful to watch.
Talk about struggling, one can definitely sense the struggle in Chopra’s efforts too. The Girl on the Train is Chopra’s most prominent role thus far in her career and gives her plenty of screen time. But as the 2h long film progresses, we realize she cannot make the best of what’s given to her. I personally would blame the lazy writing more than Chopra, but still, after years spent in Bollywood, the audience definitely expects better performance from her.
Who should watch it?
I fear I might have been a little too critical of the movie, specially coming to it straight from the Luxembourgish thriller “Capitani.” So I think, The Girl on the Train with all its Bollywoodish devices could be a decent watch for audience who enjoy ‘soft core’ thrillers. But for the more serious audience for whom all aspects need to make sense in a movie, you better stay at the platform itself.
