Review: Gia (Sonam Kapoor), a Scotland police officer loses her eyesight in an accident. The incident also makes her lose her job and purpose to live. She is told that she is expelled as a field agent not for her disability but negligence that caused the mishap. An orphan, her faith in God diminishes given the chain of events in her life. However, Gia is forced to wake up from her tragic slumber. She must gather courage after she stumbles upon a stranger, posing as a cab driver on a fateful night. As reports of various missing women surface, Gia puts her policing skills to use and suspects that the driver could be the killer. Can she convince the cops that her instincts can see what their eyes can’t? With the help of her guide dog Elsa, she decides to go after her evil nemesis.
Blind is a Hindi remake of the 2011 South Korean crime thriller by the same name. The Korean film has been adapted in various languages since, including Tamil. Shot during the pandemic in Scotland, Shome Makhija’s Hindi installment is perhaps the dullest of the lot. It’s not as dark as intended, it’s just depressing and Scotland tourism and police, won’t be flattered with this output.
What the film does get right, is its decision to not glamourize or romanticize a serial killer or his morbid thoughts. A lot of well-made true crime documentaries fall into this trap with their need to get into the psyche of the criminal. Whether Blind is ill-equipped, unaware or merely chooses to consciously not explore that aspect is hard to tell, but it helps.
On paper, the premise is solid and has all the elements essential for a compelling crime thriller. A lonely visually impaired character at the centre of a heinous crime, residing in a deserted sleepy town is good enough to create nerve-wracking tension and paranoia. Films like ‘Don’t Breathe’ (2016) used this sort of scenario perfectly. Sadly, Sonam’s sluggish OTT debut is devoid of that bone-chilling nervous energy. Makhija’s lethargic direction lacks urgency or fear, and the film’s incompetent lead cast only furthers the damage.
A deadpan Sonam Kapoor is more static, less effective. Her stoical, stone-faced approach to her character and singsong tone does little justice to her screen trauma and predicament. Purab Kohli’s attempt to portray a piano playing, menacing lunatic is more stagey, less real. Vinay Pathak and Lillete Dubey are wasted. If anyone deserves appreciation here, it’s Sonam’s makeup artist, who understands the assignment, actor Shubham Saraf, who plays an eye-witness Nikhil and the guide dog Elsa. Barring these, the rest are just winging it.
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