Movie Review: 7 Khoon Maaf is too long to be pardoned

Based on Ruskin Bond’s short story Suzanna’s Seven Husbands, Vishal Bhardwaj’s 7 Khoon Maaf is a demented, psychotic, dark tale for the search for true love – gruesome and relentless in its presentation. From the first frame itself there is a sense of foreboding in the air and one gears up for a thrilling and enthralling movie. But alas!

The movie is painstakingly slow!!…by the time we were rounding the first half, having done with 3 husbands and I read ‘4 more to go’ in the interval, I had almost made up my mind to walk out in sheer disappointment. If one were really looking for a parallel, one can probably call this a kind of ‘slowed down’ version of Kill Bill 2..but since that movie was regarded to be slow in itself..well, you can get the picture..The fact that there are many random ordinary songs in the first half as well didn’t help matters either. After the fast paced and absolutely thrilling Kaminey, this kind of a serving from a stalwart like Vishal Bhardawaj was quite unexpected and deeply disappointing.

However, the second half and really the last 40 minutes somewhat make up for the slack pace of the first one and a half hours, so much so that by the time you come out of the hall you are willing to say the movie was quite watchable. You get treated to the catchy tones of the delectable ‘Darrling’, the plot picks up pace and the narration becomes more engaging. Especially towards the end, some scenes are particularly powerful and somewhat justify the money spent on the movie ticket

In the acting department, Priyanka Chopra is at centerstage in this kind of a movie and she is certainly equal to the task. She is able to pull off a complex character like Suzanna and does justice to each of her ‘avatars’, though some are more convincing than the others. Vivaan Shah (Naseeruddin Shah’s son, for the uninitiated) is impressive for a rookie, as the narrator and one of the characters of this dark tale. The sidekicks to Suzanna also put in a noteworthy performance despite their small role.

The writing (surprisingly) is not as crisp, and some Bollywoodish dialogues just make you cringe and grind your teeth. There is nothing Bollywoodish about this movie otherwise, and they seem bizarrely out-of-place. One of the masterstrokes is really, the last dialogue of the movie though, where you get a glimpse of the class of Vishal Bhardwaj but that’s it

After a stunner like Kaminey it would not be far from the mark to say that 7 Khoon Maaf disappoints. As I said, on the whole the movie may be regarded as watchable but I have to say, given that this is Vishal Bhardwaj…I had hoped for more.