My Wife’s Murder

Director: Jijy Philip

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Suchitra Krishnamoorthy, Nandana Dev Sen, Boman Irani

6/10

In a sea of rgv camp thrillers navigated by debutant directors, Jijy Philip’s MWM is no new wave. In fact, for mainstream fare the film plot’s too placid. No surge of emotions at dramatic high tide, no low depths of dark despair in underworld world. Here the story sort of just flows. But to be fair, flows smoothly. In plain English, good screenplay. But speaking of English, isn’t a phrase-title like My Wife’s Murder too angrezi for a Hindi film?

Housewife (Suchitra) accuses hardworking over-timing husband (Anil) of two-timing with his assistant (Nandana). Her cacophonous bickering crescendos to a point of provoked physical altercation where he accidentally kills her. And before you wonder whether ‘she asked for it’, goody-goody husband panics and does something bad. He wipes off blood and all traces of his wife’s murder and cooks up story ? while feeding instant noodles to his kids ? about her having gone on pilgrimage (straight to heaven’s more like it).

But perpetually gormandising, hungry middle-age cop (Boman) smells something fishy. He uses reluctant Nandana as bait to catch Anil and fry, oops, try him.

Anil Kapoor with macho, tapori filmy-hero past (Tezaab, Ram-Lakhan), presents convincingly a flaccid character. He’s your wimpy, workaholic, no-romance, no-excitement kinda guy. Well, waddya expect? With a nagging, off-putting wife, he’s probably lost all drive. Except when he drives off with her dead body in a car and dumps it in a ‘sewer’ (what a swine).

And for movie star Anil, it’s a fait-accompli. Seriously, one has to give it to the man. He can actually pass off as born-again method actor. No madness of frenzied hamming here. His restrained performance is incredibly credible.

Finally, the film ends too abruptly. In jail presumably awaiting justice, Anil receives a message from his children saying they believe he’s innocent. He’s moved to tears. Nice redeeming stuff. But in a linear film like this, we the audience kind of want to know what happens to him?and that doesn’t happen.

Mandira Mitra