118 has been described as an action-thriller that’s built around an interesting premise -– an investigative journalist who is on a trail to find the truth behind his mystic dream. But despite its novel concept and some impressive performances from its lead cast, the film is bloated from packing in too many things at one go. Director KV Guhan has taken too many cinematic liberties to get out of tricky screenplay situations.
The film sets up the drama interestingly, opening with a scene where Gautham (Kalyan Ram) unearths a major scam involving a corrupted minister, right before the elections. It happens to be a major breakthrough for his channel and the entire office gets into the celebratory mood at a resort in the outskirts. As the story progresses, Gautham was haunted by a mysterious nightmare of a girl stabbed to death and her car rolled into a river.
Initially, he tries to forget it as a bad dream, but he starts to interpret it as it recurs months later in the same room, around the same time (1:18 am) at the resort. He realises that the story is connected to a river and he sets out to find crime references with the help of his colleague and his girlfriend Megha (Shalini Pandey). The story mostly focuses on this point and things get murkier when Gautham has a close shave of multiple murder attempts and the line between reality and imagination begins to blur. He succeeds in discovering a key piece of evidence, but that sequence doesn’t ring true because the writing’s so affected.
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118 has all the ingredients for an edge-of-the-seat thriller, but the script, unfortunately, isn’t adequately developed and the crisp narrative loosens its grip at regular intervals. This inconsistent storytelling, especially during the flabby first hour, where nothing much really happens is difficult to endure. We never really get a sense of why Gautham doesn’t seek the help of cops, why he empathizes with that mysterious girl’s character and put his life on risk to find out the actual story behind her death. Although the plot is thick it’s fairly predictable. The second hour begins on a promising note with some exciting twists and turns, but the flashback portion seems far-fetched, convoluted without an emotional wallop.
Nivetha Thomas plays a mysterious woman who pops up now and then in a dream, seemingly to help Gautham cobble together the clues behind the strange turn of events in his life. She played her part well and doesn’t miss a beat. Shalini Pandey appears in an underwhelmingly written part. The director hardly makes any effort to inspire any chemistry between the lead pair.
The film has a host of barely-etched characters like Shravan, Gagan Vihari, Nasser and Bharat Reddy whom we meet fleetingly at best.Kalyan Ram hogs the footage and dutifully goes through the paces. He gets some wonderful action elements and he executes them well. Prabhas Sreenu, who played Kalyan Ram’s colleague, is saddled with cheesy one-liners that seldom work. To say the least, 118 could have been so much more but settles for a little.
Film: 118 Cast: Kalyan Ram, Nivetha Thomas, Shalini Pandey Direction: KV Guhan Rating: 2.5 stars |
muralikrishna.db@newindianexpress @onlymurali