Unfortunately some people don’t seem to grow with time. Only plants do that. And actor-director Kumar Govind is a case in point. With his thriller Master Mind, Kumar reveals his complete immaturity, despite having spent a fair amount of time in the industry and that too with established actors and directors. When Kumar decided to mastermind his film, he did not seek any help from others but decided to go ahead with his gut instinct and a juvenile confidence which now might haunt him for a long time.
Master Mind fails on several counts and mostly it fails the audience and their faith in the actor-director who had the courage to introduce a new face — Raj Vardhan — in an otherwise big-budget film. This turned to be a poor choice as the actor cannot act, run, dance, deliver dialogues and nor does he have the ability to emote. The film’s tagline - “The Game of Death”, is ominous as it alludes to its own death knell at the box office.
Kumar’s reimagining of the Korean masterpiece Old Boy is far too ambitious and laughable. It revolves around Raj (Raj Vardhan), an architect who gets married and heads to Bangkok. Here, she is kidnapped suddenly while he is also kept captive for three years at an unknown location without any apparent reason.
When he is released, nearly as randomly as he is captured, he is a changed man and his only mission in life is to find the man who made him suffer for such a long time. He takes his cues from certain objects like a fried cutlet and a cassette and finds an unlikely ally in Seema (Tammanna Pasha), the only lady taxi driver in Bangkok.
Who is the man behind his misery and what is his story unfolds in the second half of the film and this leads up to a ridiculous climax.
The film can be considered sub-zero thriller and doesn’t even warrant a watch when you have a lot of free time and nothing to do with it. Going by the audience reaction, the film which is supposed to be a taut revenge drama becomes a laughable enterprise more than halfway through the proceedings.
The debut actor’s first-time effort is not good enough and neither does the rest of the cast pull through. Raj Vardhan needs to go back to acting school while the heroine Tammana Pasha is irrelevant to the plot.
Her dubbing especially makes it even worse for her. Bullet Prakash is totally wasted. M Fazil’s music and AC Mahendar’s cinematography cannot save Kumar’s botched up film.
The one thing that this film offers is a learning experience. Since Kumar gets everything wrong, right from his script to his casting, dialogues, acting and music, Master Mind is a good blueprint of how not to make a movie and can be a warning for budding Sandalwood actors and directors. Watching this film is a mindless exercise and not worth either time or money.