Red Swatik

Cast: Menaka Chopra (Sherlyn Chopra), Harsh Chhaya, Deepraz, Deepshikha
Producer / Director: Vinod Pande

Rate: *

What shocks me is how could a person who has been in the industry since almost thirty years can come up with such substandard products! Vinod Pande has directed films like Yeh Nazdeekiyan and serials like Reporter and now it seems like he has fallen too much in love with his work. He is upset that this film has not received a good release but being kind towards the audience, they would do well to stay away.

The film, as has already talked about, is inspired from the Hollywood film 'I Spit on your grave' but lets put it straight away that the inspiration didn't quite work.

The film is the story of psychotic women who kills whoever she sleeps with – and that she does pretty regularly. Rohini (Maneka Chopra) is the victim of a gang rape after which she is left by her fiancé. She also gives birth to a child who dies in a car crash while still a toddler. The collective impact of al these take away Rohini's sanity. She could never cope with the fact that her son was no more with her. She turns a call girl with financial burden of feeding herself but kills every one of her clients. And Sarika (Deepshika), a magazine editor, happens to be the person Rohini calls friend. So after Rohini kills someone she calls Sarika up.

Chaudhari (Harsh Chhaya) is a police official who along with his subordinate Ranadey (Deepraz) is on the trail. Ranadey gets killed when he finds striking similarities between his one-night old girlfriend and the killer.

The story looks patchy with the script taking liberty to switch Rohini's traveling preference between a taxi and her car at its own convenience. There are other goof ups like another call girl saying that only Rohini contacts her when required. This after she was shown calling Rohini up to fix a client. And also who would ever wear sexy lingerie, which reveals almost everything, when an unknown person is visiting you. She might be a call girl but this is still far fetched and does not look anything more than a desperate attempt to catch eyeballs.

One thing that repels the eyes throughout the film is terrible make up. All the characters, especially Rohini looks terrible with the foundation almost screaming out. And to add this was a strange use of Close ups through out the film. Most of the scene of Rohini had extreme close up revealing her bad make up and of course complete lack expressions. There are some subtle references to the schizophrenic state of the killer through the camera, which sometimes work but sometimes fall flat.

Lighting in the film is a problem, there being no uniformity even in the same scenes. For example some scenes in the police station are really ill-lit. The dubbing could have been better. There are scenes where it's evident that the whole thing wasn't done at the same time.

The direction could have been better. There were scenes where a little common sense could have made a whole lot of differences. Like the scene when the security guard finds that Rohini is a mental case. That was when she was talking to he non existent son in front of him. The position of hands and eyes of the lady could have been better if they kept in mind how old the child was. Also the love scene between Rohini and Ranadey is stretched a bit too long and there is no justification to the girl being shown topless. If he tried creating a classic lovemaking session like the one in 'Desperado' he has failed miserably.

But he can't really help when he is handling a complete non-actor like Maneka Chopra (also known as Sherlyn Chopra). She is a classic case of how less cloths does not necessarily mean sexy. Harsh Chhaya and Deepshika do well for themselves but still don't quite make it to the good acting bracket for this particular film.

It's hard to point out a single point that was good about the movie. And there is no harm in not wasting time. Don't even bother.