Hit The First Case Review: Gripping murder mystery with good first half but suffers due to weak suspense revelation
Hit The First Case Movie Rating: 2.5 Stars
Just watched Hit The First Case movie on Netflix. Let’s focus on the complete details, story, positive/negatives and at last my personal view on this movie.
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Sanya Malhotra, Milind Gunaji, Shilpa Shukla, Akhil Iyer, Nuveksha
Director: Sailesh Kolanu
Release Date: 15th July in cinemas & Digital premiere on Netflix from 28th August 2022
Story: Movie is official remake of Telugu movie of same name with minor changes. While the original was set in Telangana, here the action shifts to Jaipur. Like in the original, here too we meet a genius police officer, Vikram (Rajkummar Rao) belongs to the Homicide Intervention Team (HIT) who is suffering from PTSD because of something that happened in his past.
He keeps seeing flashes of the past tragedy and the sight of fire kind of paralyses him. All this is affecting his work. His girlfriend, Neha (Sanya Malhotra) who is an officer with the forensics department tells him to take a break for the sake of everyone. Vikram, however fears that if he resigns from his job then his stress would increase as the work is keeping him away from the pain. He fights with Neha and goes on a three-month-long leave in the hills.
Soon Neha goes missing and Vikram returns immediately and he tells his senior Ajit Singh Shekhawat (Dalip Tahil) that he should be assigned the case. However Vikram’s rival Akshay (Jatin Goswami) is given the charge. At the same time another girl disappeared as well and Neha was investigating the case. Thinking that both the cases are related, he begins to look into the earlier case as well.
He is convinced, the two cases are inter-related. Since there are several suspects, solving the two cases is not easy. To complicate matters further, a dead body is found in such a decomposed state that it is impossible to understand whether the body is that of Preeti or Neha. What is the truth about the disappearance of the two girls? Are they connected? Who is behind the disappearance of Preeti and of Neha? Whose dead body was it?
Positives
1. Excellent Performances
2. Music
3. Screenplay
4. Cinematography
Negatives
1. Story
2. Direction
3. Climax
4. Length
Durgesh Tiwary’s View: When I watched the trailer of this film planned to watch this movie on digital premiere instead of cinemas as this murder mystery looks good in parts and have not watched the original Telugu movie.
Haunted by flashes of a tragic past, HIT (Homicide Intervention Team) detective Vikram is forced to keep his personal battles aside as two women go missing under mysterious circumstances. College girl Preeti disappears after her car breaks down on a Jaipur highway and Vikram’s girlfriend, forensic analyst Neha is nowhere to be seen either. Are the two cases connected and who’s the culprit?
Murder mystery is among the most under utilized genre in the Hindi Film Industry. And a well made murder mystery is even rare. Director does well to build the ambience of a thriller by slowly taking the audience into the dark world of twisted characters. He also tactfully infuses the personal story of his protagonist into the narrative, without deviating much from the core conflict of the film. But as mentioned above, the entire build up goes for a toss seeing how things unfold towards the finale. The reasoning is absurd and dilutes the entire impact of an otherwise intriguing story. In a nutshell, what happens is fascinating, but that’s not justified well. Movie is a murder mystery which is gripping in the investigative portions but loses the plot when it comes to the element of mystery.
The cinematography is breath-taking and special credit to the production team too for the same since the film has been shot entirely in the pandemic. The music is decent, whereas some of the dialogues with humourous undertones work well in the narrative. The editing is also crisp, as the film moves at a fast pace, but the issue lies in the writing front. A thriller can’t be impactful without a fitting finale and that’s exactly the factor that goes against this film. While the male characters are well written, getting the desired arc, the female characters deserved some more depth in the writing. A more layered writing would have provided some context to all that unfolds in the finale.
Overall, movie hits the bulls eye in the first half but falls flat in the second. It’s an honest attempt to bring the thriller for the Hindi audience but it just doesn’t translate into a memorable experience due to the final 25 minutes. But it can be a decent watch thanks to superlative performance, whodunnit element and a promising story My view on this movie Time Pass
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