Strangers

Director: Aanand Rai

Long, long ago two men met on a train, and hatched a murderous plot. Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 classic was called, simply, Strangers On A Train, and took us deep into the layers of deception that the mind is capable of.

The latest Bollywood release gets two men on a train to do ditto, and calls itself Strangers. Within a few minutes of the film, the director has one of the men throw up an airy remark about Hitchcock, in a you-know-and-we-know where this is coming from: lopping off three words from the title is in keeping with the nature of the theft, but there is no getting away with the fact that it is stolen.

So where does Anand Rai take his version? Nowhere we haven't been before, despite an A-grade performance by Kay Kay Menon, even if he insists on wearing a hat and trench-coat (the movie is set in cold England, see?). The plot points differ from the original, but you know exactly what will happen in the end.

In between, there's Kay Kay as the husband of a neurotic wife (Sonali Kulkarni), who hasn't got over the death of their little boy. She holds havans every three days, and wanders off behind every baby's pram. And there's Jimmy Sheirgill as a writer-with-a-massive-block whose sexy wife (Nandana) finally gives up on him. There's enough talent amongst the actors to keep us engaged for the movie's very international length — a short hour-and-a-half. The cinematography is super. But the predictable script is a downer.

A tip for the director, and the other wannabes who are tempted to take other peoples' ideas and run with them: borrow from less well-known, less well-loved films. It may take you a few weeks to be found out.