Murder at Teesri Manzil 302 movie review: Irrfan Khan, Ranveer Shorey’s thriller is tacky and dated

1/5

Story:

An industrialist is informed by an anonymous caller that his wife has been kidnapped. The distraught husband frantically begins to search for her, but soon, it is revealed that things are not exactly what they seem. In the midst, a character is supposedly murdered, derailing carefully laid plans.

Review:

Indian cinema has undergone a sea change in the past few years. Barring the formulaic potboilers, most Indian films veer towards a naturalistic approach to acting, costumes, set design and the like. Even historical characters (Sardar Udham), sports personalities (Saina) and superheroes (Minnal Murali) are created to feel like real humans with palpable emotions, not demigods with heightened reactions.

Murder at Teesri Manzil 302, starring a much younger Ranvir Shorey and late actor Irrfan Khan, was shelved almost 14 years ago. And its datedness is far too unsubtle to ignore.

The story is thus — Maya Diwan (Kalyug’s Deepal Shaw), the wife of a noted industrialist with porcelain skin and one strand of white hair, Abhishek Diwan (Ranvir Shorey), is kidnapped in broad daylight. The kidnapper (Irrfan Khan) demands half a million dollars in ransom. Diwan ropes in a detective (Lucky Ali) and his female crony (who only makes observations with one eyebrow raised) to get to the bottom of the case.

As expected, things are not as simple as they are made out to be, and soon enough, every character tries to outwit the other. A kidnapping setup going awfully wrong is a great premise for a gripping story on manipulation and deceit. Yet, none of the twists feels remotely original. There are so many tropes — rainy nights, broken down cars with headlights piercing through the darkness, men in hoodies disappearing into thin air like magic — that one could possibly make a drinking game out of spotting them in the film. It seems director Navneet Baj Saini has taken scenes from their favourite Bollywood thriller (read: Abbas Mustan’s 2001 hit Ajnabee) and made a best-of catalogue out of it.

The film stylistically belongs to the 2000-s erotic thriller genre, where characters speak in metaphors, sigh and eyeroll emphatically, and don leather jackets and Matrix sunglasses in peak summer heat in Bangkok. In this world, women exist to parade in beautiful attire and change loyalties every three seconds, because they are only plot devices in the larger scheme of things.

The background sound is piercingly loud and manipulative, cueing you to feel specific emotions at specific scenes. The camera remains steadfastly tilted in dramatically-charged scenes, there is a party song with women suggestively swaying their hips as a character laments about getting hurt in love. To put things in context, the character fantasises about a woman he has spent one day with. And given that the movie is a thriller, it can be safely assumed that none of the characters ever say the truth until the big reveal in the climax.

This proves to be the biggest hurdle in getting invested in the story. Nothing in the film feels authentic. There are songs that appear out of nowhere in which women pose in chiffon sarees on picturesque beaches. From people speaking in fake Bengali accents with few inane Bengali words thrown in the middle, characters with a lisp, and women doling out sexual innuendos in husky voices, the comedy in Murder at Teesri Manzil is even more offensive and dated. Johnny Lever became a comedy legend with his loud rants as comic asides in serious films. But in 2021, such an aside would probably serve better as a nostalgic hat-tip to a different era, not a coherent arc that has anything to do with the central narrative.

Lucky Ali has a beautiful voice. Play O Sanam once, and you’d be convinced. But the man cannot act to save his life. It’s discomfiting to watch Lucky Ali try to move his facial muscles accurately. Irrfan and Ranvir try hard to make sense of the film’s ludicracy, but even their acting skills can’t save the film.

There is no point trying to look for depth or nuance in Murder at Teesri Manzil 302. The only time Irrfan does not look like he's ill at ease is when he is drinking water while dismissing phone callers asking for money. The rest of the film, and the characters, are infuriatingly dumb to deserve further elucidation.

Verdict: 

Watching Murder at Teesri Manzil 302 is torturous. Not just because it breaks your heart to watch Irrfan Khan again in a movie he probably would have liked for people to forget. Indeed, Irrfan Khan uncomfortably kissing a woman half his age while faking lovemaking is possibly one of the worst cinematic experiences one can be exposed to at the end of the year. There are other scenes that top this one, but revealing more would be considered a spoiler. However, as a fan of the actor, and of quality cinema, this writer recommends audiences to skip this film.