feroz-k-khan

The movie starts off well on a fairly humorous note and sets a decent pace for the first 30 minutes or so. After this, at every possible instant, it seems to fly off in tangents. Characters appear and fade off or die unexpectedly. Sub plots creep in and give a ray of hope for a few minutes, until they wilt sooner than expected. If the crux of the story was meant to be the struggle of a misunderstood minority character, it could definitely have been portrayed with much more valour and steasfasteness written into his story. By the end of the film you're left wondering what was achieved by staying glued to every frame in the hopes that the story might improve. There was definitely a lot of potential here but it was let down by some very weak screenplay. The only saving grace was the actor who played the Panchayat member, a frequent face in films of the early 90s but whose name escapes my mind.

You'd think that after a fairly decent thriller of a previous film, that the producers would follow it up with a more gripping and twisting script. Unfortunately there are none in this film. No major surprises that you would hope can redeem the slow pace of the movie. Eric Bana's character battles some of his childhood demons while trying to solve a case of a missing woman, but Bana isn't given adequate screen time to take charge of the movie. If there's a sequel to this one it better have a whole new direction in terms of script, otherwise it won't be worth spending any time on. It doesn't even come close to matching the slow burning yes satisfying pace of the first movie

In the final scene, Bana stares into the wilderness. That pretty much sums up my thoughts on how this movie progressed too.

While in terms of performances, the film has no real standout roles, the script and screenplay is the star in Merry Christmas. What starts out as what seems like a romantic meetup gone wrong slowly begins piquing your interest as you wonder just how many more subtle twists will get thrown your way. This film needs your undivided attention to slowly soak in the story. On the whole, the entire ensemble make this a worthwhile film, but it's certainly not one that you would put at the top of any list. Sriram Raghavan however, once again shows Bollywood that he rules the noir thriller genre, one that other producer sorely failed to capitalize on over the last couple of decades. Quite a long way in terms of impact from his peak of Andhadhun, it still deserves a watch if you're a fan of the genre. Just don't expect too many edge-of-your-seat moments.