Hit: The First Case is Rajkummar Rao’s ‘Knives Ouch’

The kindest thing that can be said about Rajkummar Rao ’s first attempt at a murder mystery is that it is no Knives Out . Rian Johnson ’s 2019 global smash paid a homage to Agatha Christie ’s murder mysteries without keeling backwards to be an obedient genre-worshipper.

When was the last time Hindi cinema created a credible whodunit? The question that followed me out of writer-director Shailesh Kolanu ’s Hit: The First Case : why can’t Hindi cinema ever get the whodunit right?

It’s not about red herrings. It is certainly not about the body count. It is about basic common sense. Playing with the possibility of any and everyone in sight being a potential killer, is proof of paranoid plotting. It is also evidence of lazy writing. Of this, there outwardly no signs in Hit: The First Case. The proceedings move so quickly we don’t get a chance to see how logically challenged the murder motive is, as long as we are hurling headlong ahead with the investigation.

Rajkummar Rao is a very fine actor who takes to every character as though it’s his last. He has a blast playing Vikram, a cop with a past, and the salient member of an imaginary investigative agency named Homicidal Intervention Team (HIT) which specializes in taking on unsolvable cases.

Initially, the set-up seems engrossing enough. Rao is traumatized by visions of fire. Not surprisingly the plot wears an icy ring around its heart. There is little warmth and nil sensitivity used in unravelling the murder mystery when weighed against Vikram’s singularly ill-suited temperament for the job.

For all its flaws of cluttering the canvas with excessive plot turnings (and in comparison, very little characterization) HIT starts of well with the disappearance of two girls, one of whom happens to be the hero Vikram’s girlfriend. Sanya Malhotra impressively central to recent films like Paglaitt and Meenakshi Sundareshwar , is here reduced to an obscure shadow-play of flashbacks none of which adds to anything substantial.

There is a psychologist in the building who keeps reminding Rao’s Vikram that he suffers from psychological trauma, so much so that I feared for her life. How many taunts can one take from one’s doctor? How many dead bodies before the murderer’s identity is finally revealed?

Come to think of it, there is little material here to justify the wide arc of experiences that the characters seem to undergo. There is also a LGBTQ revenge angle at the end, where Rajkummar Rao who was last seen playing a closeted cop in Badhaai Do , righteously declares, “There is nothing wrong with that (lesbianism).”

There is something terribly wrong with a film that crowds itself with incidents to conceal its lack of inherent conviction. The capable actors seem to be in it for the sake of keeping themselves busy in trying times. Veteran Milind Gunaji plays a shady but finally clean cop named, ahem, Ibrahim. He is that token Muslim presence meant to appease the liberals.

Dilip Tahil as Rao’s boss looks like he would rather be playing golf. Shilpa Shukla , promising aeons ago in BA Pass , plays a murder suspect whom Rao arrests and tortures mercilessly, even pulling out her nails with pliers, only to realize he is far from nailing it.When she is proven innoccent, there is no apology.

Murder means never having to say you are sorry. Not even to the audience. The film ends with a song that goes ‘Abhi kahani khatm nahin’ ad nauseam. We get the point. But we can’t really say we are holding our breath.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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