Review Right Yaa Wrong : It’s Wrong
Sunny Deol-starrer Right Yaaa Wrong is a surprisingly absorbing thriller to which writer-director Neeraj Pathak gives the old fashioned 80s treatment. By this I mean, it’s the kind of film which opens with a chase scene between cops and criminals in which police-officer Sunny Deol’s every bullet finds its target, but not one bullet fired at him so much as grazes his shoulder.
Plagiarized shamelessly from the 1995 TV movie, Above Suspicion starring Christopher Reeve and Willaim H Macy, Pathak’s film stars Deol as a committed cop so busy hunting down feared underworld types that he has no idea his wife (played by Isha Koppikar) is secretly carrying on a steamy affair with his step-brother. And this is even before Deol has injured himself in an encounter and lost the use of his lower body to paralysis.
The film gathers momentum when Deol, oblivious about their affair, asks his wife and step-sibling to grant him death so his son doesn’t have to watch his invalid father mope around helplessly. Both of them refuse at first, then agree when they realize this just may be the best thing to happen to them.
Irrfan Khan stars as Deol’s best buddy and fellow upright officer who eventually clashes with him. And then you have Konkona Sen Sharma playing Irrfan’s lawyer sister who opposes her brother in court.
Cleverly plotted and never revealing all its cards at once, the film is a smart thriller. And yet the director fails to deliver a tight, slick Bollywood entertainer on the lines of those Abbas-Mustan whodunits, because his treatment’s so archaic. Even the incredibly gifted Konkona struggles embarrassingly through a scene in which she must reveal to a young child that her parent is dead. Saddled with juvenile dialogue, fine actors like Irrfan, Sunny and Konkona are wasted in what might have otherwise been a promising film.
I’m going with two out of five for director Neeraj Pathak’s Right Yaaa Wrong. It’s a decent watch, but I recommend you dig out a DVD of the original film, and watch that instead!
Rating: 2 / 5 – watch it if you nothing else to do.
