The title of Sangeeth Sivan's crime thriller, a posthumous release streaming on ZEE5 from 11 November (Sivan died on 8 May 2024), is Blind Game, and the name is perfectly justified. It's the kind of movie that might have been made with its eyes closed, given the jerky shifts in tone that leave you stupefied. One moment, you are in the presence of a man who has been beaten up by some bad guys. The next moment, as soon as this man opens his mouth to narrate his story, you see a chubby boy's hilarious attempt at suicide (the fan falls down because, you know, he is heavy), and a few seconds later, a group of friends are seen dancing. But Blind Game is in trouble even before this jarring flashback. It opens with two friends, Shaan (Akash Makhija) and Vicky (Rohit Chandel), all worked up about...something, though if you had asked me to take a guess, I would have said that their troubles might have something to do with their romantic relationship. Shaan and Vicky do give off "couple vibes." The way the former inquires about the latter and shouts at him seems straight out of the "I was so worried about you, darling. Where were you all this time?" school of romantic concern.
Nevertheless, a few scenes later, Shaan and Vicky get into a minor accident when their bike is hit by a car driven by Sikander (Arjun Rampal). Sikander feels bad about the whole thing and volunteers to take them to a nearby hospital. At the hospital, Vicky goes missing, and you prepare yourself for an intriguing mystery thriller—until, a few minutes later, Sikander gets out of his car and begins to hit some goons, sending their bodies flying through the air. So...is Blind Game now a noisy, physics-defying, dishoom-dishoom action thriller? Before you can get a handle on Sivan's intentions, that funny suicide flashback with its "celebration of friendship" song appears. Rest assured, the movie only becomes more and more bizarre, and not in a good way either. As the story progresses, you realize that the only way to make sense of it is to consider it a clumsy, scattershot piece of hokum that feels as though it was made solely to be dumped on a streaming platform. It even finds a way to throw in a lesson for the youth about never taking shortcuts, which is funny coming from a film that takes all kinds of shortcuts to generate twists, turns, and sentimental emotions. Since the characters are little more than stick figures, Sivan has to rely on brief glimpses of "happy times" to evoke warm sentiments when a man jumps to his death.
Blind Game is the kind of thriller that prides itself on being "oversmart." It admires itself in the mirror while throwing in a few jokes, a love triangle, and a song-and-dance sequence, presumably because a producer probably told the director to make the story appeal to the masses. The real diagnosis of such a project is usually that it suffers from an identity crisis. This is true of Blind Game as well. Hence, the only right way to experience it is with blindfolds and earplugs. Or, conversely, you can choose to remain blind and deaf to its existence.
Final Score - [1.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times