Review : Yakeen

Inspired (and I use that term loosely) from the 1991 Hollywood thriller “Shattered”, Yakeen is debut director Girish Dhamija’s first product. This could have been a taut suspense thriller, but degrades to a very mediocre level, thanks to incompetent handling, and some very sorry acting.

The film starts off showing a car crashing off a high road. As it smashes down into a valley below, the camera cuts to the hospital where we find the car’s 2 passengers – Simar Oberoi (Chopra), who has a few scratches and bumps and her husband Nikhil (Rampal), who is seriously hurt and has lost his memory. Nikhil requires many operations and lot of medical treatment/therapy before he is the man he used to be, and his loving wife administers care and lends her support through it all. As he is brought home by his wife, he begins to settle into life at home, and meet old friends.

However, he is rudely shocked, when upon returning to work as an architect, he finds his will in one of his office files. In his will, which was made right before theaccident, he has disinherited his wife. Questions crowd Nikhil’s mind, and he tries to find out about the condition of his marital relationship from his friends. In this he is helped by Tanya (Kim), an old friend, who also senses that all is not well. It turns out that Nikhil was about to divorce Simar, based upon evidence of her adultery, before the accident. However, now Simar is all sweetness and light, won’t admit to any wrongdoing, but acts supiciously. So Nikhil enlists the help of a detective (Shukla) and Tanya in finding out the truth about Simar…

The strongest thing about this film is its story-line, which has many surprising twists and turns, and could have served to keep you on the edge of your seat. It is not be so however, because characterization is incomplete and flawed, dialogues are filmi, and acting poor. Priyanka as Simar looks and acts artificial, while Kim Sharma is just a tad better. Rampal is adequate, as is Pandey.

The music is nothing to write home about, and editing could have been better. Direction needed to be crisper, in such a fast-paced film. Besides all this, there are inherent flaws in situations/sets and event flow, all of which smack of incompetent direction and insufficient attention to detail.

All-in-all, just about average, watchable once.