Everything about Murder At Teesri Manzil 302, a long- delayed Irrfan Khan starrer that Zee5 has plant space for, has fustiness blessed each across it. But for the lead actor, whose sweeties are legion and who’ll always be missed, the film has little that could explain why it has been recaptured from cold storehouse-it was listed for release all of a decade ago as Bangkok Blues-and palmed upon us. Murder at Teesri Manzil 302 is dead on appearance.
Irrfan’s presence in the film, besides converting an ineluctable pain, reminds us, if a memorial were at all demanded, of the enormity of the loss that his absence represents. Indeed in the sloppiest of scenes in a puerile and messy suspension suspenser, the actor doesn’t lose his poise and finds ways to pull down from the mediocrity swirling around him The film is devoted to both Irrfan and music musician Wajid Khan, one half of the Sajid-Wajid brace who failed in 2020 two months after the important-favored actor. Unfortunately, Murder at Teesri Manzil 302 is too stodgy a film to be regarded as a befitting remembrance. Murder At Teesri Manzil 302 is, as the cumbrous title suggests, a murder riddle. It snappily murders any eventuality of developing into a creditably engaging whodunnit. Any riddle that remains pertains to the star of The Namesake, Life. in a Metro and Paan Singh Tomar. What would have made him assent to be a part of a movie similar as this?
“It’s like a eyeless date,”Irrfan’s character in the film says in a scene. We’d have given it a miss had he not been involved. The terribly underwritten character that he plays spouts lines like”Bandhi hui aurat kitni khubsoorat lagti hai na?”The rough restatement of the line would be, does not a woman in impediment look beautiful? We know exactly what to do with that question and, one can safely presume, so did the actor. Irrfan’s befuddlement shows on the screen Directed by Navneet Baj Saini, Murder At Teesri Manzil 302 unfolds primarily in two touching apartments in a Bangkok structure block inhabited by Indians and where everybody speaks Hindi. In fact, the film would have us believe that everybody in the Thai capital uses our rashtra bhasha as a means of verbal communication.
Wonder why they all had to go all the way to Thailand to make a film that could have been rustled up in Mumbai itself without the script being altered one bit. Mumbai’s original trains could have fluently stood in for Bangkok’s BTS. The thoroughfares and sights of Thailand don’t indeed give a meaningful background for the story The story? Well, that’s another story. The disconnected script meanders jovially between the banal and the simulated without seeking for any kind of credible cerebral underpinning. Falsehoods, chicane, backstabbings, rapacity, violence Murder At Teesri Manzil 302 is an ungainly pile-up of the usual suspension suspenser homilies dashed out without a semblance of sense.
Maya (Deepal Shaw), the woman of a leading Bangkok industrialist Abhishek Diwan (Ranvir Shorey, who, too, is slightly suitable to disguise a endless befuddled look) goes missing. Two bobbies (Lucky Ali and Nausheen Ali Sardar, neither of whom is particularly active as actors presently) are stationed to find out where on earth the lady has faded.
The plainclothes brace vanishes from the scene once they’ve done their token root. They surface rarely to register their presence in a film in which they’re spare. The police in Murder At Teesri Manzil 302 are impelled to take a backseat as the cat-and- mouse game turns to a battle of head between the abducted and kidnapper. Neither the battle nor the head on display is indeed partial decent Turns out that Shekhar Sharma (Irrfan), a small- time go-to man for Indians in trouble in Bangkok (yes, that’s his full- time occupation), has a hand in the woman’s exposure. There’s anextra-marital affair, a secret deal and a boggled woman in then-the style and why of it add up to a insufferably laboured and fully uncompelling affair.
The remainder of Murder At Teesri Manzil is devoted to revealing how a man who claims to have a result for every problem is bogged in the meddled-up lives of a fat and wicked entrepreneur and his sly woman. The two-hour film flits back and forth between a half- ignited conspiracy and an unknowing man caught in the muddle that it sparks It’s sad to see the inconceivable Irrfan Khan trapped in a script that doesn’t retain the wherewithal to do justice to his gift. It’s left entirely to the actor to make the utmost of a lousy deal-a job that he does without breaking a sweat.
Ranvir Shorey shows sparks of brilliance only to the extent that the insipid script will allow him to, which, as you would have guessed by now, is not important to write home about. Deepal Shaw is out of her depth as she navigates her way between an inconceivable Irrfan and a solid Shorey-when she is not strident, she’s sickly soupy, neither of which can help her arouse any kind of followership empathy for a woman torn between what she wants and how snappily she wants it.
Is Murder At Teesri Manzil 302 worth its two hours? No. Towards the end of the film, Irrfan’s character says”Ummeed hai film pasand aayi hogi (I hope you liked the film).” Indeed, this is a film that’s out then only in the stopgap of cashing in on the exceptional standing that Irrfan enjoyed as a screen pantomime. Do yourself-and Irrfan’s memory-a favour. Pick any other film from actor’s varied and substantial corpus and watch it.