Banner: Spectral India Media Management Pvt Ltd
Producers: Yesudas BC, Braj Sharwari, Pankaj Agrawal, Amarjit Singh Kohli, Manu Singal, Kapil Bansal, Hardeep Singh, Ishaan Singh, Mahesh Sagar & I.D. Chugh
Director: Yesudas. BC
Star Cast: Hiten Paintal, Hrishita Bhatt, Kanwarjit Paintal, Sanjeev Rathore, Hemant Pandey, Rana Jung Bahadur, Mukesh Bhatt,
Shiva et al
Music: Jaspal Moni, Naresh Vikal, Ashok Sharma & Haroon
Debutant director Yesudas BC has tried his hardest to make an interesting film out of an interesting subject in his debut film 30 Minutes but he is bogged down heavily with a shoddy screenplay and too many unwanted songs & dance routine which is certainly not the main requisite for a thriller oriented film like 30 Minutes.
No doubt 30 Minutes is a physiological thriller and it explains the value of time. Anyways the loosely scripted scenario revolves around the continuous torture & violent beatings of a child by his father even for small & unimportant tasks in order to enforce absolute punctuality on him. These childhood experiences of Shashank (Hiten Paintal) by his father (Kanwarjit Paintal) cause a lifelong psychiatric problems in the life of the child as he grows up to adulthood. Now he is a normal person in daily life and is efficiently working in a private firm as a copy writer. Soon enough he starts having a love affair with a girl named Shivangi(Hrishita Bhatt) working in the same office but his life gets into serious troubles on many occasions due to his childhood nightmares. Tired & desperate to get over such frequent problems, he plans a very interesting, thrilling & dangerous game called “30 minutes”.
In his debut directorial effort Yesudas BC has failed to show any directorial sparks. He has neither succeeded in extracting a decent act from his line up of actors nor does he seems to have a perfect command over his behind the scenes technical team barring his musical team comprising of Jaspal Moni, Naresh Vikal, Ashok Sharma & Haroon who have at least succeeded in keeping the proceedings lively with their decent musical score.
Performance wise Hiten Paintal has got a role of his lifetime that too as the main leading man singing songs & dancing around the trees which he executes well, but his acting skills as a psychologically unbalanced man leaves much to be desired and the same can be said about the veteran actor Kanwarjit Paintal. As this time around he is not up to the mark either. While Hrishita Bhatt, even in a double role of a twin sister, fails to impress. The rest of the actors like Sanjeev Rathore, Hemant Pandey, Rana Jung Bahadur, Mukesh Bhatt, Shiva et al just help in carrying the film forward.
Tail Piece: 30 Minutes does try to address the issue of physical violence against kids, but ends up paying a mere lip service. At the Box Office turnstiles 30 Minutes may be appreciated by the multiplex cinegoers as well as the film lovers of the film festival circuit but it is certainly not a common man’s cup of tea.
