Banner: T – Series, Paramhans Creations Entertainments & Adarsh Telemedia
Producers: Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Shailesh R Singh & Amit Agarwal
Director: Hansal Mehta,
Star Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Mark Justice, Soham Shah, Hiten Kumar, Kishori Shahane, Esha Tewari Pande, Manu Narayan, Aneesha Joshi, Rupindra Nagra, Usha Jerajani
Music: Sachin – Jigar
Hansal Mehta, the most well – known director has always attempted novel topics, and now he has taken one more challenge to present another novel topic passed on a true incident but this time his attempt seems have totally backfired on him and the poor audiences had to bear the brunt of his backfiring challenge.
The scripted or rather the non – sensically scripted scenario of Simran reveals that it is the story of a girl with flaws who has to resort to crime when things go horribly wrong. Praful Patel (Kangana Ranaut) is divorced and is living in Atlanta in United States of America. Fed up with the rants of her parents (Hiten Kumar & Kishori Shahane), So Praful now decides to move into her own house. She even gets pre – approval for her loan. But a chance visit to Las Vegas with her cousin Amber changes her life. After the initial victory at the casino, she loses out a lot of money, including her savings. Yet, she continues to play since she gets addicted to it. A private moneylender loans her $32,000 and she loses that as well. The moneylender is dangerous and warns her of dire consequences if Praful doesn’t repay the amount along with interest. With no other option, Praful starts robbing banks. How it messes her life further forms the rest of the film.
Hansal Mehta’s direction is disappointing and it’s nowhere close to his earlier films like Shahid, Citylight & Aligarh. Few scenes have been well executed by him though. Watch out for the scene where Praful’s father watches the news and criticizes the father of Simran, not realizing that he is insulting himself. It is quite funny. The story penned by Apurva Asrani which has been inspired from a true incident rests on a weak pivot. Apurva Asrani’s screenplay is very faulty & incoherent. There is no relatability factor of any sort with the principle protagonist and that goes against the film heavily. Apurva Asrani’s dialogues (additional dialogues by Kangana Ranaut} are fine however but nothing memorable. Simran has a decent beginning. The 1st 10 – 15 minutes are spent in character introductions and also the Las Vegas sequence and it makes for a nice watch. But as soon as Simran turns into a habitual gambler, the film falls and never goes up again. There’s no logic to her actions and it gets bewildering after a point as to what’s going on in the film. One doesn’t feel any empathy for Praful. Neither does she seem to be a smart badass, if that was the intention of the makers. Besides, there’s too much of English & Gujarati in the film that dilutes the commercial element of the film. There are too many cinematic liberties in the movie which takes the audience for granted. Even the audio isn’t clear in certain scenes and hence certain English dialogues aren’t even audible. And above all Simran comes across as a show reel for Kangana Ranaut. Sachin – Jigar’s music is absolutely forgettable. Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s cinematography is horrible. Tiya Tejpal’s production design is nothing special. Antara Lahiri’s editing is not great but with such kind of pointless script & useless direction, there is nothing much that she could have done.
Performance wise Kangana Ranaut is hopelessly irritating. She indeed does a good job in a few selected scenes but her performance is quite inconsistent and comes across as self – obsessed. Notice how her Gujarati accent vanishes in several scenes, such goof ups are not something that we expect from a powerhouse performer like her. Sohum Shah’s (Sameer) performance suffers because his character isn’t well fleshed out. He disappears completely in the middle of the film. Hiten Kumar is too loud & theatrical. He should have kept his performance restrained. Kishori Shahane is quite better. Esha Tewari Pande (Salma) is fine in her small role. The actors playing Amber, Mike, bartender, moneylender and his henchmen are fair.
Tail Piece: On the whole, Simran is a movie which can be easily skipped without any regrets. At the Box – Office turnstiles it will turn out to be an average fare. Don’t even make an attempt to watch it even if you are a hardcore Kangana Ranaut fan.
