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By Taran Adarsh, January 7, 2005 - 17:26 IST
Sometimes, a good idea can get ruined by inept writing. That’s exactly the case with ROG, written by Mahesh Bhatt and directed by Himanshu Brambhatt.
Frankly, after watching ROG, you fail to understand the motive behind making the film. If it’s meant to catch the fancy of the multiplex crowd/elite, sorry, there’s very little to excite them. If it’s aimed at the masses, there’s scant entertainment in the film.
In short, ROG is a tedious exercise that tests the patience of the viewer!
Uday Singh Rathod [Irrfan Khan] is an honest police inspector, rather a super-cop, quite famed for his brilliant investigative mind. Following the murder of a model, Maya Solomon [South Africa-based model Ilene Hamann], Rathod is handed over the charge of the case. Thus begins Rathod’s unusual journey.
A well-known journalist Harsh [Suhel Seth], a rich party-animal Ali [Himanshu Malik] and his companion Shyamoli [Shyamoli Varma] are short-listed as chief suspects. Rathod works day in and day out to get the mystery solved, eventually falling in love with the dead Maya.
However, Rathod gets the shock of his life when Maya resurfaces one night. If Maya is alive, who had been shot dead that night? And what was the motive behind the murder?
What could’ve been an edge-of-the-seat thriller loses focus soon after the principal characters are introduced. Making the cop fall in love with the model, who everyone thinks is murdered, was a novel idea, but all that the cop does after meeting the prime suspects is look at the model’s photograph and gulp liquor.
When Ilene suddenly shows up minutes before the intermission, you expect things to improve. But post-interval, ROG falls to an all-time low. The story never moves, in fact it gets weird where the suspects throw a party, then the cop and the model jump on the bed. And then, suddenly, the cop realizes who the actual murderer is!
That’s not all! The climax – which should’ve been the highpoint of this murder mystery – is so tame and lifeless that whatever impact a few sequences must’ve generated just evaporate as quickly. Even when the identity of the murderer is revealed, it just doesn’t come as a shock, partly because of the shoddy screenplay.
Ideally, ROG should’ve been a songless affair, but the two/three songs that come up in the post-interval portions only test the patience of the viewer. In fact, the songs should be deleted rightaway for a better impact.
Besides Mahesh Bhatt’s faulty writing, the film also suffers thanks to the lethargic pace the story moves at, sorry, inches forward. To state that the film is extremely slow-paced would be putting it mildly.
Himashu Brambhatt’s direction is as lackluster as the script. M.M. Kreem’s music may sound pleasing to the ears, but when viewed with the story, it’s an absolute no-no. Cinematography [Anshuman Mahaley] is alright. Dialogues [Niranjan Iyengar, Subodh Chopra] are philosophical.
Irrfan Khan pulls off his part with admirable ease and poise. He is just perfect. Ilene Hamann has good screen presence, but she is expressionless in most situations. Himanshu Malik is strictly okay, whereas Munish Makhija [as Rathod’s comrade-in-arm Munna] irritates. Suhel Seth is a revelation. He is the best of the lot. Shyamoli Varma is quite nice.
On the whole, ROG is neither a sleaze-fest, nor is it a scriptural gem. At the box-office, it’s a non-starter.
 
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