Raat Akeli Hai. Deconstructed.

Prasanna S Kulkarni
Aug 2, 2020
3 min read

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddique, Radhika Apte, Aditya Srivastava, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shweta Tripathi and Swanand Kirkire.

Writer/Screenplay: Smita Singh

Director: Honey Trehan

Run time: 2 Hours 29 Minutes

It’s quite an unfamiliar and sort of a hard to imagine scene; Nawazuddin Siddique riding a Bullet donning those Ray-Bans and khakis, complete with a moustache. A la Chulbul Pandey. Only in this one, Nawaz is all business, playing a police inspector, a station in-charge in what looks and feels like a town in Uttar Pradesh. This one had to be savored the moment it was available on Netflix. Because, come on, there is Nawaz and Radhika and Tigmanshu and Uttar Pradesh. Why would I not want to watch it?

Anyway, without talking about the sale optics any further, Raat Akeli Hai is quite a fresh watch. As such, it offers nothing new in terms of a story. However, the treatment and Nawaz’s hopeless charm uplift the film. A stellar cast which includes Radhika Apte, Ila Arun, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shweta Tripathi and Aditya Srivastava to name a few, help the slow screenplay light up in delightful ways. They make it worth.

A gory murder. A dead patriarch. Clueless and disengaged family members. Unknown dirty secrets and horrible realities. All of this on the night of the victim’s wedding ceremony. So many missing pieces. A simple cop up-to the task. That pretty much sums up this longish Honey Trehan directorial (superb debut) of a screenplay by Smita Singh. As much as I loved the attention to detail, the long run time is a little irritating. The editors ought to have done a far better job of cutting out a lot of celluloid flab. The mystery takes its own sweet time to unfold but the climax is worth the wait.

Up front, the interesting and mysterious characters, Nawaz’s slapstick and straight-faced cop act along with delightful longish cameos by Tigmanshu Dhulia, Swanand Kirkire and Aditya Srivastava are excellent. Nawaz does a fantastic job with his character, in and off the uniform. There is an eerie discomfort throughout the runtime which is amplified every time Nawaz’s character is cornered. Ila Arun delights as Inspector Jatil Yadav’s (Nawazuddin) doting mother. Shweta Tripathi and Radhika Apte walk through their roles effortlessly. The dialogue is equal parts effective and witty. All of this juxtaposed with the general lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh viz a viz the dirty politician-businessmen nexus makes for a gripping watch.

What is equally annoying is the jarring background score which is out of sync many times. I missed pieces of dialogue more than once because the background score was overpowering the speech. I could certainly discount that though. What I cannot discount is the presence of ill-timed songs in this genre of cinema. The songs totally ruin the screenplay and disconnect the tempo and curiosity. The longish run time does not help; and I found myself waiting for it to get done by cutting out the melodramatic flab.

The delightful climax makes it all purposeful. Worth mentioning is a scene during the climax when Nawaz’s character gets to be an absolute hero; one tight slap from the inspector and the beneficiary of the slap falls flat. So much fun. Nawaz is in his element here. He pulls off bravado as effortlessly as he does a hopeless convict rotting in jail. Hats off to him and his improvisation.

I am not entirely clear on why the movie is called what it is called. The screenplay is quite the opposite. Another sale optic? We shall pass.