Review – Seven

Film: Seven

Dialogues and Direction:  Nizar Shafi

Cast: Havish, Rehman, Regina Cassandra, Nandita Swetha, Trida Choudary, Aditi Aary, Poojitha Ponnada

Story and Screenplay: Ramesh Varma

Cinematography:  Nizar Shafi

Editor: K L Praveen

Debut director Nizar Shafi’s Seven just about qualifies to be called a reasonably interesting thriller if you are ready to overlook some gaping holes in logic that appear right at the start of the film.

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The story begins with Ramya (Nandita Swetha), an IT professional, lodging a police complaint saying that her husband, Karthik (Koneru Havish) has gone missing. Even before she completes narrating the chain of events that led to the disappearance of her husband, the police officer (Rahman) investigating the case, stops her and narrates the remaining part of her story, much to her surprise. She is even more shocked when Rahman says that she isn’t the only one who has lodged a missing complaint for Karthik and that there is already another girl called Jennie who has lodged a similar complaint for the same person. What’s more, Jennie’s story is pretty much the same as that of Ramya’s.

As always, the needle of suspicion now points in the man’s direction and the cop says that he would have to change the nature of the case from being a missing case to being that of a cheating case.

Even as they have this conversation, news comes in that another woman from Hyderabad has also filed a missing compliant for Karthik, saying he is her husband.

Baffled thoroughly, the police choose to issue a missing advertisement in the leading publications to see if it will get them some clues to solve the case. Soon, one man in his fifties arrives at the station to say that he knows the man identified as Karthik but then discloses that this man had died decades ago…

The story and its screen play are something new and refreshing. In fact, Tamil film audiences would have in all likelihood not witnessed a story as this one. The manner in which the film brings out the manipulative abilities of a certain character in the film is just fantastic. It has great performances coming in from some of its artistes. For instance, Regina Cassandra, Nanditha Swetha, Trida Choudary, Aditi Aary, Poojitha Ponnada all play their parts well. Havish is not so convincing in the initial stages but is actually spot on in the second half of the film.

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The performances are not so much the problem. What happens to be the biggest problem as far as this story is concerned is its coherence. For instance, how does the cop know what has transpired in one of the girl’s lives even before she narrates it to him? Next, when two girls come up with a similar story involving the same guy, the first thing that the investigating officer will look to examine is the time period. Was the suspect  two timing the girls at the same time or did he con them one after another? Were both these women working in the same office as that of the guy or did the guy actually work in two different offices? If both women were working in the same office as that of the guy, how is it that they did not know each other? These and several other questions like these arise in our mind and are left unanswered by the film.

Nevertheless, this film is a valiant effort by the crew and comes across as an enjoyable fare if only you don’t let your mind to ask too many questions.