Chehre

Story 

The plot of Chehre revolves around a twisted theme of serving justice to the criminals who got away with their horrendous crimes.  

Sameer Mehra, a successful CEO of an AD agency, was on his way to a resort in Delhi while driving through an intense blizzard. It is when a tree falls on his narrow way, a passer invites him to take shelter in his friend's house. Sameer agrees and when he visits the place, he comes across an eccentric group of retired law workers. One is a retired judge, the other two being a defence lawyer and an executioner. While Sameer gets entertained by the supposed housemates, Lateef Zaidi, retired prosecutor, enters the house and everyone cheers him upon his entrance. Sameer and Zaidi have an interesting rapport as they share conflicting views on ethics. Sameer brags about being a responsible citizen whose books are clean. Lateef Zaidi then pressures him into playing a fun game with his friends where they hold a mock trial. By making Sameer the 'fake' accused, the mock court trial goes on, and Lateef Zaidi throws malicious accusations at Sameer. Somehow, all the wicked deeds of Sameer and his accomplices of murder spill out and he falls into huge trouble. Is it really a mock trial? How will Sameer get away from this quicksand of a mock trial? Watch the film to know the answers.  

Review

It would be unfair to say that I do not have any conflicting views about Chehre. Let's start with the movie plotline. The plot of Chehre is truly a unique one as is a vessel of a perfect suspense thriller. If executed the right way this film would have the potential to become a rare masterpiece. But sadly, this wasn't the case here. The cast selection of this film is immaculate, and the filmmakers made sure to choose the finest actors for this film like Amitabh Bachchan and Emraan Hashmi. Despite this shining line of the cast the entire potential of the actors wasn't extracted in this film. The performance of all the actors, especially Emraan Hashmi felt ridiculously amateur. Amitabh Bachchan was the only one who did a fair execution of his role. Emraan Hashmi is a splendid actor but he could've done a hundred times better than what we saw in this film. Annu Kapoor's role was supposed to be a sharp defence lawyer but there were hardly any scenes where he was in action against Amitabh Bachchan. It felt conflicting because he didn't even do the bare minimum and do justice to his role that carried a lot of weight in this film.  

Coming to the technical aspects, the cinematography was done exceptionally. The scenes relating to the past story of Sameer felt mixed up and misleading to the plot. The part where a song was inserted to show the tricky love story between Emraan Hashmi and Krystal D'Souza felt like a filler and was unnecessary. Editing could've been done in a much better way.  

To conclude this review, considering the amazing plot and immaculate cast selection I had high expectations with the execution of the film but it all ended up disappointing me in the worst way. None of the actors' full potential was taken out. One of the selectively good things about this film is the frequent exchange of poetic phrases among the lead actors.  

Verdict

Chehre is worth watching for its unique plot but one can skip it if they don't want to be ridden with disappointment because of the poor execution of the film.