Karwaan Review: Irrfan Khan's film oscillates between being a fun-ride and a dark-drag

Film: Karwaan (Comedy-Drama)

Cast: Irrfan Khan, Dulquer Salmaan, Mithila Palkar

Direction: Akarsh Khurana

Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Language: Hindi (U/A)

Critic’s Rating: 3/5

Story:

It's a tale of two buddies--Avinash Rajpurohit(Dulquer) and Shaukat(Irrfan) who go from Bengaluru to Kochi, not under the happiest of circumstances. Avinash is reserved, while Shaukat is opinionated. When the two of them are forced to give a lift to a collegian, Tanya (Mithila), their disposition towards life changes. This is a journey on which they find redemption, hope, love and eventually themselves!

Review:

Screen-writer and now two-film-director, Akarsh Khurana's road-trip through South India is enjoyable, but  to a degree.  Also, the film has nothing to do with discovering the natural beauty of the places the three protagonists drive past. Cinematographer Avinash Arun captures the greenery and `cleanliness' of some parts of God's own country so deftly, it makes you want to drop everything and rush there.

But this script actually attempts an inward journey for Avinash, Shaukat and Tanya, all of who are angst-ridden. At one point, Tanya says--all three of us haven't had much luck with our fathers.  So you know the viewer is actually meant to participate in the process of transformation of these three outwardly normal and inwardly beleaguered people who comes from different age-groups, backgrounds and mindsets. 

The pace is slow. Since the attempt, like we earlier pointed out is more of an inward process rather than a superficial one, there are those awkward silences, peppered of course by some real laughs. All the funny dialogue written by Hussain Dalal is reserved for Irrfan, who with his dead-pan expression makes you grin every time he shows up. Dulquer is a natural. He comes from `blue' stock (he is the son of Malayalam film icon, Mammootty) and he definitely adds sparkle and freshness to this outing.

Mithila is good but the precociousness of her screen character, wants you to run miles away from the millennial. Tahira (Amala Akkineni) shows up in a cameo and she is refreshing.

Actually, the thing with Karwaan is, it doesn't know what it wants to be. Akarsh is confused between making a light, breezy comedy and a dark, soul-searching film; so it oscillates between a fun-ride and a dark-drag, leaving you with no real emotion. The music credited to-- Prateek Khuhad, Anurag Saikia, Slow Cheetah and Imaad Shah is pleasant to the ears but doesn't have too much recall when you leave the theatre. 

Verdict: If you're in mood to travel with Irrfan, go for it. The nice thing is, you will also discover Dulquer on the trip.