Do Lafzon Ki Kahani: Too sobby for Hooda

Cast: Randeep Hooda, Kajal Aggarwal

Rated: 4/10

This too is a Korean remake, though totally divorced from the viability of Te3n. Based on a freestyle boxer’s traumatic turn of life events in the mean streets of Malaysia and the ultimate sacrifice he plans for his love, the film is long, slow, tedious and boring despite Randeep Hooda’s recent high as a people’s actor.

Director Deepak Tijori returns after a long hiatus but manages only to decorate the cliches in the film and play to the gallery with the emotional monosyllables of Hooda. He, however, makes up a little bit by capturing the fighting arena and underground/illegal fight-to-kill scenarios in the underbelly of that country but other than that, there’s a sobby, sloppy and misplaced love story emanating from a security guard’s room at an entry gate where a blind girl spends her nights watching a Hindi serial.

Kajal Aggarwal as the widest eyed blind girl to have visited the Bollywood screen in ages, tries to insert some chirp into the proceedings but she is so far removed from the general dreary picture that she stands out as a sore, almost unreal girl with an overdose of Baconian optimism to life. Hooda, as the silent lover, meanwhile, does what he can do best under the circumstances. So he is not over the top as most lovers are, but Tijori makes him so silent and not happening outside of the ring that his calibre threatens to desert him at times.

Whatever edginess that you can snatch out from the film is from the boxing ring where the fights look real, bloody and cruel. Hooda excels there so you wonder why he was made to spend so much time outside the arena. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 12 June, 2016