HIT review: Rajkummar Rao’s compelling performance makes it a must-watch
It is arguably a compelling and riveting performance from Rajkummar Rao that makes ‘HIT- The First Case’ a must-watch. Beaten, bruised, blood-stained, deserted at a snow-clad mountain, he kick-starts the narrative, all in a hallucination that has an unrevealed past. From here till the final and needless platitudinal template. In all, it’s a class act from the actor.
Vikram Jaiswal (RK Rao) is a police officer and a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Suggestively, it is an inheritance of his helplessness at the death of Pushpa of whom not much is known. Cut to the present, an 18-year-old Preeti goes missing. So does Neha (Sania Malhotra) the present love interest in his life.
Vikram and his colleague Akshay have a professional rivalry in the investigative wing of the Police Department and they report to Ajith Singh (Dalit Tahir). The Christie-style whodunit predictably points at various suspects. The story also involves the wonderful chemistry shared between Vikram and his colleague Rochith (Shanu Kumar) and the neighbour Sheela (Shilpa Shukla). We come to know that the concerned parents of missing Preeti are her adopted parents. Revealing more story would be playing spoilt sport.
Director Sailesh Kolanu sure knows his craft. His control of the script is visible and pushes the credibility of the tale. Having made the film in Telugu before, he is in familiar territory. The jerks, the turns, and the twists are often within the defined parameters of the genre.
Milind Gunaji as the erring, plump police inspector Ibrahim, Sanjay Narvekar as the Forensic Investigator and Jatin Goswami as the plotting colleague Akshay delivers. Special mention must be made of Shanu Kumar whose presence is akin to what Vinod Mehra would do in the 90s. For all its pitfalls there are two definite survivors to the tale.
One is the script (Director Sailesh Kolanu) which makes up for the tame finale which in a way is a near anti-climax. Mithun and Manan Bharadwaj add soul to the music. The final and all prevailing reason to make HIT- The First Case a must-watch is Raj Kumar Rao. This is a 9/10 performance.
