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EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: **
In the era when mobile phones weren`t even dreamt of, characters in our films
connected on landlines, or not at all. Into this world of conditional
connectivity crept a collage of crimes and confusion only because punishment,
justice and retribution were not linked closely enough.
In "The Stoneman Murders", writer-director Manish Gupta takes us into
the anarchy of an era when technology was tenuous and crime meant smuggling and
racketeering rather than extortion and terrorism.
Serial killing is still an alien crime in India. The phenomenon made a rare
appearance on our streets in the mid 1980s when an unidentified wacko went
around bashing in the faces of sleeping pavement dwellers in the dead of the
night with a rock.
India`s first certifiable rock star from hell?
A gruesome subject for a film.
"The Stoneman Murders" does nothing to redeem the sense of
claustrophobic dread that shrouds the characters on either side of the law. The
moments created to establish a link between the private life and public
investigations of the cops are so stagey you wonder if they were written and
shot to deliberately deflect attention from the main business at hand, namely
the messy killings.
Let`s face it. The mind of a serial killer is beyond our comprehension. As facts
have it, "The Stoneman Murders" remain unsolved in our police files.
This is where the film`s plot gets inventive. It seeks out a neat end to the
messy murders involving intrigue and Satanism within the police force. The shock
value is applied with jolting generosity at the climax. But the suspense element
in most of the narrative is depleted by the restricted space in which the
characters manoeuvre their motivations.
The enormity of the multiple-murder crimes is quite often restricted to showing
pictures from the newspapers or glimpses of sprawled bodies on pavements. By the
time Kay Kay Menon, as gritty and honest on camera as ever, cracks the case, our
patience with this dark and gloomy chronicle of the grisly goings-on has run
thin. Even the cop-and-criminal chases in dimly-lit subways and railway stations
fail to get our adrenaline running.
The pit is reached in the scenes between the suspended cop Kay Kay and his
screen wife (Rukhsar) whose exchanges are more in the nature of a radio skit
than a film where marital discord is a vital clue to the murderous plot.
Ruskshar is even put through an entirely unnecessary bare-backed sequence. And
we can only gape in wonder as ladies in a beer bar break into an item song.
This serial killing story badly needs bailing out. Kay Kay Menon with his
strong, wry unsmiling presence brings grit to the feeble drama. Arbaaz Khan as
his adversary in the police department has nothing much to do. A couple of
supporting performances try to flesh out the shadowy scenario.
On the whole the theme of mass murder on Mumbai`s streets leaves us cold and
unaffected.
The periodicity (the 1980s) is established through common devices like songs and
films. At one point a prostitute calls out to our hero addressing him as
"Rajesh Khanna".
A bit behind the times. Maybe our movies should just not get into the
serial-killing space.
After the serial killer aptly dubbed `Stoneman` by the media has just claimed his fifth victim, the case is still of little interest to the Bombay Police force. But to suspended sub-inspector Sanjay Shelar (Kay Kay Menon), this killer poses an opportunity. Sanjay hopes to track this killer down and thus, possibly find an entry back into the police force. With the secret aid of his patronizing superior AIG Satam (Vikram Gokhale), Sanjay takes up the arduous process of tracking this killer down. But the official police investigator of the case Inspector Kedar Phadke (Arbaaz Khan) clashes incessantly with Sanjay as both of them, separately, delve deeper into the case. Even as the police jostle for leads and clues, the Stoneman stalks the streets unabated, claiming victim after victim.