Wazir, starring Farhan Akhtar and Amitabh Bachchan, is a consistently watchable but frankly far-fetched thriller that just isnt as smart as it ought to have been. Theres a lot to appreciate in the film, particularly the performances of its leading men, and the brisk unraveling of its plot. Too bad its weighed down by a sloppy script. In the end Wazir is moody and atmospheric, and gripping for a large part. What it needed was a tighter script with fewer holes. Im going with two-and-half out of five.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra has written an interesting story even though, it must be added, it is meant only for the class audience. On the whole, Wazir is a well-made film but meant for the class audience in the big cities mainly. It will do fair business. Recovery of cost and even generation of profits should not be a problem because the producers have recovered 60% of the investment from sale of satellite rights alone.

Neil Nitin Mukesh in the guise of the menacing Wazir makes the most of the single scene the screenplay gives him, but there is absolutely nothing special about John Abrahams special appearance.Wazir, Bejoy Nambiars third venture after Shaitaan and David, bears the directors imprimatur. But its visual and technical sheen pales in the absence of a truly gripping story.Wazir is at best a one-time watch, if only for the academic interest of viewing Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar in the same film.

I would never recommend that all films feature some KhoyaKhoyaChand-ugiri, but this one cries out for visual zip, for some seriously slick style. Thus, this thriller isn’t merely predictable, but depressingly drab.It has competent moments, but is too generic to be memorable, and that’s a shame for it could so easily have been a winner.As it stands, Wazir is the one thing a chess player can never afford to be: Obvious.

Theres enough to watch in Wazir despite its flaws. It reaffirms something weve always known: that theres nothing to beat a plot-driven film (co-written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi). That the supreme importance in a thriller is to keep it going. And that strong performances are the pivot of any film: watching Akhtar and Bachchan joust and manoeuver around each other is this films high point. Satisfactory start to the year.

On the whole, WAZIR, despite boasting of some of the great performances, reasonably fails to leave the desired impact because of its convoluted script. At the box office, the film may just about appeal to a handful of the multiplex audiences who would want to get a taste of Bollywood entertainment in absence of any new film releases since past three weeks.

Wazir is a smart movie – which could have been way smarter. Wazir is held together by Amitabh Bachchan who shows why he is the Grandmaster of this game. But the tension just isn’t hard enough.But when it over-indulges itself – its writers and editors are the same – the game slips into stalemate. It’s a pity because Wazir’s lead performances, its glassy cinematography, its haunting sound design, work well. What this game needed was more attack, less defence, less repetition, more relentlessness.

Predictability and loose sense of detailing are the biggest giveaways for this thriller. Based on an intelligent game like Chess, the writers seem to have played their weakest moves. If you were planning to watch Wazir as a thriller then no point!

Like most of Bejoy Nambiar’s movies, this one’s quite stylish too. Fortunately, Bejoy concentrates on dramatic presentations of realistic scenes. What works against the film, however, is loads of groan worthy cliches, predictable storyline and worst of all, it also suffers from the common woe of most Bollywood thrillers; lack of subtlety. There is nothing left to audience’s imagination as the director goes about painstakingly explaining every move, every turn of the story. ‘Wazir’ is a good, one time watch.

There is so much happening in Wazir on so many levels that you come away with a feeling of having lived through a lifetimes experience compressed into a tightly edited (by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi) exposition on a relationship of shared grief. Till the end, Wazir remains true to its purpose, of conveying the emotions that underline the action. Its failing, if we can call it that, is that the characters do not stay with us long enough for us to know them well.Never mind, better a film that moves away quickly rather than one that overstays its welcome. This looks like a terrific year ahead for Bollywood. Wazir is a solid start. A gripping thriller anchored by Bachchan and Akhtars compelling compatibility. Not to be missed.