Murder Mubarak - Crime/Comedy - Hindi - Netflix - 140 mins
Written and directed by India's very own Guy Ritchie , Homi Adajania ( merging dark humor into an innovative screenplay, but the sum of the parts have never fully landed ) - Murder Mubarak is just like much of his previous work , has a few good scenes, dark humor and so much potential - the end is however just about an edible khichdi.
A classy elitist club in Delhi is it's election season and we are introduced to the motley crew - Sanjay Kapur, Karisma Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia, Tisca Chopra , Vijay Varma ...and Sara Ali Khan and a bunch of cats! A murder has taken place - the club's gym instructor and "object of desire" Leo.
Naturally as you would expect - each of the characters have some axe to grind and it is then a typical "Knives Out" / "Poirot" kinda whodunnit. Enter ACP Bhawani Singh (Pankaj Tripathi) - who works his way through this mess of classism, drugs, money, deceit.
Vijay Varma is ok and has not much to do - surprisingly his scenes with Sara Ali Khan (when she is not emoting and is being a regular Delhiite) are quite fun! Its only when SAK decides to act that the voice breaks, the face contorts and the it all goes downhill (mercifully only in the last bit). Karisma Kapoor is lovely in the few scenes that she has.
Dimple Kapadia hams her way through the three scenes - garishly dressed (very similar to the Jamie Lee Curtis character in Knives Out). Tisca Chopra normally a very good actor is hopelessly out of depth in this campy / over dressed elitist mom role. Pankaj Tripathi, while being quite repetitive in his "Hmm" and "head shakes" and slow pauses , eventually settles in to a dependable portrayal towards the last 30 minutes. Brajendra Kalra is surely wondering just like the rest of us as to what is he doing in this movie!
There are too many plot holes - why is a potential suspect allowed to be part of a primary investigation, how do people figure a CCTV footage has been deleted and a few more.
Overall - it is still an OK watch - for some innovative scenes , the super looking cast (their costumes are wow!) , the mystery is also fairly well kept. Would have been so much better to give more character depth to the actors, than making them so caricaturish and eventually this movie becoming more Pink Panther than a Poirot!
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