Talaash

One late evening, near Mumbai's red light district, a car careens off the infamous Seaface Road and hurtles into the sea. The car's lone occupant doesn't survive the plunge. And when word circulates that the casualty is a famous Bollywood film star, what starts out as a routine auto accident investigation soon catapults the morose lead detective, Inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat (Aamir Khan), into a haunting maze of deception, fatal attraction, and murder. Maybe it's significant that similar freak accidents have happened on that same road. The first two-thirds of Talaash unfolds as a taut, hard-boiled mystery. And then the third act comes along and pretty much plagiarizes a movie I can't possibly mention because it'll give the whole thing away. As someone mentions in the DVD features, Talaash, on the surface, is a suspenseful whodunit. But peel that away and we glimpse the essence of the thing. It's about loss and our cast of characters' ability (or inability) to cope with loss. Surprising absolutely no one, Aamir Khan submits another riveting performance, ratcheting his glower up to white heat intensity even as he masks a tortured vulnerability, a repressed self-loathing. Also, he has a mustache. You can't question the guy's commitment to his role. Khan didn't know how to swim before shooting this film, but he underwent three months of swimming lessons for a particularly arduous underwater sequence. As Inspector Shekhawat, he worries at the threads of his high-profile case, pursuing the elusive clues with admirable tenacity. But one wonders about him. Shekhawat still reels from the loss of his eight-year-old son, and associated pangs of guilt. His marriage is rocky. His patient, long-suffering wife Roshni (Rani Mukerji) abides, but she's taken to consulting a psychic medium. So she, too, isn't over their son's death. In this confluence of professional morass and personal desolation, Shekhawat unearths a surprising ally. For a while now Shekhawat, unable to sleep, has been haunting Mumbai's seedy underbelly, restlessly driving around. During one such excursion he meets Rosie (Kareena Kapoor), a sympathetic lady of the evening. Rosie tips him to various leads in his case and eventually becomes his confidante. I still think Jab We Met offered Kapoor her best role, but she's pretty terrific as "Rosie." What she does best here is layer in this air of mystery. A suggestive smile. A pained, knowing look. She's good.