Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba: 2024 Bollywood Romantic Thriller Film

4to40.com August 10, 2024 Movie Reviews 681 Views

Movie Name: Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba
Directed by: Jayprad Desai
Starring: Taapsee Pannu, Vikrant Massey, Sunny Kaushal
Genre: Drama, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Romance
Running Time: – Minutes
Release Date: 09 August, 2024
Rating:
Budget: ₹ – Crore
Production Companies: Colour Yellow Productions, T-Series Films

Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba: Movie Overview

This is an upcoming Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film directed by Jayprad Desai and written by Kanika Dhillon. Produced by Colour Yellow Productions and T-Series Films. A sequel to the 2021 film Haseen Dillruba, it stars Taapsee Pannu, Vikrant Massey and Sunny Kaushal. The film is scheduled to premiere on Netflix on 9 August 2024.

The film was announced in January 2023. Taapsee Pannu and Vikrant Massey reprise their roles from the previous film, with Sunny Kaushal joining the cast. The principal photography of the film started in mid-January 2023. The filming was wrapped up in December 2023. The teaser was released on 1 March 2024, followed by the trailer on 25 July 2024.

The music of the film is composed by Sachet-Parampara and Anurag Saikia. The first single titled “Haste Haste” was released on 31 July 2024.

Movie Trailer:

Movie Review:

Taapsee Pannu returns with a wilting rose

The dangers and deception that defined the 2021 dark romantic thriller feel contrived in the sequel

Three years after Vinil Mathew’s romantic thriller brought some cheer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haseen Dillruba returns to cash in on Rani Kashyap’s charm and goodwill. Promising to be a racy sequel to enliven the rainy season, it, however, turns out to be a damp squib. The makers once again try to dish out a desi dose of pulp fantasy to Netflix audiences but fail to turn a Manohar Kahani into a romantic noir.

Part of the problem is that apart from the clueless police at the end, there was little left to add to the scandalous story of the small-town beautician who takes time to make up her mind about the kind of man she wants in her life. As a result, in the sequel, directed by Jayprad Desai, the build-up feels a tad forced, and then the purple prose of writer Kanika Dhillon bleeds one to boredom as the shallow dialogue-baazi takes a long time to translate into action. Despite being set in Agra, the romance lacks soul and the crime is bereft of passion. Going back and forth to keep the suspense ticking turns out to be more of an editing gimmick than an organic exercise.

After taking the police for a ride, Rani Kashyap (Taapsee Pannu) and Rishu Saxena (Vikrant Massey) plan to escape abroad. In comes Jimmy Sheirgill as police officer Mrityunjay Prasad to scuttle their scheme. He has a personal connection with the case and is keen on unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of Neel Tripathi (Harshvardhan Rane), the third angle in the original.

Meanwhile, another besotted admirer, Abhimanyu (Sunny Kaushal), walks into Rani’s life and she finds a modus operandi to throw the police off track in the game of cat and mouse. Complicating matters, the one-handed Rishu also has a specially-abled admirer. The premise looks purposeful on paper, and the possibilities are immense, but the thriller fails to bring one anywhere close to the edge of the seat. The mood keeps simmering for a while but never really comes to a boil.

Rani’s dilemma in the original made it a fun watch. She marries a mild-mannered man but gets charmed by the husband’s rakish cousin. When the devoted husband develops muscle, Rani’s confusion sets off a chaos that is not just skin deep. Three summers later, the deception and danger become one-dimensional and the supposed gotcha moment gets our goat.

The self-awareness of introducing a fictional pulp fiction writer whose novels inspire everybody in the film as a tribute to the genre gets a bit too obvious and his pearls of wisdom on relationships lose their shine pretty soon.

The only time my heart truly pounded in anticipation is when Ek Hasina Thi, Ek Deewana Tha played in the background. That a 1980 song from Subhash Ghai’s Karz is borrowed to generate goosebumps in 2024 says something about the state of originality and creativity in Bollywood. However, the writing is not in sync with the moral ambiguity of the iconic song for the makers play safe with the actor’s image in the second edition. The dirty and sultry shades of red that are thrown in the parlour conversations don’t reflect in the storytelling. Moreover, the defining line of the film—“if love does not push you to the brink of insanity, it is not true love—is reduced to a throwaway remark in the sequel.

The sexual tension between Taapsee and Harshvardhan Rane’s characters that kept us anxious in the middle overs of the first installment is missing here because the bond between Rani and Abhimanyu lacks the covalent charge. Sunny is a fine actor but the role required a little more charisma. Saddled with a toothless character, Jimmy doesn’t gel with the proceedings and appears utterly disinterested in the case. Vikrant who brought the story to life in the first chapter has little to play with and Taapsee needs to hit the reset button to come out of the rut. Like the film, she is efficient without being exciting.