The latest Hindi movie offering – The Girl on the Train streaming on Netflix with Parineeti Chopra playing the protagonist. The movie is set in London or somewhere in UK. The movie is of the now rare thriller genre in Hindi cinema.
Girl on the Train revolves around three beautiful women namely Parineeti Chopra, Aditi Rao Hydari and Kirti Kulhari. Each essaying a different facet of women’s personality. The movie is based on Paula Hawkins’ book of the same name The Girl on the train. A Hollywood movie based on the same novel and the same name was also made in 2016 starring Emily Blunt but was a bit different in style and execution.
This Bollywood film – The Girl on the Train has been Indianized brutally to add more twists and turns and an unnecessary emotional angle for all the mayhem. You can count on Indian over thinkers to spoil a broth by adding too much masala.
Mounted lavishly (great production value) with a decent enough starcast. All three female characters evoke different feelings, Parineeti for example appears to be trying too hard, infact so hard that in some drunken binges she looks more possessed than drunk. Aditi Rao Hydari looks the part with an aura of vulnerability around her and every bit a victim. Kirti Kulhari has a soothing presence, her voice has a different grainy texture that draws you and specially after her performance in the OTT series Criminal Justice her presence is endearing though she looked plump in that awkward jeans and shirt and that blue patka that she has worn throughout, it is such a give away.
There is not much to talk about the other characters in the movie. There are some parts of the story where you are left as clueless as the heroine trying to grapple with reality. The climax is changed in the Hindi version. At an expense of sounding too harsh, this could have been one of the better movies of the recent darb fare on the OTT platform and could have been made much more thrilling but as I said too much masala can be bad for digestion.
The Girl on the Train has its moments but few and far in-between its duration of 120 minutes. I was just thinking why the makers choose to keep the same name, just imagine how it would sound ‘Woh Trainwali Ladki’, if you guys have any better suggestions please let me know.
– Review by PAWAN GUPTA
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Cast of The Girl on the Train:
Parineeti Chopra as Mira Kapoor
Aditi Rao Hydari as Dr Nusrat John
Kirti Kulhari as Inspector Dalbir Kaur Bagga
Avinash Tiwary as Mira’s ex-husband
Tota Roy Chowdhury as the psychiatrist
Suresh Sippy
Nisha Aaliya
Credits of The Girl on the Train:
Based on The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Production companies: Reliance Entertainment, Amblin Entertainment
Directed by Ribhu Dasgupta
Produced by Vivek B Agrawal, Shibashish Sarkar
Adapted Screenplay writers: Ribhu Dasgupta, Viddesh Malandkar
Dialogues: Gaurav Shukla, Abhijeet Khuman
Music by Gilad Benamram, Chandan Saxena
Cinematography – Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni
Edited by Sangeeth Varghese
Distributed by Netflix