Raat Akeli Hai movie review: Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s knives are out in Netflix’s nail-biting murder mystery

Raat Akeli Hai
Director - Honey Trehan
Cast - Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shweta Tripathi, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Nishant Dahiya, Ila Arun, Swanand Kirkire, Aditya Srivastava

The ‘chhuris’ are out in Raat Akeli Hai, a homegrown murder mystery on Netflix that doubles as an impressive directorial debut for Bollywood casting director Honey Trehan. It’s the rare mainstream Indian film that doesn’t seem to be in a rush to tell its story, and earns its daunting two-and-a-half hour runtime — deviating from the primary plot when it wants to, and fleshing out its archetypal characters with care.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as Inspector Jatil Yadav, would be glad to ditch the gangster garb for a cop’s khaki, if only to reprimand journalists who keep asking him if he’s been typecast.

Watch the Raat Akeli Hai trailer here 

When Raghuveer Singh, the rich patriarch of a landowning Uttar Pradesh family is found dead in his bedroom, Jatil is sent to investigate. Affecting the dignified manner of Hercule Poirot and Benoit Blanc, he paces about the house, observing the crime scene with clinical passivity and sizing up each member of the family. It is soon clear to Jatil (and us) that they are all hiding something; they all have reasons to kill the old man.

Having understood this, Jatil gathers the family in the courtyard and says, almost as a threat, “Aap sabko hum ek baat bata rahe hain. Yahan jo kaand hue hai na, hum karenge uski jaanch.” And once again, Nawazuddin rises above his diminutive physical stature to deliver a performance that positively demands attention.

Jatil is an interesting character, given a chip on his shoulder by Nawaz. In the tradition of fine fictional detectives, he is quite the blank canvas. His sincerity is unquestionable, even in the face of corruption and red-tape. At every turn, he is met with hurdles, sometimes in the form of his uncooperative superior, and on other occasions a local politician known as Munna Raja. Like the recent series Paatal Lok, Raat Akeli Hai also subscribes to the age-old cinematic trope that for a crime to be solved, the detective must first be suspended from duty.

Trehan does the intelligent thing and surrounds himself with impeccably talented artists on his first film. Everyone, from Nawaz and the ensemble — Shweta Tripathi and Tigmanshu Dhulia are standouts — to the cinematographer Pankaj Kumar (Talvar, Tumbbad) and writer Smita Singh (Sacred Games), appear to be working in comfortable collaboration to serve a shared vision. Perhaps because of his experience in casting, Trehan is aware that he must not fall into the same trap that has consumed earlier murder mysteries: telegraphing the identity of the killer by hiring an actor who sticks out like a South Delhi boy in a Gurugram bar.

Even Knives Out, a film with which Raat Akeli Hai shares its DNA, couldn’t avoid this. The moment Chris Evans stepped up in the second half, you knew something was up. But by casting actors of equal skill and popularity to play the members of Raghuveer Singh’s family, as a viewer, you’re constantly guessing, and mostly guessing wrong.

Unfortunately for Raat Akeli Hai, it arrives mere months after director Rian Johnson’s Oscar nominated film, which raised the bar considerably for locked room murder mysteries, and will, at least for the time being, be considered the benchmark for this sort of story. Not merely content with having crafted an intricate yarn, Johnson through his film made keen socio-political observations as well.

Raat Akeli Hai is more old-school in its approach; perfectly happy to play around with genre conventions without feeling pressured to make any grand statements about class or patriarchy in cow-belt India.

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As fun as the film is, it can’t help but come across as a wasted opportunity in this regard. Singh’s screenplay sets the stage for subversion, but concludes rather clumsily. A romantic subplot involving Jatil and the old man’s mistress feels tangential, and serves only as additional motivation for a man who doesn’t really need any. Played by Radhika Apte, Radha, the ‘rakhael’, is an enigma of a character, no doubt modelled after classic film noir femme fatales, but regrettably reduced to nothing more than a damsel in distress.

As a first film, however, Raat Akeli Hai is quite the achievement. Trehan not only has a skill for directing actors, but also displays a command over tone and visual texture. Surely this is the beginning of a bright new franchise?

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The author tweets @RohanNaahar