Fever

STORY: A man (Rajeev Khandelwal) wakes up in the hospital with sketchy memory of his past life. All he knows is that his name is Armin and he is from Paris. And then, he starts getting visions of a murdered woman. As he tries to put together pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, he meets Kavya (Gauahar Khan), who becomes his confidante. Soon, another murder happens. Is someone trying to frame Armin?

REVIEW: If you’ve watched Rajeev’s earlier film Samrat & Co., Fever will feel familiar. It is just as amateurish and convoluted. It fashions itself as a thriller but is too mind-numbing to make a mark. You’ll figure out quite early which way the film is headed, long before Armin makes the revelation.



It is hard to forgive good actors when they reduce themselves to such parts. Rajeev, who was mesmeric in Aamir, still remains a one-time wonder in Bollywood. Gauahar isn’t half bad (though the diamond stud on the mole above the lip was distracting). Bond girl Caterina Murino and Gemma Atkinson were wasted.

But in this case, Rajeev Jhaveri’s incoherent and cliché-ridden script plays the spoiler. Added to that, he packs the movie to the brim with corny dialogues. Sample this, when an actress makes an entry, a song in the background goes - ‘She is so hot, just like a tequila shot...’ (We have eyes, let us decide!) Spouses break up because they ‘colonise’ each other’s minds. When someone asks Armin, what can she get him, he replies, “My identity...” You get the drift?

Khandelwal is sincere in his desi Sherlock act (he apes Cumberbatch, making his deductions from the clues popping on screen) but has no support from the plot. You wish the writer-director had used some logic, the film wouldn’t have been this silly.

The picturesque locales (snow-capped Swiss Alps?) could provide some respite but the deafening background score and overwrought storyline should be reason enough to skip this one. The aftertaste can be best described in a line from the movie, “Life is a hit-and-run. Everything happens by accident...” We assume, so did Fever.