Visfot
- Director
- Kookie Gulati
- Studio
- White Feather Films
- Release Date
- 5 September 2024
- Running Time
- 130 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
Review
"Visfot" is Rajkumar Hirani attempting gritty crime drama, and the results are painfully uneven. The premise—a taxi driver caught between a gangster's demands and familial obligation—has genuine potential for tension, but Hirani's direction undermines it at every turn. He wavers between wanting to make a hard-hitting thriller and retreating into sentimental melodrama, never committing fully to either. Naseeruddin Shah delivers a solid, understated performance as Shoaib, grounding the film with authenticity, but the supporting cast (particularly whoever's playing Manya) feels like they wandered in from a different, lesser film. The writing constantly sabotages itself—scenes that should crackle with dread are bloated with unnecessary emotional beats, and the "Acid Tai" character, despite her terrifying potential, feels more like a plot device than an actual threat.
What's most frustrating is that Hirani shows flashes of competence in staging a few tense sequences, but then immediately undercuts them with heavy-handed writing or inexplicable tonal shifts. The fire sequence should be catastrophic; instead, it's presented with such melodramatic overkill that it becomes laughable. The central MacGuffin—the jacket and its contents—loses urgency because the film keeps stopping to wallow in Shoaib's mother's memory loss subplot, which, while touching in isolation, belongs in a different, quieter film entirely. There's also the matter of the ending, which feels rushed and contradicts
Storyline
So there's this taxi driver guy, Shoaib, who's basically the backbone of his whole household. His mom's getting older and her memory's playing tricks on her—she forgets things left and right, even sad stuff. He's got this casual connection with a local tough guy named Manya, you know, the kind of acquaintance you nod to on the street. Thing is, Manya works for this absolutely terrifying woman gangster called "Acid Tai" who's earned that nickname because she literally uses acid to settle her scores, no questions asked.
One night Manya hops into Shoaib's taxi, they chat a bit, and Manya leaves his jacket behind. Shoaib doesn't think much of it and heads off to see his girlfriend Lucky, who works at this coffee house. But then boom—his phone rings and his world falls apart. There's a fire at his place. He rushes back, saves his mom, and she's devastated because she realizes she accidentally caused the whole thing. Talk about heartbreaking timing, right?
Then Manya calls him back asking for that jacket, and Shoaib's blood runs cold when he learns it had drugs worth a fortune stashed inside. He's frantically searching everywhere but it's gone, probably destroyed in the fire. Now this guy's life is spiraling because Manya's making insane threats—either he gets that jacket back or something terrible happens to his mom. And somehow, things get even messier when Shoaib picks up Lucky and discovers there's a little kid with her.