Kasoor


Kasoor is a 2001 Indian Hindi romantic suspense thriller film produced under Mukesh Bhatt's Vishesh Entertainment Ltd. and directed by Vikram Bhatt. It features Aftab Shivdasani in his second Bollywood appearance and Lisa Ray in her Bollywood debut. Ray's voice was dubbed by Divya Dutta. The film also stars Apoorva Agnihotri, Irrfan Khan and Ashutosh Rana in supporting roles. It was released on 2 February 2001. The film is an unofficial remake of the 1985 Hollywood film Jagged Edge but the last sequence has been taken from another Hollywood movie What Lies Beneath.

Plot

The film starts with the murder of Priti, wife of Shekhar, a wealthy and well-known journalist. Inspector Lokhande investigates the case and accuses Shekhar of the murder, saying he has enough evidence to arrest and convict him. However upon getting bail from the court, Shekhar asks his lawyer to fight his case for him however his lawyer tells him that he will not be able to fight his case because he is a corporate lawyer and only fights civil cases. He suggests Shekhar to ask Simran Bhargav, who is a very skilled criminal lawyer in his firm to fight his case.
Shekhar goes to Simran's house to convince her to take his case. Simran tells Shekhar that she'll defend him only if she is convinced that he is innocent. Simran is battling inner demons over a case in which she got a man convicted for crime he had not committed. Her guilt increases when she learns that the innocent man had committed suicide in custody.
While representing Shekhar, whom she considers innocent, Simran falls in love with him – a part of Shekhar's plan to win her trust. They end up having intimate, passionate and sensual sex. Throughout the case a mysterious man sends clues to Simran which helps her prove Shekhar's innocence. It is revealed that Shekhar was having an affair with another woman and so was his wife Priti having an affair with Jimmy Parena. When Simran comes to know this she is heartbroken and decides to leave the case but Amit tells her to keep fighting the case. After the court declares Shekhar innocent, Simran spends the night with Shekhar at his house. The next morning, while opening his closet, she finds a typewriter hidden between sheets.
The typewriter proved to be the one the mysterious man used to write clue letters to Simran with earlier. Simran realizes this because the typed letters all have a flyaway 't' on them.
Simran realizes that Shekhar is the murderer and the mysterious man who wrote the letters to her. She then contacts Inspector Lokhande about the typewriter. He tells her to come to the police station with the typewriter. She continuously ignores Shekhar who asks her for dinner. Shekhar realizes that Simran knows the truth. Shekhar quickly reaches her house and tries to kill her but Simran kills him in self-defense and reconciles with Amit.

Cast

The music of Kasoor was composed by Nadeem-Shravan. The lyrics were penned by Sameer. Singer such as Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik lent their voices for the album. The soundtrack became very popular upon release. The soundtrack attained number 1 position on the all-time music sales music chart of 2001. The soundtrack received a rating of 8/10 from Planet Bollywood.

Track listing

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama praised the performance of the lead cast saying, "Kasoor scores the most in that one important department — performances. Credit for this must go primarily to the two principal performers — Aftab Shivdasani and Lisa Ray — who come up with proficient performances." Aparajita Saha of Rediff.com stated, "this is a film that attempted an intriguing premise but failed when it didn't fully explore that very premise and take it to its logical and rightful conclusion."