Ohh.. What a day yesterday, I had few tight sales meetings with the customers and was running between locals, auto and taxis across Mumbai. Also, it was raining heavily and I regretted not carrying an umbrella as I got drenched in rain and reached home by 9.30 pm. Back home , I badly wanted to refresh my mind from the day's events and decided to go for Shaitan, night 10.15 show and it turned out to be a perfect decision to wind myself from work and enjoy the time. Well, Shaitan opens up with Kalki Koechlin as Amy meeting Gulshan Devaiya as KC in a party. KC is a rich industrialist son and have 3 other friends – a struggling actress played by Kirti Kulhari , a sex obsessed computer geek Parsi played by Neil Bhopalam and a restaurant waiter cum drug peddler played by Shiv Pandit. Amy who had a tough childhood and has traits of mental disturbance becomes friends with these four characters and here starts the event of being naughty, being evil, being wrong but right in their own terms Their adventures and mischief's finally lands them in a trouble one fine Mumbai night when they accidentally run their Hummer over two scooter riders while flying high on speed and drugs. They try to forget it when a corrupt cop approaches them and asks them for 25 Lacs bribe to shut the case. These young kids don't want to go to their parents for certain reasons and plans the fake kidnapping of Amy. This brings in the entry of an honest but a very aggressive police officer Rajeev Khandelwal who is given the charge to solve this high profile kidnapping case and rest is what follows is a series of gripping incidents. The direction by debutant Bejoy Nambiar is really good. The way the events are created in the movie matching with real life incidents are the some of the best moments of the movie. There is one shot of gun fight battle between the cop and underworld agents in a chawl amidst the attempted rape of one of the friends and a dead body of a German tourist with "Khoya Khoya Chand" remixed version being played in the background. This scene is so well crafted and the screen play is mind boggling and is one the finest shots in the recent Hindi cinema. The song "Fareeda" which often plays in the background after the second half gives the pace to the movie and keeps you on your seats, if ever you feel too much violence and dark events. The only time the movie makes you feel boring is few sequences when Amy remembers her mother quite often. Rajeev Khandelwal as a tough cop makes his statement that he is such a fine actor and his talent is still unutilized by the industry. All the other actors have also played their role well. I can say that this is an out and out a Director's cut and kudos the debutant Bejoy Nambiar , who had assisted Maniratnam in Guru as he lives up to the expectations from an Anurag Kashyap's production. Go and watch Shaitan because it's dark and bitter but yet gripping and you will like it if you are not only an emotional drama lover and like watching different genre.
