Zora movie review: Ideally? No rai (comment) on Tridev’s Rajiv!

‘Zora’
U/A: Suspense, thriller
Dir: Rajiv Rai
Cast: Ravinder Kuhar, Karan Vir
Rating: 1.5/5

Before this movie starts, you hear opening riffs of songs Gupt Gupt, Gupt, from Gupt (1997), of course; and Tip Tip Barsa Pani, from Mohra (1994). They’re part of what’s called vanity plates, or production logos, for the said film, Zora.

Which opens with an action sequence, crappily executed like CID or Crime Patrol, with a cop team that’s apparently raided a hideout with fake stamp papers. 

While the main cop’s looking and talking in one direction, others behind him, the full squad, is getting knifed, one after another, by a solitary reaper. 

This main dude can’t tell a thing. He continues talking. Until this dude’s off too. There were three rando extra-types tied up to a pillar.

The killer is a female figure, wrapped in black chador, black surgical mask, and black shades. This is Zora, while she kinda disappears from the screen after. 

That’s reason one, you mustn’t be late for this film, if you care to go. Because it’s about who’s Zora, if you really care to know.

To the point that towards the end, the picture parades multiple characters in black glasses, looking at the camera. As if the audience was a 3D film!

Reason two, don’t be late — that underlay music with production logos tell you the filmmaker for both the fab-scaled, super-fun thrillers, Gupt, and Mohra, is the same as this one. As in, Rajiv Rai, 70. 

Music is memories first. Those songs are iconic enough that my ears perked up at the music director Viju Shah’s riffs, even if for a second from the synth.

He’s scored the techno background music for this picture. The stellar director-composer combo is why I’ve rocked up to the cinema. 

Movies are nostalgia too, no? Sure, nostalgia’s an exaggeration as well. The ’90s, I notice, is the nostalgia of the times — whether or not one belongs to that vintage. 

Befits this context to recall how huge the whodunnit Gupt was. What with everyone, from graffiti in public loos, to annoying private conversations back then, revealing the big twist, “Kajol is the killer!”

Back to Zora, hence. Who’s she? As per verbal description, some balaa (dangerously attractive woman), who’ll get you madhosh (spellbound), with chaal (gait) of hiran (deer), while she perennially perfumes herself with the scent of the devil… 

Post that cop-killing spree, Zora, dressed like Zorro, zeroes in on the only policeman, who escaped. This guy is killed off too, at a haveli, with his little son watching the father die. 

Totally in the tradition of (Zanjeer type) Bollywood prologues from the ’70s/’80s — you know this boy will grow up to be the hero, for baap ka badla (avenging dad’s murder). 

The baap has been branded a chor, so this chota ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ from Deewar grows up with that ignominy. He becomes a cop, who kills anyone in sight, that reminds him of injustice or foul-play. 

He’s deemed a serial killer. In the Mumbai Police of the ’90s, he could be an encounter-specialist.

That’s the Mumbai, producer-director Rai — also credited for story, screenplay, besides editing this pic — had disappeared from the scene, in the late ’90s; reportedly, due to threats from the underworld. 

Besides genuinely mainstreaming Naseeruddin Shah with Tridev (1989) that he doubled down with Vishwatma (1992), Rai’s also introduced actor-model Arjun Rampal onscreen, with Pyaar Ishq Aur Mohabbat (2001), upon his return to Bollywood.

The debutant hero here — suffering from Lokhandwala complex, with bulky biceps and abs that deserve Insta handles of their own — seems, at best, a sasta Siddharth Malhotra. 

At worst, an AI imitation for He Man in human form as the camera tilts, threatening to expose his crotch, when he’s in shower. That’s when he’s not matching lips to dialogue, going around killing people, and wondering, who’s Zora?

Is he the worst thing about this film, besides the delusional announcement of a sequel with the release date, after the end-credits (Zora Zorawar, 1.1.26)? Hell, no! 

It’s really just the way this song-less thriller looks: so poorly shot, with even poorer production design; from a director once considered king of craft, action, thriller, and foreign location! 

Makes you realise how filmmaking is so not cycling. Times change, as does tech, and therefore, the storytelling. 

One thing that remains unaffected is possibly music. Natural talent there is plausibly eternal. 

Just hear this film, instead, with Viju Shah’s banging background score. Not enough, of course, to lift up the dead (plot). Enough to want Shah back on the console again.

That said, as you can tell, I’d have caught this anyway. It’s 125 minutes flat. Unfortunate that one has to discuss it as well.

*YUCK  **WHATEVER  ***GOOD  ****SUPER  *****AWESOME