Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Cast/ Actors: Ajay Devgn as Krishna, Tabu as Vasudha, Jimmy Shergill as Abhijeet, Saiee Manjrekar as Young Vasudha, Shantanu Maheshwari as Young Krishna, Sayajirao Shinde as Mahesh Desai, Jay Upadhyay as Jignesh, Hardik Soni as Pakya, Shahrukh Sadri as Jamshet.
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Director: Neeraj Pandey
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Release Date: August 02, 2024
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Available On: Theatrical Release
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Movie Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Runtime: 145 Minutes
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Critic Review:
A hulk of a bully has just walked into jail like he owns it. Food that’s ladled to prisoners is piled on his plate by every nervous server until he grunts his satisfaction. He strides to his favourite corner where someone else, a prisoner wearing specs, is already eating his meal quietly. The bully throws the other guy’s plate and the food goes flying. The whole jail waits for the fireworks. “Has he removed his specs?” asks an old hand.
It’s a classic entry for prisoner Krishna (Ajay Devgn), the man of few words, who can love and protect a woman as intensely as he can land a knockout punch.
The opening credits roll along with a background song and visuals of jail sequences that tidily sketch Krishna. Quite the favourite of inmates, jailers and cops, a computer hardware wiz to boot, gentle most times but capable of venting his anger even on a piece of clothing that he’s washing, Krishna’s good behaviour has earned him an early release. He doesn’t want it.
I wish writer-director Neeraj Pandey had begun with Krishna’s entry which is his forte and not with the cloying romance of two young lovers, Krishna (Shantanu Maheshwari) and Vasudha (Saiee Manjrekar) who talk, talk more than act, act. Romance is clearly not Pandey’s genre.
“Krishna, how much do you love me?” “Krishna, what if someone separates us?” “Krishna, will you miss me?” The inane romance chats on and on in predictable and never-ending flashbacks with an MM Kreem number droning in the background.
In a laboured effort to establish just how much chawl teens Krishna and Vasudha are in love, Pandey repeats them ad nauseam and doesn’t move his story forward for over an hour. He must sledgehammer it for you to understand the high voltage of their feelings.
But it’s a love story that’s doomed when Krishna is jailed for two murders committed to protect his ladylove. Flashbacks of that too, are repeated.
Mandatory loyal friend Jignesh (Jay Upadhyay) awaits Krishna outside.
Time for more flashbacks as Krishna returns to his favourite Irani café and visits the chawl. Yes, yes, Neeraj Pandey. We’ve understood just how much the past means to Krishna.
Fortunately, once Vasudha (Tabu) arrives in her swanky, plush car and you visit her swanky, plush mansion and meet her swanky, rich husband Abhijeet (Jimmy Shergill), there’s some acceleration.
But Pandey elongates it forever with Vasudha shedding buckets of tears.
Action scenes like the one in the rain in the jail compound are well shot. But Neeraj Pandey’s romance-telling is sluggish. Except for one stray moment of humour when Jignesh puts on the old Kumar Sanu number ‘Jeeta hoon jiske liye’ in the car with Krishna, there is no relief. Even the young romance lacks pep in Pandey’s endeavour to showcase emotional depth.
MM Kreem continues to be a disappointment, unable to match the poignancy of his ‘Tu mile dil khile’ composed for Criminal in 1995.
Tabu is a relief. Ajay Devgn retains one oft-seen expression. The overdose of Shantanu and Saiee and the lack of youthful energy takes away from the youngsters. Happy to see Jimmy Shergill back in a Neeraj Pandey film playing the understanding spouse that Ajay himself had played years ago in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
At the end of it all, you could use logical law to question Krishna’s sentence for double murders. You could ask, so how did it matter whether he came out of jail two years earlier or two years later? What’s he punishing himself for?
But the main question would remain, why make a soppy last-era romance if it can’t be narrated with an emotional intensity that draws you in instead of zoning you out with its drabness?
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie – Watch Or Not?: Wait for its OTT release to use the fast-forward option generously.
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Review Score Rating: 2 out of 5 (i.e. 2/5)
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha Movie Official Trailer:
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