Director: Ribhu Dasgupta

Cast: Parineeti Chopra, Aditi Rao Hydari, Kirti Kulhari

When the release of ‘The Girl On The Train’ was announced by Netflix, I found it to be a coincidence, as the book on which the film’s story is (loosely) based was also the last one I had finished reading. Now personally, the book itself (by Paula Hawkins) didn’t work a 100% for me, though it did keep me interested till the end due to a slew of factors. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about this film.

For starters, its important to know that this is an Indianized version of the story in the book. Generous creative freedom seems to have been afforded to the writers who have made quite a few telling changes to the plot from the original material. The last act especially is a complete pivot if you’ve also read the book. The characters are more or less the same. The story revolves around an amnesiac ex-lawyer Mira Kapoor (Parineeti Chopra). She’s just been through an ugly divorce. Depression has turned her to alcoholism and she’s stopped practicing law. Her only regular activity these days seems to be pointless train hopping from the suburbs of London into the city. Things take a turn though, when Mira becomes a suspect/witness in a crime involving another woman Nusrat (Aditi Rao), who first goes missing and is then found dead. Mira knows she’d been around the scene of that crime when it happened, but her amnesia doesn’t help, and she isn’t able to piece the jigsaw together. With the police now hot on her trails, she’s desperate to solve this puzzle as she also battles with her personal demons.

What saddened me the most about this film was that I actually liked the idea of adapting this story against the backdrop of the Indian diaspora in London. In fact, two of the best Hindi films of last year, London Confidential and Bejoy Nambiar’s Taish, were also set amidst the same milieu and worked brilliantly. But the difference was that those films also got the screenplay and other nuances of this setting spot on. Here, in an attempt to Indianize the story, the writers seem to have fallen into the typical Bollywood formula trap. For a film that brands itself as a suspense thriller, two elaborate Punjabi numbers are the last thing you want included in your screenplay. But my bigger problem wasn’t even this. When I mentioned earlier that there were certain reasons why the book kept me hooked, in spite of its obvious shortcomings, I was referring to how the author had managed to effectively delve into the psyche of each one of the lead characters and kept surprising us with these small personal revelations. For instance, a large portion in the book is devoted to the lead character’s (Mira’s equivalent) struggles with conceiving a child and the consequent gaslighting she endures from her husband. The film though, barely scratches the surface of this key psychological plot point, and instead takes some convenient detours. The same can be said about Aditi Rao’s character also which had a solid and chilling back story in the book that has been completely side-stepped in the movie. In effect, talented actors like Parineeti and Aditi Rao are left out in the cold and remain criminally under-utilized.

Its fair to say the film didn’t work and you think just sticking to the original material would have worked wonders for this team. At 2 hours, the film also feels bloated, surprising especially as some key plot points from the book were actually left unexplored. The Girl On The Train is a forgettable outing overall and makes you wish you were an amnesiac too so you could move on from this soon enough!

Overall rating: 1.5/5