Fox - Movie Review

Cast: Sunny Deol, Arjun Rampal, Udita Goswami, Sagarika Ghatge, Vipul Gupte

Director: Deepak Tijori

Rating: **
 
‘Fox’ has an interesting premise. It is about a lawyer who has been busy for years using law to save criminals. And then one day his conscience comes knocking and he goes backpacking to Goa for a break. But things go wrong when he gets framed for murder and the lawyer is to figure out things for himself. All stage is set for an intriguing chase and a thrilling story. However, ‘Fox’ fails.
 
It fails because of the eternal problem with suspense thrillers – the film is slow and the suspense unfolds without any thrills. It does not even surprise you one bit. ‘Fox’ is just not written well. While the pace is slow, the dialogues hardly interest you. There are too many loose ends and characters remain unexplained. Udita Goswami’s character and her romantic alliance is a bigger mystery than the actually mystery. Sagarika Ghatge hardly has anything to do and ends up playing a rather shallow character. Also, newcomer Vipul Gupte gets a raw deal. Even in terms of their performance, there’s nothing to write home about.
 
Another annoying part about ‘Fox’ is its camera work. Too many hand held shots, intended to give a shaky feel, actually give you a headache and do away with all your attention on the scene.
 
One of the better points of the film is Sunny Deol and his character of Inspector Yashwant Deshmukh. In his long career of over 80 films the actor has never really played such a character. And he comes out quite a natural with his sarcasm. Arjun Rampal too gets one whole film to himself and he does reasonably well.
 
The novelty is the story and interesting casting is the highlight of the script. However, inconsistent writing lets it down. Deepak Tijori has always been trying newer stories, be it the ‘Identity’ inspired ‘Khamoshh’, ‘Oops’ or ‘Fareb’ and now this one. But he still needs to work on getting the stories fall into place without the loopholes that seem to creep into all his movies. ‘Fox’ ends up as just an average thriller which you could avoid and yet won’t miss much.