Synopsis
Living dangerously. That is what George
Vincent (Tota Roy Choudhury) practices as a way
of life. He is a contract killer. Over five years,
the police have failed to identify him either
by name or by face or to link him to the cold-blooded,
well-planned killings he does to earn a living.
Rishin (Jishu Sengupta), a very successful chartered
accountant, who has inherited his father’s
business, wants to live dangerously because he
believes that life has placed everything for him
on a golden platter. Sans struggle to achieve
anything, he finds no purpose to keep on living
and gets into depression. The alternative to a
dangerous life is to commit suicide. He attempts
this only to be stopped by his loving wife Mayuri
(Swastika Mukherjee), who works for a television
news channel. Striving to find some excitement
in his life, Rishin chances upon George’s
cell contact through his wife, who was George’s
girlfriend in college. He contacts George secretly
with a strange offer for a contract killing. The
target is Rishin himself. The condition is that
George should be able to kill Rishin within the
next 90 hours. He pays him in full in
advance. As soon at the countdown begins, it becomes
a battle of wits between George trying to pounce
on his target and Rishin trying to escape from
certain death. The hotter the chase gets, the
more exciting Rishin’s life becomes. He
gets out of his depression and begins to enjoy
the thrill of the chase. The end of this psycho-thriller
is predictable but has a slight twist to the tale.
Just as he is about to shoot Rishin down five
minutes before zero hour, George is killed by
his live-in partner Payal (Manjushree) and shoots
her back. But is George really dead? Or does he
go on adding thrills to Rishin’s life, keeping
up the suspense and the excitement of living?
Saugata Ray Barman has been an extremely successful
still photographer since he was 19 beginning with
the dreaded dacoits of Chambal. He then made many
documentaries to shift to advertising. 90
Hours is his directorial debut into the world
of feature films. He is now 48. Asked what made
him step into the dicey world of direction, he
says, “I believe in the power of the
mass medium. Creative photography is no doubt
a strong visual medium. But we must accept the
limitation also. Though we have great photographers
like Raghu Rai, Raghubir Singh, Benu Sen and others
but till today photography is not accepted as
mass medium. I don't know why. Cinema on the other
hand has tremendous mass appeal.”
 For
a psychological thriller, 90 Hours drags
too much till the interval, as the screenplay
tries to establish the credentials of Rishin and
George, supplementing it with mere lip service
to the two women, Mayuri and Payal, who have not
been given a sense of history the two men have.
The film needed a tighter pace, without wasting
footage on the needless item number by Yana Gupta
that adds neither gloss, nor any USP to an otherwise
chilling script. Repeated visits to a psychiatrist
who looks and acts like anything but one, slows
the pace and takes away the suspense and the thrill
even more. After the interval, once the deal is
struck between the two men, the narrative gathers
momentum and rushes at a thrilling pace to a long-drawn-out,
melodramatic climax, only to resurrect itself
in the final shot as, six months later, Rishin
picks up the phone to answer a call. Silence
of the Lambs (1991), anyone? Last year, young
filmmaker Birsa Dasgupta made a telefilm called
K. The storyline was similar with an alcoholic
girl, separated from her husband and with a boy
to look after, hires K, a contract killer, to
bump her off. It was a dark, brooding film that
explored the mindset of the killer than on his
target.
The strength of the screenplay of 90 Hours
lies in the director’s concentrating more
on the characters than on the narrative. The narrative
evolves out of the characters. Tota Roy Choudhury
as Vincent George, the schizophrenic contract
killer who Mayuri left when she detected the traits
of extreme violence in him, is a stylish, slick
and sophisticated villain, Tota does complete
justice to the character, thus establishing the
polarity of his talent, with Chokher Bali’s
Behari on one end and 90 Hours’
Vincent George on the other. The touch of his
playing the violin is cliché but necessary
for his schizophrenic traits. Jishu as Rishin
offers him able support. He brings out the dark
and bright shades of the character in the two
parts of the film very well. The counterpoint
in the two characters comes off well. But Jishu’s
characterization is comparatively weaker even
if footage-wise, he gets the better deal. But
in terms of intensity and shades, 90 hours
is Tota’s film all the way. Swastika, Majushree
and Santu Mukhopadhyay are okay in their sketchy
roles. Swastika’s histrionic potential is
yet to be tapped.
Samiran Dutta’s cinematography is in keeping
with the ambience and pace of a thriller, capturing
the dark shades of George’s apartment very
well. The same goes for the ambience of the neighbourhood
in which George lives. There are too many close-ups
that dilute the perspective of the scenario. Deb
Choudhury’s musical score is good for the
soundtrack but the songs, sung extremely well,
do not really belong to this film except the one
that takes off into a poem from time to time.
That touch of using the folk form of the khemta
(the Bengali parallel for the nautanki in
UP and Bihar and the lavni in Maharashtra)
for Yana Gupta’s song in the item number
is brilliant even if the song had no place in
the film.
90 Hours offers a different brand of
entertainment. Kudos to Ray Barman for having
taken the risk of banking on actors who are yet
to attain stardom in Tollygunge. They have fulfilled
the faith he placed on them. At the end of the
road, the film has more ‘psychology’
than ‘thrills’ because of the slow
place. And one would like to remind Ray Barman
that contract killers who are self-confessed ‘loners’
would never have a live-in girlfriend or frequent
discotheques and nightclubs. Not even for you-know-what….
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance journalist
who specialises in cinema and gender. She has
won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema
twice.
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