Four years, four very long years I have awaited the release of this delayed movie. Grahan promised to be a sensitive and sensible movie about the traumatic experience of a rape victim and the lawyer who drives her to insanity. Critically speaking, everything seemed to be working in its favour; a talented cast and director being supported by a first-time star producer who claimed he wanted to make the audience think rather than talk during his movies. Only the Lord knows what went wrong? (Heck, because of the delays, I even went in with zero expectations.)

The tale centres around Paro (Manisha Koirala), a happy-go-lucky, lower class woman who teaches dance to young girls. Sanjay Acharyaa (Prasad Parundare), the conniving son of the Chief Minister, spots Paro at a dance recital and arranges for his men to abduct her the following night, when he brutally rapes her. A month later, a bystander journalist sees Paro´s near lifeless body thrown from a moving van, and apparently convinces her to take legal stand against her rapist. Sanjay´s dad does not stop the case, but dies silently of shame during a political rally. When Sunita (Anupama Verma), Sanjay´s sister and interim leader of her dad´s political dynasty, learns of the accusations, she is convinced that it is the opposition´s ploy and elicits the aid of her lawyer fiancée Jaggu (Jackie Shroff) to serve as her brother´s defence. Jaggu goes all out and convinces the court that Paro is a prostitute, driving her to insanity and schizophrenia. When he later realizes she was telling the truth, Jaggu goes back to try and help right his sins.

You will most certainly agree that the story has considerable potential and would contribute to a most thought-provoking end-product in the right hands. We had all thought that K. Shashilal Nair, the man who brought us both Falak and Angaar, would be that person. What a faulty assumption! Nair is clearly lost as captain of this ship, accepting the most inane screenplay and dialogues for the proceedings. A director should be responsible for accepting and vetoing all components to his/her movie and Nair is clearly not up to the task this time. He allows Paro´s character to be drawn as a mix between Sridevi´s Sadma performance and Tabu´s Sazaa-E-Kaala-Paani act. If inspiration was necessary, wouldn´t Rekha´s character in Ghar be a more suitable reference? Koirala tries her best to infuse likeability in to Paro, but droopy eyes and a sullen look is not always enough. She sometimes hams and overacts, particularly in the pointless and inappropriate choreography and unfolding of the film´s songs. (Poor Karthik Raja would probably cringe viewing the buffoonery taking place during the videos to his awesome tunes.)

Anupama Verma and Prasad Parundare appear quite capable of long innings in the film industry, but again, the film fails at providing them any clear character traits to make them memorable in the audience´s mind. Sunita is far too akin to Suchitra Sen in Aandhi and Prasad´s villainy seems to be semi-inspired by Nana Patekar´s old villainy acts. The screenplay writer clearly pulled from too many external film sources.

The editing further mars the film´s appeal, by jumping from one abbreviated scene to the next. There is little character development and therefore no chance for the audience to relate to, or sympathize with the protagonists. For those unaware, let me finally add that Subhash Ghai (Jackie´s mentor) was brought on in 1998 to view the final product at that stage and make recommendations. He felt the mood was far too consistently dark for an audience and changed the original ending to something more uplifting. (Since the film is unlikely to find many fans, I doubt the eventual DVD release will contain any alternate endings.)

Some fingers will point towards Ghai´s intervention as the cause for much of Grahan´s failings, but there are far more fundamental problems with the flick. Honestly, it lacks enough conviction and cohesiveness to be taken seriously by either the intelligentsia or the masses. Whether it is the producer, director or writer´s fault is hard to say. I am just peeved I wasted so much time awaiting the release.