HIT: The First Case
Director: Sailesh Kolanu
Year: 2022
Duration: 132 minutes
Music: NA
Rating: 4.5
This is a remake
of a Telugu film. The Telugu film is the first in a three-film series so
far. This one bombed at the box office, so sequels seem unlikely though it
ends on a semi-cliffhanger. It is a police procedural with HIT standing
for Homicide Intervention Team. This one stars Rajkummar Rao as DCP Vicky,
a supposedly brilliant detective but one with personal issues stemming from
an incident years before in which he was unable to stop the murder of a loved
one. Supposedly brilliant because he misses a couple obvious leads that Sherlock
or Columbo would have gobbled up like a midnight snack. Much of the film
is him and his assistant and friend Rohit (Akhil Iyer) running around like
chickens that lost their heads. Vicky keeps giving Rohit absurd information
requests that in the real world would take weeks, but in movie land only
take a few hours.
Vicky is pretty much a dick, humorless,
driven and annoying. We are supposed to sympathize because he has PTSD but
he keeps going into trauma at crucial moments. Like when someone is killed
because of it. This has the feel of a 90-minute TV movie stretched to 140-minutes.
He has a fight with his girlfriend Neha (Sanya Malhotra) and she goes missing.
He gets on the case and connects it to that of a missing girl Preeti (Rose
Khan). In what appears to be common practice, they beat and torture suspects
and witnesses. He will tell his subordinates, give them the third degree
and leaves the room. Soon the screams begin. If you are in India and you
hear third degree, run. When the murderer is finally revealed, it is so stupid
that you want to reclaim your time.
