Radhika is an investigative journalist working on a story about the traffic offenders at a particular flyover who move the divider blocks to take a U-turn. One night, the police interrogate her in a murder mystery. When she informs them about her extensive research, the police inquire about her findings. And in a shocking revelation, the police find out that all those offenders that she tracked were also murdered.
U-Turn is the remake of a Kannada film with the same title but this supernatural thriller heavily relies on two pluses. One is the story and the other is Alaya F‘s performance. U-Turn has an interesting story because the idea covers many interesting elements like a particular traffic violation, its offender and the victims, journalism, police, crime investigation, superstition, suspense, and super-naturalism.
This is my second experience of Alaya’s acting and I must say that she is really impressive in applying behavioral attitude and body language of the character that you can observe when the police interrogates her, her immediate reaction when the body falls on the police’s vehicle, when she almost had a pedestrian accident, or her series of getting scared of unnatural appearances.
Besides these two pluses, U-Turn struggles to compel me for any impression. And that’s the problem with the low-budget films. Good stories fail to sell if the direction has no impact. And the final act of the film is a let-down. The film in its entirety loses towards the motive.
U-Turn guarantees fresh idea about the story but that is because it is remade and is not an original content. The film could have been much better than presented.
RATING 5/10
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND WATCH MY FILM REVIEW HERE
Detective sergeant Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is a well-known heroic figure in her neighborhood of Easttown, a small town in Chester County of Pennsylvania. But she has faced a trembling year in quest of a missing girl that has raised many eyebrows over her detective skills. Also, she suffers the worst possible personal crisis due to a divorce, a custody battle, and a son lost in suicide. And during all this, the cops find a body in the forest park one morning. She is Erin (Cailee Spaeny), a teenage mother, who was fighting a custody battle for her kid with her ex-boyfriend.
Looking at this magnificent miniseries and the continuity of the plot, I am surprised that Mare Of Easttown is neither adapted from a novel nor is based on a true incident. In fact, I am impressed by the quality of production that they came up with such a presentation that makes the audience believe that this may all be true. But to some extent, Mare of Easttown is somehow the story of everyday people which is why it makes you believe in the bullet detailing of the screenplay. It gives you a real feeling the way the whole show is dramatized like a cop who is sensitive to blood, an old man confessing an affair at his wife’s funeral, a priest alleged for raping a minor, a mentally disabled girl bullied in the school, the old couple who tries to figure how to set up a security camera, and many more.
ERIN McMENAMIN
The character of Erin in the first episode is the most fitting epitome of bad social treatment. I have watched so many television characters develop well but have taken time to grow with more than one episode. But Erin whose character lived for just one episode has to be the fastest growth-developing character in recent years. It was phenomenal writing about a character that screamed louder the more she gets unsettled. Facing the hardship of becoming a mother as a teenager, she suffered rigidity from her father and her ex-boyfriend who should have emotionally backed her instead of being unsupportive. How heartbreaking it was to see Erin get beaten in the park and the ex-boyfriend doing nothing but watching and enjoy it.
All the major characters in Easttown are affected by Erin’s murder. They are socially distressed and contribute to the plot which is another impressive point of the drama.
MARE SHEEHAN
There have been many detective stories with the central character in the uniform always portrayed to suffer due to his/her line of work and in person. So there is nothing new about Mare but the reason why Mare’s typical character is picked and praised highly over others in recent times is because of touching the deepest aspects of her life very rightly, addressing her miseries peculiarly, giving enough screen length to suffocate between her roles as a mother of a dead son, ex-wife in a troubled marriage, irresolute to her line of work, and doubtful heroism that has faded since no trace of a missing child in an unsolved crime case. Mare is hanging loosely on the walls of many parallels with no success and optimism.
And the most impressive factor of all – Kate Winslet. How much do you have to influence a character to your body that the audience traces no sign of the actor’s stunning performance but feels the pain of Mare Sheehan? I am lost at how Meryl Streep a performance can be. This has to be Kate’s best performance since ‘The Reader‘. There was everything about the role, her body language, the Delco accent of the Phillys, the facial translation of emotional distress, rage, frustration, and God knows what else. The only scene in the entire series she laughed was so natural and visibly showed to the audience that her guffaw came out after all the bad things happening to that lady and was so necessary.
Unnecessary Developments
Yes, there are elements that looked pretty forced and time-consuming. Mare’s daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice) had unnecessary sequences for her relationship with the radio jockey that had nothing to do with either plot or sub-plot. It clearly looked like this segment was dramatized to keep the LGBTQ+ community happy.
The second is Mare’s love interest Richard Ryan, a writer and professor played by Guy Pearce. This character had absolutely no importance to the story and wasted quite heavy minutes in the development. In the beginning, I assumed that Richard’s character will be later linked to Erin’s murder somehow but he had no connection at all and was generally there for Mare. Giving so many minutes to his presence made no sense. The only theory that makes Richard in the story applicable is that his existence gave Mare’s unhappy life an opportunity to find positivity. She badly needed counseling so he was there. The same error in Detective Colin’s character, played by Evan Peters, who was brought to assist Mare in the criminal case. First, he was awkward and I have never understood why the assistant or vice to a detective or a cop has to be a little dumb or less confident. And then, out of nowhere, Colin falls in love with Mare. Why would you do that?
But yes, the makers of the show deserve special praise for funny sequences that occurred in such a dark drama out of nowhere. Not a single time did the comedy look forced and fitted so well. Mare’s mother Helen was a source of bringing excitement many times.
CLOSING REMARKS
Mare Of Easttown is another masterpiece that propels me to advise the television audience to prefer HBO over any network if they are willing to try a miniseries. HBO looks like a dominant force for limited writing and has impressed with many quality contents in recent years like Watchmen, Chernobyl, The Night Of, and a few more. The winner of 4 Emmies, the show deserves every credit for being one of the best suspense and detective thrillers in recent years.
RATING: 8.6/10
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND WATCH MY TV REVIEW HERE
Aranyak is the new Netflix show about the two cops, Angad (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) and Kasturi (Raveena Tandon), who are handed over an extremely difficult murder case that involves numerous people around the hill station. The murder mystery becomes personal when they realize that the case ties with their dark past or compromises the family security. The superstitious theory about the return of some serial killing Leopard-man becomes certain when the diggings indicate that this all leads to a hunter in the jungle.
Not sure if Aranyak is based on the famous Bengali novel by the same title written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. But the credit should be given to the writing and the screenplay of the show. I think the mystery is very complicated and has the driving factor that makes you binge-watch all eight episodes. I think the season finale doesn’t do justice as compared to how all the previous seven episodes were maintaining the storytelling. The last episode ran in haste and the conclusion of the season looked pretty weak to me.
I think this show marks the return of Bollywood‘s mast-mast girl, Raveena Tandon. Maybe I am wrong but I noticed her years ago in Anurag Kashyap‘s Bombay Velvet song. Anyway, I don’t remember Raveena in any memorable role in the past. And even here, she was just average. Her facial reactions were flat and there were many scenes where her performance needed a push but she couldn’t. Veteran Parambrata had another impressive number of acting credits. Ashutosh Rana also gave a decent show.
If I am not wrong, there will be another season. This should have been a mini-series. But for now, Aranyak is a very interesting mystery thriller to get entertained.
Sami Naik | Film Critic 