Mili Review - Janhvi Kapoor Is On Fire In This Cold Survival Thriller

It's raining remakes this year in Bollywood, and Janhvi Kapoor's Mili is another drop in the bucket. Mathukutty Xavier's Malayalam survival thriller, Helen, had Anna Ben in a never touched before topic in Indian cinema. The film has now gotten a Hindi adaptation for those who are yet to see the original film (with subtitles or dubbed voice), with no changes made at all. Thank God for that. Xavier's thriller wasn't the first one in the survival genre, but it was definitely one of its kind for Indian cinema, soon after Vikramaditya Motwane's pathbreaking attempt, Trapped (2016). Before that, many good attempts had been made by the foreign cinema industries, like Cast Away (2000), Castaway on The Moon (2002), Into The Wild (2007), Life of Pi (2012), The Martian (2015), and our Hindi sensation Pihu (2016). Xavier's film wasn't close to any of these films because it didn't have that emotional connect and, hence, ended up as a cold thriller (and I'm not talking about the place). Mili comes out as a complete copy and paste, but the technical departments looked much better here. Maybe because I saw that film on OTT and this one in Cinema hall.Mili is about a 24-year-old girl named Mili (Janhvi Kapoor), who is living a regular life. She works at a cafe but has plans to fly out of the country. Her father, Mr. Naudiyal (Manoj Pahwa), is not happy with her decision, and even her boyfriend, Sameer (Sunny Kaushal), doesn't think otherwise. They constantly fight over this thing and job, but never break the strings. While things are getting worse between Mili, her father, and Sameer, one night she accidentally gets locked in a freezer room at her workplace. The search begins outside, and at the same time, Mili is fighting to stay alive inside the room at -17°C temperature. Sounds crazy, no? Well, Mili is that much of a crazy thriller.Written by Alfred Kurian Joseph, Noble Babu Thomas and Mathukutty Xavier, Mili is a realistic thriller, but it tries to be too filmy. You'll see a lot of dramatic sequences that hamper its realistic values. A small dose of commercial cinema is clearly visible, but that's okay because it widens the audience of thrillers to the masses. Mili has its own good moments, plenty of them. However, the actual potential was far greater. There are two layers to this thriller: one inside the room where Mili is trying everything to come out, and the second outside, where her father, boyfriend, and others are tirelessly searching for her. You see, the atmospheres of these two layers are contradictory to each other. Inside, what happens is that Mili is alone, and the sound effects make it a very frightening experience. But the film constantly shifts from that tight, cold room to normal things happening outside. It breaks your engagement. Helen suffered the illness, and now even Mili has been infected by the same virus.Coming to one of the most pleasant parts of the film: the performances. Janhvi Kapoor has done Dhadak, Ghost Stories, Gunjan Saxena, Roohi and Good Luck Jerry so far, and I won't remember that. But I will remember Mili. This is, by far, her best performance to date. Anna Ben did a great job in Helen, and because it is a performance-oriented film, we needed the lead actress to perform like that. Fortunately, Janhvi Kapoor did it. But don't know why Janhvi sounded like female version of Himesh Reshammiya. Manoj Pahwa hardly fails to deliver, and Mili isn't amongst those rare ones for sure. Sunny Kaushal is a fantastic talent to look out for in the future, as he gives a solid performance here despite having a low scope for it. The supporting cast of Hasleen Kaur, Rajesh Jais, Sanjay Suri, Anurag Arora, and Vikram Kochhar performed well enough to pass the scene without any faults.Mili has powerful support from the technical team. The background score and cinematography are both superb. Also, the make-up work on Janhvi looks effective. A. R. Rahman does it again. His Hoga hardly appears for 2-3 minutes in the entire film but still leaves an impact on you. The other two songs aren't that good, but they're decent stuff. After so many good things like this, all Mili lacks is soul. I called it a "cold" film for the same reason: the characters don't have an emotional touch. Even if Mili is locked up and is unable to stand tall, you don't feel anything about her. All you do is get frightened sometimes or feel the tension. What about feeling sentimental about the lead character, or, for that matter, all the supporting characters?Mathukutty Xavier makes so many basic mistakes in the direction, while Ritesh Shah's screenplay makes up for it. I don't know why, but it seems that it has become propaganda to show a bad cop in the film. And at the same time, somebody else from the team would do his work honestly, or some criminal would have more humanity than the cop. Mili has these lame conflicts. Why would Sameer rush away in a hurry on a bike when he could have easily gone up in the room to use a mobile? Why did Mili's father start crying in the freezer room instead of taking her out ASAP? Mr. Xavier couldn't handle these basic details, taking Mili even more than what it deserved. Overall, a good attempt to present a new kind of survival thriller dropped to an average level, saved by Janhvi's dedicated act.