Geeta Basra blinks about three beats too late in almost every close-up during the first half hour of The Train, and if I'm honest, that little rhythmic hitch distracted me more than any plot hole ever could. It is a small thing, but it bugged me, this slight delay in her processing of emotional data, like a buffering video file in human form. You watch her stare at Emraan Hashmi across a smoky hotel lounge table and you feel the gears turning inside the take, the director waiting for a reaction that arrives just after the slate should have clapped. Bollywood movies have always relied on outsized emotional registration, but here the pause creates a vacuum where a glance is supposed to land. Hashmi, for his part, doesn't bother waiting around for her to catch up, sliding right into his standard repertoire of smoky-eyed grievance and rumpled collars like he's putting on an old jacket he left in the back of his wardrobe. He plays a guy whose life is quietly falling apart in a high-rise office somewhere, the kind of corporate drone who wears a tie that's slightly too loose and looks like he spends his weekends chain-smoking on balconies while thinking about his choices. The premise drops them both into one of those familiar domestic traps where an extra-marital affair starts over weak coffee and escalates into blackmail involving a shadowy syndicate operating out of low-rent motels with flickering neon signs.

Directorial duties are split or at least credited to Hasnain Hyderabadwala and('&' encoded as &)? Raksha Mistry, who shoot the whole thing with the frantic, oversaturated energy of a mid-2000s music video that somehow got stretched out to feature length. The camera moves constantly, tracking around characters in wide circles even when they are just talking about train timetables or insurance claims, which gives the impression that everyone is perpetually dizzy or standing on a boat in heavy swells. The screenplay takes pages from Hollywood thrillers like Derailed, borrowing the exact setup of an illicit hookup interrupted by a heavy-breathing psychopath who demands cash or else the spouses find out. But where Clive Owen managed a look of perpetual, sweating panic, Hashmi just looks annoyed, as if the blackmail is more of an administrative inconvenience than a threat to his marriage. The dialogue drops exposition like heavy stones into shallow water, characters flatly stating their motivations while standing directly in front of poorly painted backdrops that are supposed to be Mumbai railway stations. Rajat Bedi shows up as the heavy who knows too much, delivering his threats with the enthusiastic gusto of a stage actor playing a pirate in a school play, chewing on his lines until the consonants practically fly off the screen. Anant Mahadevan and Suresh Menon pop in for brief stretches as various authority figures or confidants, though Menon's comedy relief arrives with the subtlety of a falling anvil, landing punchlines about marriage that feel like they were scraped off the wall of a commuter train toilet.

Sayali Bhagat gets the trickier role of the loyal wife left at home while her husband is out chasing trouble, and she plays most of her scenes with a frozen, tragic-heroine smile that never quite reaches her eyes. She is stuck in a loop of domestic interiors that look perpetually damp, the art department seemingly determined to paint every wall in shades of bruised teal and mustard yellow. The lighting throughout these scenes casts long, jagged shadows across actors' faces for no discernible narrative reason, suggesting a noir atmosphere that the actual staging fails to back up. Whenever the plot threatens to stall completely, the soundtrack steps in with another heavy-handed ballad, usually featuring Mithoon's trademark piano chords that drag on for four or five notes too many. These songs arrive with the predictability of a morning alarm, halting the momentum just as someone is holding a gun or a suitcase, turning the thriller mechanics into a showcase for playback singers. Sayyed Quadri’s lyrics lean heavily on words like dard and tanhai, repeating them until they lose whatever meager resonance they had in the first script draft. Sayli's apartment has a recurring wall clock that makes a distinct mechanical thunk every second, and after the third time the sound editor isolates it during a tense phone call, you start watching the second hand instead of the actors' faces. Hindi cinema has occasionally used ambient sound to anchor emotional states, but here it feels like a blunt instrument swung repeatedly at the audience's skull.

The cinematography by Sameer Arya relies on filters that turn the daylight scenes the color of weak tea and the night scenes into murky blue sludge, making it genuinely difficult to tell whether characters are meeting in a park or an underground garage. It is a visual scheme born from a very specific era of filmmaking where digital color grading was new enough that nobody wanted to leave a single frame looking normal. Yet within this sludge, there are moments where Hashmi manages to carve out a strange kind of authenticity, particularly in the scenes where he has to lie to his wife while his pockets are literally full of extortion notes. He has this specific way of rubbing the back of his neck when he is cornered that feels unscripted, a tiny bit of physical business that grounds the absurdity of the plot in something resembling real human stress. The train journeys themselves, which presumably gave the picture its title, mostly serve as transitional filler where characters stare out windows at blurry digital backdrops while the score swells to indicate deep, soul-searching introspection. You start to notice continuity errors that pile up like discarded ticket stubs, such as Hashmi's hair parting shifting sides between cuts in the same conversation, or a cup of tea going from full to completely empty in a single reverse shot. These are minor infractions in the grand scheme of commercial Hindi films, but they accumulate, creating a sort of friction that keeps you from ever fully sinking into the narrative dream. The climax unfolds in a rail yard at night, naturally, complete with steam vents hissing on cue and headlights cutting through artificial fog to blind anyone attempting a dramatic confrontation.

By the time the final confrontation resolves itself through a thoroughly unconvincing scuffle involving a moving railway car and a dropped revolver, you are left wondering why the characters made half the choices they did. The script simply abandons logical progression about twenty minutes before the end, rushing toward a moral conclusion that feels bolted on by a committee terrified of letting an adulterer get away scot-free. It is not a complete disaster, because Hashmi possesses enough screen presence to keep your eyes from wandering entirely toward the EXIT sign, but it is deeply, aggressively ordinary. The supporting players drift in and out of frames like extras who wandered off the set of a different production entirely, unsure whether they are supposed to be in a gritty crime drama or a glossy melodrama. Geeta Basra vanishes from certain crucial sequences for so long that you almost forget she was supposed to be the catalyst for the entire mess, replaced by more shots of trains hurtling down tracks toward nowhere in particular. It occupies that vast, gray middle territory of cinema where ambition collided with budgetary limits and executive notes long before the first day of shooting ever commenced. You leave the theater or turn off the screen with your head slightly ringing from the synthesizer stings, remembering little more than the stubborn persistence of that wall clock ticking away in the background.