There is a specific kind of shoulder hitch Akshaye Khanna does around the forty-minute mark of Ittefaq that told me the projectionist at the local multiplex was probably running the digital file a fraction of a frame too fast, though to be fair, that might just be the way he holds his jacket when he leans against a badly painted partition wall in a Mumbai precinct that smells of damp files and stale cardamom tea. If I'm honest, the whole movie feels a bit like it was assembled by people who had spent too much time reading Agatha Christie paperbacks left in second-hand stationer shops, which is neither a compliment nor a specific complaint, just a greasy-window view of where commercial Hindi cinema tends to wander when it tries on a trench coat.

Abhay Chopra directed this thing, keeping his running time down to a lean one hundred minutes, a blessing that ought to be written into the contracts for all upcoming Bollywood movies to curb the persistent habit of bloated intervals. The original 1969 suspense drama starring Rajesh Khanna had a certain theatrical sprawl, but this update cuts away the fat until you are left with two suspects sitting in interrogation rooms telling wildly contradictory stories about a rainy night, a dead publisher, and a terrified woman running through traffic without a left shoe. Screenplay credits are spread among a few names who clearly understood that modern audiences lose patience with elaborate alibis involving train schedules, so they opted instead for a hyper-focused room-bound battle of wits where every cigarette ash dropped on the linoleum feels like a piece of falling masonry.

Sidharth Malhotra plays Vikram, a bestselling novelist whose wife has just been murdered and who spends half the film looking like a fashion model who has briefly misplaced his sunglasses rather than a man undergoing severe trauma. It's a performance that doesn't stretch past the margins of his pretty jawline, though he does manage one genuinely decent moment of frozen panic when the police flashlights sweep across his living room rug. Opposite him is Sonakshi Sinha as Maya, a homemaker accused of killing her abusive banker husband, and she plays the part with a heavy-lidded detachment that works surprisingly well against the frantic energy of the investigation. Neither actor is doing anything revolutionary, yet they hold the screen without making you check your watch every five minutes, which is higher praise than it sounds for most mid-budget Hindi films trying to pull off a complex whodunit.

Akshaye Khanna anchors the entire enterprise as Dev, the world-weary investigating officer who has bags under his eyes deep enough to store loose change and a quiet skepticism that cuts right through the theatrical tears of both suspects. He has this wonderful habit of rubbing his temples as if trying to physically scrub away the stupidity of the people he has to work with, a gesture that feels entirely earned after watching him deal with incompetent subordinates and smug intellectuals. There's a supporting actor playing a junior constable who is so obviously dubbed in a post-production studio with a slightly different microphone that every time he opens his mouth to confirm a fingerprint match, the illusion of the rainy Mumbai night outside the window shatters completely.

The cinematography by Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran leans heavily into blue-tinted shadows and wet asphalt reflections, giving the whole affair the slick finish of a high-end commercial rather than the gritty realism the script occasionally demands. Every frame looks polished until it feels artificial, like a furniture showroom display case where someone has tipped over a glass of water just to suggest a crime happened there. There isn't much of a soundtrack to speak of, thankfully avoiding the traditional song-and-dance interruptions that usually derail Hindi movies halfway through a tense interrogation, relying instead on a low-frequency hum that vibrates through the floorboards every time the narrative shifts perspective.

Underneath the procedural mechanics, the film is essentially an argument about the unreliability of memory and the way middle-class morality collapses the second money or infidelity enters the conversation. Vikram and Maya both present themselves as victims of circumstance, yet their stories are so neat and tailored that they practically invite you to poke holes in the seams, revealing the nasty little ego trips hiding beneath their polite exteriors. It reminds me a bit of The Talented Mr. Ripley in the way it asks you to root for someone who is fundamentally rotten simply because they are smarter and better-dressed than the authorities trying to lock them up.

The pacing never really sags, which is an impressive feat for a two-character puzzle box stretched across a feature-length runtime, even if the final twist relies on a logistical contrivance that falls apart the second you walk out into the parking lot and talk about it with your friend. It isn't a masterwork of suspense, and it probably won't be remembered when film historians write about the evolution of the genre, but it passes the two-hour test with enough style to keep you from falling asleep in the aisle.