Noor manages to neither be a decent slice-of-life film about a young, independent, working woman nor an insightful film about the profession of journalism. Here is our Noor movie review.
Noor Cast:Sonakshi Sinha, Kanan Gill, Purab Kohli, Manish Chaudhary, Smita Tambe
Noor Direction: Sunhil Sippy
Noor Rating:
(0.5/5)
(0.5/5)
If one edited out the audio track of Noor, which consists of Sonakshi Sinha blabbering rubbish ninety per cent of the time and then play it at full volume, it would make for a terrific torture device at Abu Ghraib.
Noor is insufferable, boring, tedious, torturous, f... words will not be enough to describe how bad the film is. Based on the Pakistani novel Karachi, You're Killing Me!, Noor explores the life of the titular character, played by Sonakshi Sinha, who is a journalist. We know this because Noor tells us this fact about her life at least ten times and by the way, Noor is really bad at her job but that comes later. Director Sunhil Sippy clearly doesn't believe that cinema is about 'show, not tell' so Sonakshi Sinha is given monologue after monologue that serve to describe exactly what is happening on screen. For example, if Noor walks in front of the mirror, checks her waistline and shrugs, we get it that she is upset about her weight. She does not have to say out loud, "I am so fat, I hate my life" which she does, by the way, innumerable times in the film. Dear reader, get ready for hot takes from angry ladies about how Noor glorifies fat-shaming in the next few days. And that's not even the most offensive thing about the film.
Noor is a bad, bad film on many levels. An entire chunk of the first half is spent on establishing that Noor is like any other 27-year-old independent, working woman in a big city. Her love life, her weight issues, her struggle with finances, her EMIs; these things are not cinematically unique! So if you keep making Sonakshi Sinha say out loud every single thought that passes through her head, it does not make Noor interesting or cute. My life is a mess! So, what? Why does one need to watch an entire movie about you? Why is Noor a character worth exploring? The film does not give us answers.
Suddenly, comes an unexpected twist. Noor who has so far been a features reporter comes across a big story. She is sent out by her editor to do a 'positive' story on a doctor but turns out this doc has been nasty. Lives have been lost because of greed. Noor gets hold of a source and gets her to speak on camera. Wait, could the film get interesting now? Was that embarrassing marketing campaign for Noor that screamed #ThisIsAFilmTheYouthWillLikeOK just a clickbait and now, the real drama begins? The first half ends on a promising note. Maybe, just maybe, the film would shift to an investigative-thriller territory and we would be spared the agony of watching Noor just prancing on the big screen and hating herself.
Sonakshi Sinha plays, perhaps, the most uncharismatic character of her life in Noor. After Akira, Noor is another failed attempt to reinvent herself as a solo-heroine who can put butts in seats. The film also has Purab Kohli who at one point looks at himself in the mirror sadly and probably wonders, I could have rocked on with Farhan Akhtar but now, I am here. Kanan Gill moonwalks through his role, takes the paycheck and leaves through the back door. Manish Choudhary plays Noor's editor, a man who was once a war reporter but now has chosen the nice, desk-life after marriage and he doesn't disappoint.
The one single issue in Noor that had the potential for great drama is the bad-doctor thread and Noor's makers seem to be reluctant to touch it in the film. Every time, this plot point rears its head, the film quickly shifts to scenes of Noor hanging out or moping about with her friends. Noor, being a film about a journalist at the end of the day, unavoidably brings up a few uncomfortable truths about the profession: At what point, does a journalist lose her empathy? Do news organisations give airtime to Sunny Leone because people would rather see her than 'real issues'? Is doing a story that could incriminate powerful people important when you are putting a source's life in fatal danger?
But the film raises these points and abandons them by the wayside because the focus needs to be on Sonakshi Sinha, all dolled up and dancing to the tatti remix of Gulabi Aankhen after all. If nothing else, the existence of the remix in this world should tell you all you need to know about Noor.
Source:-India Today
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