After the activists of the Republican Party of India (RPI) threatened to launch protests against 7 Khoon Maaf, the Bombay police deployed extra personnel outside Cinemax cinemas where the film was being screened. Apparently, the RPI activists are agitated over a shot where a glass of liquor is held in front of a statue of the Buddha. They want the shot to be deleted from the film as, according to them, it hurts the sentiments of the Buddhists.

Again this year, Vishal Bhardwaj’s 7 Khoon Maaf, produced by UTV, showed Priyanka Chopra marrying seven times and killing her husbands one after the other. In the view of the orthodox Indian audience, girls who marry more than once aren’t the ‘right’ kind of girls. And so, the question of the public’s sympathy going to Priyanka in the film is out of question. The entire drama rests on the premise that Priyanka is in search of marital bliss and she keeps murdering her errant husbands and looks for newer ones in that quest. But because the Indian audience could not empathise with Priyanka’s character, the film was rejected.

UTV had better be careful about the films it backs so that the projects don’t backfire on the company!

The other releases last week haven’t done very well either. Kaccha Limboo is a disaster with a total Rs. 1,53,689 from 42 cinemas. Masti Express is no fun at the box-office with Rs. 12,12,370 from 33 cinemas.

Akshay Kumar and Anushka Sharma’s Patiala House has crashed further. The film made a total of Rs. 3,28,68,093 from 297 cinemas in its second week. The Mechanic (dubbed) earned total Rs. 3,85,391 from 17 cinemas.

In its third week, Yeh Saali Zindagi made Rs. 61,05,846 from 151 cinemas. Sanctum – Jaan Ki Baazi (dubbed) totalled Rs. 1,82,966 from 14 cinemas.

The comedies, Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji and Yamla Pagla Deewana are still in the race. ‘Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji’ with Rs. 12,49,022 from 78 cinemas in its fourth week and ‘Yamla Pagla Deewana’ with Rs. 4,59,255 from 23 cinemas in its sixth week.

The Nutcracker made a total of Rs. 8,30,556 from 60 cinemas in its first week.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES IN INDIA

With one gorgeous actress and her 7 husbands, 7 Khoon Maaf disappointed with its low box-office collections. So why did Vishal Bhardwaj’s film flop? Koimoi.com Editor Komal Nahta points out that seven marriages for one woman and her killing them is a very un-Indian concept that did not go well with audiences. And since the title itself gave away a lot about the murders, the film became boring and monotonous. Watch the video to find out more about the reason behind the downfall of ‘7 Khoon Maaf’.

Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ collections over the weekend has been very low. Though collections did not look up on Saturday, it picked up slightly on Sunday. The current collections are mainly due to the hype of the Darling song and because Vishal’s fan base commands a loyal audience. The dip in the collections is mainly because reports about the film have not been good and fans have been disappointed by the film.

Read more: Bloody Poor Opening For 7 Khoon Maaf

Even with seven heroes for the lovely Priyanka, the film did not get the expected results at the box-office. Though Priyanka did star with seven other delectable men like John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Naseeruddin Shah among others, the film revolved around Priyanka and her search for true love with the death of her husbands.

Dressed For The Funeral?: Priyanka Chopra & Vishal Bhardwaj.

Everyone knows that in India, it is the male actors who command an opening, not the female stars. No One Killed Jessica may have been a happy exception but the rule is that heroes command an initial, heroines don’t. The Dar-r-r-r-ling song in ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ had already become very popular before the film’s release, which is also what led to the speculation that it would muster enough support on the first day. But what may have kept the audience away from the cinemas is the depressing nature of the film’s subject which has not been kept under wraps by the producers (UTV and Vishal Bhardwaj). After all, the prospect of watching a film in which a woman gets married seven times and kills her husbands one after another is not a very happy one!

7 Khoon Maaf: Dull Opening At Box-Office

The opening response to the Priyanka starrer has been so dull all over, whether in the big cities or in the smaller towns, that it has stunned the trade people. The worst part is that collections did not pick up much after the dull morning shows were over. This could well be a pointer to the public reports for the dark film.

Business Rating:  1.5 stars

Star cast: Priyanka Chopra, Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Annu Kapoor, Vivaan Shah, Alexsandr Dyachenko, Usha Uthup.

What’s Good: The acting; the ‘Dar-r-r-r-ling’ song; the dialogues; the background music.

What’s Bad: The weird script; the screenplay glitches; the un-Indian sentiments in the drama; the slow pace.

Verdict: 7 Khoon Maaf alright… but will the audience pardon Vishal Bhardwaj? Not likely!

Loo break: Occasionally, in the second half.

Watch or Not? If you are a Vishal Bhardwaj fan, yes!

UTV Spotboy and Vishal Bhardwaj Pictures’ 7 Khoon Maaf (A), based on Ruskin Bond’s story, Susanna’s Seven Husbands, is about Susanna Anne Marie Johannes (Priyanka Chopra) who feels betrayed after each of her seven marriages and, therefore, kills each of her seven husbands. It is about Susanna’s search for true love and marital bliss.

Susanna alias Saheb is a wealthy woman whose Christian father and Hindu mother are no more. Her caretakers and guardians are Maggie aunty (Usha Uthup), Ghalib uncle (Harish Khanna) and Goonga (Shashi Malviya) who cannot speak. She dotes on Arun (master Ayush Tandon) who is the adopted son of Goonga. Her first husband, Edwin Rodriques (Neil Nitin Mukesh), is an armyman who is over-possessive and extremely suspicious. One day, he accepts a challenge from Goonga and engages in a hunter-fight with him to decide who is supreme. In the fight, he injures one eye of Goonga with his hunter so mercilessly that he is left with just one eye. Susanna kills him because she treats Goonga as a trusted servant.

She then marries guitarist Jamshed Rathod alias Jimmy (John Abraham) but soon kills him too when she learns that he is on drugs and has kinky sex with other girls. She next marries Wasiullah Khan alias Musafir (Irrfan Khan) who is an Urdu poet. He has weird ideas about sex and brutally beats up Susanna every night. Tired, Susanna kills him too.

Her fourth husband is a Russian, Nikolai Vronsky (Alexsandr Dyachenko), whom she murders once she learns that he had married her in spite of having a wife and kids in Russia. He had professed his undying love for her and had, in fact, fooled her into believing that he was a one-woman man. The murder case becomes high-profile as it involves a foreign national, but the one who saves Susanna from going behind bars, by twisting facts, is intelligence officer Keemat Lal (Annu Kapoor) who she had met in an earlier murder case when he was a police inspector.

Keemat Lal marries Susanna and has sex with her but even this marriage doesn’t last as he becomes the fifth husband to be murdered by her. Dr. Modhusudan Tarafdar (Naseeruddin Shah) enters the scene when Susanna, frustrated and bitter, consumes sleeping pills to end her life. He saves her and even gets married to her, only to get killed by her when she realises that he himself was a murderer and had killed Ghalib.

After killing Dr. Tarafdar, Susanna burns her palatial house so that the police is led to believe that she herself had committed suicide. Her childhood friend, Arun, has now become a doctor (Vivaan Shah) and he is asked to carry out the post-mortem on the body found in the house as he is a forensic expert. He realises that Susanna is still alive and he goes in search of her and finally meets her. Incidentally, he had had a crush on her since childhood but had spurned her advances when she had tried to seduce him years back.

Anyway, Susanna gets married for the seventh time. What is the fate of her seventh husband? Does Arun give a report to nail her? What about Arun’s wife, Nandini (Konkona Sen Sharma)?

Read more: 10 Things You Did Not Know About 7 Khoon Maaf

Story and Screenplay – 7 Khoon Maaf Review

Ruskin Bond’s story may be interesting and intriguing but the takers for this kind of subject among the Hindi film-going audience won’t be too many. There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered by the story writer and the screenplay writers viz. Matthew Robbins and Vishal Bhardwaj. For example, how does Susanna keep falling in love with men with such alarming regularity when she has had bitter and chilling experiences in her married life in the past? The natural way for a lady in such a situation would be to be put off marriage forever. The writers have sought to explain Susanna’s quest for the perfect life partner by establishing her character as one who is headstrong and doesn’t accept defeat – but this doesn’t impress the layman. Besides, why does she simply not walk out of the bad marriages? Why does she take law into her own hands each time she feels cheated by the husband? Who has given her the right to take people’s lives one after the other simply because the husbands were not to her liking? What is also puzzling is why man after man is keen on marrying Susanna when her earlier husband/s has/have died under mysterious circumstances. Even if the new suitor is unaware that Susanna had killed her husbands, wouldn’t he consider her jinxed and keep away from her? At least, that’s how the majority of the Indians would think when it comes to selecting a life partner.

Frankly, the biggest flaw of the script is that it doesn’t evoke the audience’s sympathy for Susanna. She smokes, she consumes alcohol, she sleeps with so many different men (so what if they are her husbands) – and all these are taboo as far as the Indian audience is concerned. Given these characteristics of Susanna, it is not likely that too many people would sympathise with her. Since the husbands have been shown as wrong men, the viewers’ sympathy would also not go to them. So, whom is the audience supposed to side with in the film? Susanna? No chance! One or all of the seven husbands? No chance! When that happens (the viewers are unable to sympathise with even one character in the film), there’s not much left in this drama to enjoy except, perhaps, the intrigue value which also loses charm after a few murders. The film becomes monotonous after a point of time because the title and the graph of the story keep nothing in the drama as a surprise element. To make matters worse, the pace of some portions of the drama is very slow and boring. Otherwise also, it is a depressing tale of a woman who doesn’t win the viewers’ sympathy, not the majority of the viewers, at least. Vishal Bhardwaj’s dialogues are exceptionally good and have a lot of weight.

Star Performances – 7 Khoon Maaf Review

Priyanka Chopra excels as Susanna. She does the fullest justice to her role and plays her character wonderfully. Showing Priyanka ugly when her character has aged is not a wise thing to do even if it is done in the name of realism, because she is, after all, the heroine of the film. Naseeruddin Shah is very natural in a brief role. Irrfan Khan acts with effortless ease but his track is the weakest (of course, for no fault of his). John Abraham does well. Neil Nitin Mukesh springs a pleasant surprise with a sterling performance. Annu Kapoor is just too fantastic and deserves distinction marks for a memorable show of talent. Alexsandr Dyachenko leaves a mark and his dialogue delivery in Hindi is cute. Ruskin Bond is okay. Vivaan Shah has his moments. Konkona Sen Sharma is brilliant in a special appearance. Usha Uthup makes her presence felt. Harish Khanna and Shashi Malviya act ably. Master Ayush Tandon is very good.

Direction, Music and Editing – 7 Khoon Maaf Review

Vishal Bhardwaj’s direction is very fine. He has done justice to the script but it must be added that the film would be appreciated by a section of the class audience only. Music (Vishal Bhardwaj) is a mixed bag. The Dar-r-r-r-ling song is a mass-appealing hit number and its choreography is beautiful. The O mama and Dil songs also hold appeal. The Bekaraan and Awara numbers will not be liked by the masses. Gulzar’s lyrics are appropriate. Vishal Bhardwaj’s background score is exceptionally wonderful. Ranjan Palit’s camerawork is beautiful. Sham Kaushal’s action scenes are of a good standard. Editing (Sreekar Prasad) is crisp. Production values are as per the demands of the subject.

The Last Word
On the whole, 7 Khoon Maaf is for the elite audience in the big cities only. The general masses will reject it. Given its good recoveries from non-theatrical sources, it may not entail huge losses but its theatrical business will be far from exciting because of its highly class appeal. Distributors who have bought the film’s rights at fancy prices would stand to lose.

In an interview with www.koimoi.com Editor Komal Nahta, the multi-faceted director talks about 7 Khoon Maaf, his music and love.

Vishal has a unique, distinguishable dark style that stands out in most of his films (except maybe The Blue Umbrella). What also stands out is his love for literary characters. He has adapted books, stories, short stories and even plays to the big screen creating a very faithful band of followers. As such, Vishal Bhardwaj isn’t too worried about the commercial success of his films. “It is very difficult to make a commercially successful film. It is easy to make an off-beat film,” he says. “Lagaan, Sholay, Munnabhai MBBS and 3 Idiots are some of the recent films that I liked.” Among his contemporaries, Vishal is all praise for Rajkumar Hirani, “Raju is a fantastic filmmaker,” he raves, “He’s one of the best commercial filmmakers in the past 15-20 years. He just bridges the divide: his films have no problems aesthetically and they cater to the audiences quite well too.”

Read more: 10 Things You Did Not Know About 7 Khoon Maaf

With a heroine as the lead in his latest, ‘7 Khoon Maaf’, finding seven actors to play second fiddle to Priyanka Chopra must have been an uphill task. Vishal concedes that he did approach many top stars to play Priyanka’s husbands in the film, but many of them backed out. While refusing to reveal names, Vishal says, “I think it happens for the best. When I went about casting for Maqbool, Naseeruddin Shah was my first choice for the role which Pankaj Kapur finally played. But Naseer suggested Pankaj Kapur’s name for this role and himself went for the role of crooked inspector instead. Now when I look back at the film, I can’t imagine it in any other way.”

This also isn’t the first time Vishal is teaming up with writer Ruskin Bond. ‘The Blue Umbrella’ was his version of Ruskin Bond’s novella of the same name. And it was Ruskin’s Susanna’s Seven Husbands that caught his eye with its intriguing tale. “When I read the book’s title I thought, how could a woman marry seven times? After finishing it, I realized that Susanna does not just marry but also murders her seven husbands! Her character is very mischievous but you still fall in love with her; only a master like Ruskin Bond can create a character like that.” But will the dark tone of the film put people off? Vishal disagrees, “The series of murders intrigues you and you actually side with Susanna. I think it gives flamboyance to the character. And I think that’s the buzz about the film.”

We sure hope so.

Priyanka Chopra may have cunningly bumped off all her husbands in 7 Khoon Maaf, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to take it sitting down! What if these sexy seven team up in the afterlife to haunt their beloved Susanna with Hum 7 Saath Hain?

When the seven join forces, it will be one handsome haunting for sure! While John Abraham can keep singing/yelling rock songs that only Priyanka can hear, Naseeruddin Shah can drop mushrooms in her food (even her tea!) when she’s not watching.

And they can also warn her impending 8^th husband of the consequences of falling for the lovely Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes.

Give us your suggestions on how Susanna’s dead husbands can haunt her for Hum 7 Saath Hain!

Star cast – Saat Khoon Maaf Preview

Priyanka Chopra, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Naseruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, Anu Kapoor, Aleksandr Dyachenko, Vivaan Shah, Usha Uthup, Ruskin Bond.

Plot – Saat Khoon Maaf Preview

Priyanka Chopra gets married seven times, over the course of thirty five years, due to the untimely and mysterious deaths of half a dozen of her hapless husbands. The strange circumstances of their deaths make Susanna a prime suspect. Priyanka falls for the dashing Major Neil Nitin Mukesh, rockstar John Abraham, poet Irrfan Khan, Aleksandr Dyachenko, police officer Anu Kapoor, a doctor obsessed with mushrooms Naseruddin Shah and finally the youngest, Vivaan Shah. Does she ever find her one true love?

Box-Office Expectations – Saat Khoon Maaf Preview

7 Khoon Maaf looks like a dark film. Director Vishal Bharadwaj has his loyal fans who would queue up to watch the film and hence the film will take a reasonable box-office opening in good multiplexes. The popularity of the ‘Darling’ song will contribute to at least 50 per cent of the initial footfalls in the theatres. However, ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’ has a woman oriented subject and such films do not necessarily find favour with the masses.

]]> http://www.koimoi.com/bollywood-news/7-khoon-maaf-saat-khoon-maaf-preview/feed/ 2 http://www.koimoi.com/photos/celebrity-pics/shahrukh-khan-priyanka-chopras-zor-ka-jhatka/ http://www.koimoi.com/photos/celebrity-pics/shahrukh-khan-priyanka-chopras-zor-ka-jhatka/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:36:45 +0000 Koimoi.com Team http://www.koimoi.com/?p=40002 ]]> http://www.koimoi.com/photos/celebrity-pics/shahrukh-khan-priyanka-chopras-zor-ka-jhatka/feed/ 1 http://www.koimoi.com/videos/7-khoon-maaf-promo-1/ http://www.koimoi.com/videos/7-khoon-maaf-promo-1/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:03:06 +0000 Koimoi.com Team http://www.koimoi.com/?p=38045