Sunrise (2014) Reviews

• Dark Shadows

  sol-2017-01-09

  Distraught over his daughter's recent abduction, a Mumbai detective struggles to not let his emotions get the better of him while investigating a string of similar kidnappings in this Indian drama. The film has several intense moments as lead actor Adil Hussain chases literal shadows down dark alleyways at night and as first person point-of-view shots render a seedy nightclub that he comes across all the more unsettling. The film is also assembled in a curious fashion with flashbacks often blended in with the action and various scenes played out two or three times, creating a blurred sense of reality that acutely reflects the protagonist's fractured state of mind. In fact, as the film progresses, it becomes more and more doubtful that what we are seeing play out is actually what is happening. An interesting counterpoint comes with Hussain's wife, who is clearly delusional, talking to herself and carrying on as if her daughter had never vanished, and yet what is to say that Hussain is not delusional too? Certainly the final twenty or so minutes of the film seem more like fantasy wish fulfillment than reality and even the nightclub with all its neon signs feels like more an embodiment of everything that Hussain dreads as opposed to an actual place in the middle of the city's slums. There are no clear answers here and the film's attempts to show the kidnapped girls being groomed often come as a distraction to Hussain's plight. Frustrating as this may occasionally make the film, one does have to wonder if it would not be equally as a frustrating to lose a child forever. Food for thought.

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• Sunrise Takes Us Into Darkness

  krocheav2017-02-11

  The opening few minutes of Sunrise are at first compelling and overdone all at once. When scenes remain on screen for too long and are repeated often - it begs the question..."does this film maker have a grasp on the importance of his story or simply aiming for extended stylish pop-art"? For an artistic director turned feature director 'Sunrise' is Mumbai born Partho Sen-Gupta's second full length movie as writer/director. The story is an important one, given that thousands of children go missing each year with most ending up in the repulsive child sex trade. So perhaps Sen-Gupta's movie could have been worthy of better shape and some conventional styling to add a little more accessibility to its nightmarish eye-of-the-beholder dreamscape. As it stands, it's unsure where the protagonists's guilt-ridden psychic dreams and reality merge - making it difficult work for general audiences looking to lock-into something tangible. Jean-Marc Ferriere's Cinematography is dazzling, considering the locations and he makes remarkable use of lighting and a water drenched setting. Most of the youthful cast also do well given their difficult subject matter - though perhaps more could have been done to better develop a couple of these situations. Good but maybe could have been better with less art and more class.

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• Stylish and disturbing

  XhcnoirX2017-06-06

  Police detective Adil Hussain is haunted by his daughter's disappearance several years ago. Every night after work hours he drives across Mumbai looking for her, before returning home to his wife, Tannishtha Chatterjee, who's gone into a sort of catatonic denial. One night, in one of the sleaziest areas of Mumbai, he thinks he sees a child abduction, and tries to catch the guy. But his fruitless chase brings him to a nightclub, where young teenage girls are dancing for randy men. Hussain thinks his daughter might be in the nightclub and soon grim reality and feverish nightmares collide and lines start to blur. This is a dark and disturbing Indian neo-noir that is anything but a typical Bollywood movie. Written and directed by Partho Sen-Gupta and beautifully shot by DoP Jean-Marc Ferriere, this movie deals with the real-life problem of child abduction in India (the movie ends with the chilling statistic that 100,000 children disappear annually in India). Taking place mostly at night, during the monsoon season when it rains heavily and almost constantly, the movie makes effective use of minimal lighting, narrow streets and stark shadows to create a menacing, doom-laden and claustrophobic atmosphere. The movie's narrative is very dream/nightmare-like and switches between Hussain (who's slowly losing grip on reality) and one of the young dancers, Komal Gupta, who's been assigned to watch over a new abductee, before culminating in a climax in a sewer underneath the nightclub. Hussain gives a great performance as he becomes more and more unhinged as do Chatterjee and Gupta (who's got very expressive eyes despite her 'expressionless' face, as she dances on the nightclub's stage with a drunk and randy man showering her with money). The movie does lose some of its thematic impact by focusing more on the mental state of Hussain as well as the visual style than on the issue of child abduction and prostitution, making this movie more like 2007's 'Mad Detective' meets Nicolas Winding Refn than 1979's 'Hardcore', but it still hits hard at times. The movie does not offer a happy ending, raising more questions than it answers, particularly as to what was real and what was inside Hussain's head, but also in regards to the abduction issue. It's a grim, stylish and surreal movie, that is both stylish as well as disturbing in content. Recommended.

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• predictable and shallow

  sunnyluc2017-05-20

  Yes, the trailer looks great, I bought a DVD. Money totally wasted, this movie is predictable, and where it isn't it's because the plot doesn't hold up. The acting is decent, but often forced. Directing and script are shallow, there's no depth there. The best of it all is music, which fits perfectly and holds the film together even when everything else fails.

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