The Final Call Movie Review: It Gives A Spin To The Web

The final Call

Starring: Arjun Rampal, Sakshi Tanwar,  Neeraj Kabi, Anupriya Goenka

Directed  by Vijay Lalvani

Rating: ***(3 stars)

 Arjun Rampal has an inscrutable face.  It  is the face  of  man who doesn’t reveal much. In The  Final Call he plays  Karan Sachdeva,  a pilot  with many secrets all  ruinous and  devastating. As all of  them come undone  layer by layer in  the cockpit  of  an airborne flighto Australia,  we know the  passengers  on board are doomed.

And yet, here  lies  the formula to a whacking  screen saga.You know. Yet you  hold your breath. The writing in  this 4-part  series is clearly of that caliber. We  know. Yet we sit riveted. Right at  the  start we meet an astrologer-scholar Krishnamurthy,played with wonderfully  whittled  wisdom by Neeraj Kabi who takes   that ill-fated flight because  hiskundali says  that’s where his  end  is  destined. Krishnamurthy’s family rightly advises  him to just stay away from the destined .

But Krishnamurthy—how I love his transcendental  wisdom—has other ideas.Kabi gives a fatalistic spin to the  proceedings, wrapping his character’s  prophecies in a surge  of immediacy. His  interaction on  board the doomed flight with a jaded  tycoon(Javed Jaffrey, who plays it cool, as only he  can) has  us  reading between the  lines  ,looking for  valuable clues to something beyond what  is  happening in the plot.

The  truth about The Final Call is that  it does things which we normally don’t see happening on the  big screen. It opens up the characters’ inner world to reveal the dark interiors. The  view is frightening and funny, as only  a story told in  leisure can be.

I came away deeply  riveted  by this impressive  adaptation  of  Priya Kumar’s bestseller IWill Go With You: The  Flight  Of  A  Lifetime. The  characters, whether it was  the Australian girl rushing back home  to surprise her cheating  boyfriend, or her co-passenger in the next seat, a cocky 18-year old trying to hit on her….everyone left a lingering impression.There are  no cardboard  characters  on board this  flight. Rest assured. And  don’t forget to fasten  your seatbelt.

 But my favourite  in  the  series besides  Arjun Rampal, is Sakshi Tanwar  playing  a pregnant  terror negotiator. There  is  a sequence where  she  leaves home for  work  promising  her worried husband that  she won’t do anything dangerous, then  returns in the evening  fatigued while he watches her on  television dealing with a dreaded terrorist in  a hostage situation.Sakshi  builds  a case for women taking on patriarchal  jobs and beating the hell out of  the cynical  competition.

The  plot is relentlessly  robust  unveiling unfurling thoughts and looping  action faster than we can process their relevance. With  performances that solidly anchor the action, the first four episodes have me waiting for the  next season.