''Ittefaq'' ( Coincidence) is a 2017 Indian

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

-language

neo-noir Neo-noir is a film genre that adapts the visual style and themes of 1940s and 1950s American film noir for contemporary audiences, often with more graphic depictions of violence and sexuality. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the term ...

mystery

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...

directed by Abhay Chopra, written by Chopra, Shreyas Jain and Nikhil Mehrotra, and produced by Gauri Khan and

Shah Rukh Khan Shah Rukh Khan (; born 2 November 1965), also known by the initialism SRK, is an Indian actor and film producer who works in Hindi cinema. Referred to in the media as the "Padishah, Baadshah of Bollywood" and "King Khan", he has Shah Rukh K ...

under

Red Chillies Entertainment Red Chillies Entertainments Private Limited, doing business as Red Chillies Entertainment; abbreviated as RCE is an Indian entertainment company established by actor Shah Rukh Khan and his wife Gauri Khan in 2002. It was transformed from the d ...

in association with Renu Ravi Chopra under B. R. Studios and Hiroo Yash Johar and

Karan Johar Karan Yash Johar (born Rahul Kumar Johar; 25 May 1972), often informally referred to as KJo, is an Indian filmmaker, producer and television personality who primarily works in Hindi cinema. He has launched the careers of several successful ac ...

under

Dharma Productions Dharma Productions Pvt. Ltd. is an Indian film production and distribution company established by Yash Johar in 1979. It was taken over in 2004, after his death, by his son, Karan Johar. Based in Mumbai, it mainly produces and distributes H ...

. An adaptation of the eponymous 1969 film by

Yash Chopra Yash Raj Chopra (27 September 1932 21 October 2012) was an Indian film director and film producer who worked in Bollywood, Hindi cinema. The founding chairman of the film production and distribution company Yash Raj Films, Chopra was the reci ...

, the film stars

Akshaye Khanna Akshaye Khanna (born 28 March 1975) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. Khanna is known for his versatility, which has secured him numerous accolades including two Filmfare Awards. Born to actor Vinod Khanna, he made his acting deb ...

, Sidharth Malhotra and

Sonakshi Sinha Sonakshi Sinha (; born 2 June 1987) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films and series. The daughter of actors and politicians Poonam Sinha, Poonam and Shatrughan Sinha, she has appeared in ''Forbes India'' Forbes Celebrity 100, Celebrity ...

, and has a

Rashomon effect The Rashomon effect is the phenomenon of the unreliability of eyewitnesses. The effect is named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Japanese film '' Rashomon'', in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses. It has been use ...

storytelling style. The film was released on 3 November 2017. It did well on

box office A box office or ticket office is a place where ticket (admission), tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a Wicket gate, wicket. ...

and received positive reviews from critics.

Plot

Vikram Sethi is an acclaimed British writer of Indian descent. On the launch of his third book in

Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...

, he finds his publisher wife Katherine dead in their hotel room. The police suspect him, so he flees by car. As the police give chase, his car overturns and he escapes with injuries, taking shelter in a nearby apartment. Maya, a young housewife who lives there, spots a police car outside and rushes there for help. The police find Vikram next to the body of her murdered lawyer husband, Shekhar. They also find burnt photographs in the trash. Dev Verma, an officer investigating the double murder, interrogates Vikram and Maya. According to Vikram's account, he fled the police because he feared he would be framed for his wife's murder. He found Maya at her door and asked for help. He adds that his wife did not attend the book launch, as she was unwell and took medicines for a heart ailment. Vikram entered Maya's flat and claims that she attempted to seduce him. Maya introduced Chirag, who entered her house, as her husband to Vikram. When Vikram saw a wallpaper photo on her PC and realised Chirag is not Maya's husband, Chirag struck him with a candle-holder and Vikram lost consciousness. Upon waking, he found Shekhar's body next to him. While in custody Vikram was shown removing his shoe as if his foot is sore or shoe is pinching him. According to Maya's account, she found an injured Vikram at her door, asking for help. She lets him in only to find out from the news that the police are looking for him for the murder of his wife. Vikram whipped out a knife and overpowered her, and began searching for documents at Shekhar's desk when she turned a visiting Chirag away, with whom she confessed of having an extramarital affair. Around midnight, her husband returned and struggled to free her from Vikram. Maya rushed outside to a police vehicle for help. By the time she returned, Vikram had killed her husband with a candle-holder. Meanwhile, the police find that a

gang rape In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape,Ullman, S. E. (2013). 11 Multiple perpetrator rape victimization. Handbook on the Study of Multiple Perpetrato ...

victim named Sandhya recently killed herself because Vikram had written his third book about that incident and, hoping to prevent his third book from being a failure, he had leaked her identity to generate buzz. Examination of Katherine's body reveals that she had died of a heart attack. The forensic team informs Dev that Shekhar was attacked on the head by someone who was at least 6 feet tall. The police initially suspect Vikram as he is 6’1". However, it is found that the burnt photographs were those of Maya and Chirag, who is also about 6 feet tall. The photographs had been taken by a detective hired by Shekhar. The police eventually conclude that Vikram's account is true and Maya and Chirag had killed Shekhar when he confronted them with the photos. Moreover, there was no mud on Shekhar's shoes at the time of his death. It had rained at 11 pm and there was mud on the streets. Vikram had stated that Shekhar had come home at 7:30, hence his account was believed to be true whereas Maya's account of her husband returning home at 12 am was labelled false as a result. Vikram is deemed innocent and released from custody. He cremates his wife's body, and Maya and Chirag are arrested and charged with Shekhar's murder. At home, Dev is reading Vikram's second book when his wife Meera spoils that the protagonist dies of drug overdose. Dev rushes to the forensic doctor to check if Vikram's wife could have died from an overdose of the medicine she had been taking for her heart. They discover that the capsules had been tampered with and the dose was made three times higher than normal, which caused Katherine's fatal heart attack. Dev calls Vikram while the latter is about to catch a flight back to London. On the phone, Vikram confesses to having killed Katherine and Shekhar. He killed Katherine because she was threatening to charge him for Sandhya's suicide. Shekhar was the lawyer working with her to file a case against him. He fled to Shekhar's house to destroy the legal documents of the case. When Maya went out to seek help, he killed her husband and stumbled across the photographs with her lover. He partially burnt them and threw them in the trash, banking on the conviction that the police would find the ominously burnt, adulterous pictures, creating a convincing story to dupe the police, which would then insinuate the inquisitory suspicion that it was Maya, in conjunction with Chirag who had orchestrated the murder of her husband Shekhar in order to conceal her affair. He also switched Shekar's muddy shoes with his own. He tells Dev that he has already cremated his wife's body; thus there is no evidence left. Dev decides to catch Vikram and punish him even if he has to take an illegal action to do so. However, Vikram leaves for London on his flight as Dev watches helplessly.

Cast

as Dev Verma * Sidharth Malhotra as Vikram Sethi *

as Maya Sinha * Pavail Gulati as Chirag *

Mandira Bedi Mandira Bedi (born 15 April 1972) is an Indian actress, fashion designer, and television presenter. She gained recognition by playing the title role in the 1994 television show, '' Shanti'', which was telecast on India's national channel, Doorda ...

as Meera Verma * Sameer Sharma as Shekhar Sinha

Production

Development

Co-produced by

, B. R. Studios and

, ''Ittefaq'' released on 3 November. The official announcement of the film was made in April 2016. ''Ittefaq'' is an adaptation of a 1969 film with the same name, produced by B. R. Chopra and directed by

. The film starred

Rajesh Khanna Rajesh Khanna (; born Jatin Khanna; 29 December 1942 – 18 July 2012) was an Indian actor, film producer and politician who worked in Hindi films. Considered as one of the greatest and most successful actors in the history of Indian cinema, h ...

Iftekhar Iftekhar Ahmed Sharif (22 February 1920 – 4 March 1995), often mononymously credited as Iftekhar or Iftikhar, was an Indian actor who mainly worked in Hindi cinema. He is known for his film roles as a police officer. Career Iftekhar wa ...

and

Nanda Nanda, including Nanda (南大), may refer to: Education * Nanchang University (南昌大学), a public university in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China * Nanhua University (南华大学), a public university in Hengyang, Hunan, China * Nanjing Universi ...

in lead roles. While Sidharth Malhotra reprised Khanna's character, Nanda's role is essayed by

plays Iftekhar's role. The film is directed by Abhay Chopra, grandson of B. R. Chopra, the producer of the original film.

Casting

The makers of the film chose

, Sidharth Malhotra and

to star in the film as lead roles. Rajkummar Rao was cast to play a doctor but he then opted out.

Filming

The film was shot on a fifty-day non-stop schedule. The principal photography of the film started in February 2017. The film was shot entirely in

Marketing

But before its release they came out with a

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

campaign, requesting viewers not to disclose the culprit after watching the film. Rather than using traditional and costly marketing techniques (

reality show Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...

promotion, media interviews and city tours), the producers decided to focus on television, radio and print advertising.

Reception

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on nine reviews, with an average rating of 5.92/10. ''

India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media, Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' laun ...

'' reviewed "Sidharth-Sonakshi's murder mystery will keep you on your toes". ''

The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...

'' stated the movie was "a smart, gripping

whodunit A ''whodunit'' (less commonly spelled as ''whodunnit''; a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an criminal ...

". ''

Deccan Chronicle ''Deccan Chronicle'' is an English-language daily newspaper based in Hyderabad, India. Founded in 1938, it was initially launched as a Weekly newspaper, weekly and later converted into a daily. The newspaper's name reflects its origins in the ...

'' called the movie "A crackling whodunnit".

Box office

The film, which was released on 1100 screens throughout India, had a moderate opening of 40 million. ''Ittefaq'' was in competition with '' Golmaal Again'', which released on

Diwali Diwali (), also called Deepavali (IAST: ''Dīpāvalī'') or Deepawali (IAST: ''Dīpāwalī''), is the Hindu festival of lights, with variations celebrated in other Indian religions such as Jainism and Sikhism. It symbolises the spiritual v ...

, and had been in a strong position even after its third week. Hollywood's '' Thor: Ragnarok'' of the popular

Marvel Cinematic Universe The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is an American media franchise and shared universe centered on List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, a series of superhero films produced by Marvel Studios. The films are based on characters that appe ...

, which recorded strong opening collection, was released concurrently with the film thus affecting its business. Despite the tough competition from ''Golmaal Again'' and ''Thor: Ragnarok'', ''Ittefaq'' was able to earn as much as ₹40 million. *1st Day ₹40 million (India) *2nd Day ₹50.6 million (India) *3rd Day ₹60.5 million (India)

Music

The theme song ''Ittefaq Se'' was recreated by

Tanishk Bagchi Tanishk Bagchi (born 23 November 1980) is an Indian music producer, composer, singer and lyricist in Hindi films. He is known for tracks like "Vaaste", "Bolna", "Ve Maahi", " Aankh Maarey" (recreated), " Dilbar" (recreated), "Jehda Nasha" (recr ...

from the song "Raat Baaki Baat Baaki" from the film ''Namak Halal'' (1982), originally composed by

Bappi Lahiri Bappi Aparesh Lahiri (born Alokesh Aparesh Lahiri; 27 November 1952 – 15 February 2022), also known as Bappi Da, was an Indian singer, composer and record producer. He popularised the use of synthesised disco music in Indian music industry and ...

and sung by

Asha Bhosle Asha Bhosle (; ; born 8 September 1933) is an Indian playback singer, entrepreneur, actress and television personality who predominantly works in Indian cinema. Known for her versatility, she has been described in the media as one of the ...

Shashi Kapoor Shashi Kapoor (pronounced �əʃi kəpuːɾ born Balbir Raj Kapoor; 18 March 1938 – 4 December 2017) was an Indian actor and producer known primarily for his work in Hindi films. He is considered as one of the greatest and most successful acto ...

and Lahiri. Unlike most mainstream

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...

films, which are musicals, the film does not contain any songs as did the original 1969 film.

References

External links

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