Starring Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade, Udita Goswami, Nauheed Cyrusi
Directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
Rating: **

The first question I asked the director after I saw the film was, "Is this an original script?"

Having been assured by Anant Mahadevan that this is an original story, let me at the outset say the writer S.Farhan has written a riveting manuscript on the anatomy of infidelity. Mahadevan has filmed the feel-cold thriller with that trademark sparkle which distinguishes this underrated director from his popular peers.

Well- packaged and evenly narrated, Aggar has a plot that keeps the narration going at a hot trot till the very last visual spills out in a pool of filmy blood.

Though not done with any great stab at profundity the episodes move with the sly celerity of a James Hadley Chase novel with a certain respect for logic generally absent in fast-paced thrillers from Bollywood.

Would it be fair to give away any of the plot when Mahadevan has gone to so much trouble to stay a step ahead of the audience?

I'll certainly draw attention to the narrative's mid-level where the wife, thinking her husband to be unfaithful, has defiantly returned from a bout of serious infidelity with a man whom her psychiatrist-husband has been curing of a serious mental disorder.

Yes, these complications are I'm afraid, part of life as envisaged by Mahadevan and his writer in a world where slick surfaces secrete sick impulses.

Suddenly as the wife(played with tartish chic by Udita Goswami) enters her home she realizes the woman she thought to be her husband's lover is not really a lover but an interior designer hired by the hubby to build his wife's Taj Mahal.

Gee, talk about a designer who devastates domesticity!

The second-half of this finely-contoured jigsaw puzzle has Tusshar turning distinctly obsessive and doing a violent version of Shah Rukh Khan in Darr.

Oen wounds on tortured faces ooze out as the two male actors battle it out in the wilderness leaving so many footprints in the soundtrack, you could carpet the score with images of human scuffle as played out against a over-heated precipice of passion.

Aggar is a steamy brew of double and dribble-crossing actors who often exchange a gaze that suggests love-making through eye contact. Both the heroes look lustfully at the leading lady.

Tusshar, so far doing staid, slightly naïve characters, works himself into dark noire areas of acting with surprising restraint. Here's an actor who has persuaded himself to evolve beyond his own expectations. He carries off his disturbed character's turmoils with reposeful restrain.

Shreyas Talpade, I am afraid, is thoroughly miscast as the suave, upmarket shrink. The Versace spectacles don't help much.

Udita is perky and at times, quite a revelation. And I don't mean that in any overt way.

Anant Mahadevan has always been a fine racounteur with a perceptive eye for colours that and interiors. Take a look at how bright Tusshar's home gets after he returns to a normal life...the cheerful white curtains, the plants and trees fluttering in the skyline...Or take Udita's work-place. It's functional yet flashy. Tasteful yet a little tartish.

This thriller seldom digresses into unwanted interpolations The narrative doesn't take too many lunge-breaks except for Suresh Menon who plays a leery fashion designer who checks the chicks out and says into his cellphone, "Iss route his sabhi line mast hain."

Er...dialogue dementia?

And what, pray tell, happened to Sophia Chowdhary who simply falls to her death in Reel 3(a la the bewafaa beloved in L.V Prasad's Khilona, which coincidentally starred Tusshar's dad Jeetendra).

Was she pushed into the plunge? Or did she take the diva's dive voluntarily because her character was caught cheating on her sensitive lover-boy with Vikas Kalantri?

A woman, no matter how materialistic, does have standards, you know.