by Subhash K Jha

Starring Dino Morea, Emran Hashmi, Udita Goswami, Tara Sharma
Directed by Ananth Mahadevan
Rating: **

So you think Ananth Mahadevan can only make candy-floss musicals? After Dil Vil Pyar Vyar and Dil Mange More, he moves towards a dark film-noire kind of tale which has no bearing on real life, no signs and crosses leading to a neat and compatible finale...

Just a series of aesthetically mounted scenes that could leave you with a question beyond that boundaries of a whodunit...what's the point, Mr Mahadevan?

Specially after Rang De Basanti, we do want to see a point to our mainstream entertainment. On that level, Aksar often comes to a dead-end, and that has nothing with Emran Hashmi(surely the most freakish 'star' ever devised for the potboiler machinery) ending up stone-cold murdered on the floor of the British mansion(pronounced 'mention' by the film's churlish heroine).

Aksar...or shall we say, quite often , Mahadevan's British ambience seems to suggest more intrigue and suspense visually than it eventually delivers creatively.

The characters in this 'lust' triangle are so bereft of any native charm and integrity, you wonder why we have to bear them in the first place. The leading lady Sheena (Udita Goswami) screams, rants and fornicates under the same roof as her suave and cool tycoon husband Rajvir (Dino Morea).

Unlike other recent adulteresses on-screen like Mallika Sherawat in Murder or Kareena Kapoor in Bewafaa, you hate Goswami's hysterical hoax-wife act, and probably because she looks and behaves like a cross-dresser strip- dancer from Bangkok.

Emran Hashmi's bullish Casanova act is even more irksome. He thrives on hard-selling his bratty persona to the audience, and by kissing his way through a celluloid passion-play. He has neither the strength of personality nor the sensitivity and conviction to play anything but a guy who thinks with his crotch.

The saving grace is Dino Morea. Suave, restrained and blessedly free of the hammy mode Dino brings an urbane cool to this film about ebony postures in dark chambers.

Whispers and moans in the dark are all very well. But the purposeless preening of cast that's captured in flattering silhouettes conveys nothing about their supposedly turbulent inner-world.

By the time the whodunit is resolved, you are beyond caring. These spoilt rich people deserve the chic hell that's created for them.