Right Yaaa Wrong: review

Irrfan Khan cannot be wrong. He is always right. During the making of Rog Pooja Bhatt had once said that when Irrfan’s in the frame, you can just start the camera and forget about saying ‘cut’. She couldn’t have put it better. Whether it’s The Namesake or a Dil Kabaddi, A Mighty Heart or a Right Yaaa Wrong, it’s difficult to ignore a film that stars Irrfan Khan.

Here, in Neerraj Pathak’s (Apne writer) directorial debut, Irrfan plays a character similar to Jack Gyllenhaal’s in David Fincher’s Zodiac. A man obsessed about digging out the truth behind a crime and bringing the killer to justice. The killer happens to be his long-time friend in the same police department. (This piece of information is not a spoiler as the makers want us to know what some of the characters don’t.)

Right Yaaa Wrong has such a shoddy first half that you won’t be blamed if you don’t return for the riveting half after the break. Maybe it has something to do with Konkona Sensharma only flying in — literally — 15 minutes into the second half to join Irrfan.

So we have the cop duo Ajay (Sunny) and Vinay (Irrfan) who are good at their work but with very different approaches. Vinay is the hard-as-nails no-nonsense cop while Ajay is the kind-hearted nice-guy cop. Is that why Ajay’s wife (Eesha) is cheating on him with his cousin? Given that devar and bhabhi only indulge in kinky sex routines, we have to presume that Ajay is too goody-goody you know where. Because no one bothers to tell us.

What we are told — and hilariously so — is how Ajay becomes paralysed waist down and then bounces back in a few days. The reason for the first? Two bullets in his spinal cord. The reason for the second? He is “that one in the million (sic)”. So faking a wheelchair act, Ajay choreographs the perfect double murder making it look like as if he is the wronged guy. Everyone buys his plan except Vinay.

The two halves of Right Yaaa Wrong are qualitatively so different that it’s hard to believe the same guy made both. Eesha Koppikhar’s relentless romps with Arav ‘Wooden’ Chowdharry, from the bed to the bath, are aargh. No wonder we cheer for Sunny when he blows them away.

Irrfan and Konkona take care of Half 2. Here the Life in a... Metro pair play brother and sister but as the two people fighting it out in court, they are efficiently effective. Even a casual throwaway line from Irrfan brings the house down. When asked why he wants to check out the two dead bodies in the morgue again, he quips: “Un dono ki yaad aa rahi hai!”

Sunny is not too bad. He doesn’t scream anymore, sounds like his father on more than one occasion but most importantly brings an endearing quality to his character that evokes empathy. Sadly he is no longer hot at the box office, the reason why Right Yaaa Wrong has been waiting in the cans for the last couple of years. But it’s not that bad an option if you are not in the mood for IPL Yaaa IPL.


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