If you ask me for a one word review of Lost, my answer will be ‘Lost’. The film does full justification to its title. ‘Lost’ isn’t a Winner at all. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s last Bollywood film Pink was a success critically and commercially. Pink was a very important film for society. After delivering a hard-hitting film like Pink, expectations were high from Lost, but Aniruddha failed at delivering the product we wanted him to deliver. Yami Gautam delivered her career best performance last year in A Thursday which was also released on OTT and here, in Lost we can say that her performance is close to that of A Thursday. The only thing to watch out for in Lost is the honest and outstanding performance by Yami Gautam.
Lost is the story of a journalist named Vidhi Sahani (Yami Gautam), who finds out about the missing case of a young theater activist Ishan Bharti (Tushar Pandey) and gets involved in it. Vidhi lives in Kolkata with her maternal grandfather (Pankaj Kapur) and is in a relationship with Jeet (Neil Bhoopalam). Ishan is in love with Ankita Chauhan (Pia Bajpai) who eyes her career in politics. Ankita is in contact with political leader Ranjan Varman (Rahul Khanna). Lost gets a boost from Maoism. Going deep into the case Vidhi finds some shocking truths. Watch Lost to know more about all these things.
Lost is based on true events, but the film doesn’t seem to be true enough. While watching the film I bet, you will look at the watch again and again until it gets over. Lost is too slow and this is not the problem, but the main problem lies in the narrative which doesn’t hold one’s interest. Lost tries to bring many things to the viewer but doesn’t do justice to any one of them. The climax of Lost is also not very effective, unconvincing and remains unanswered. Lost is all bits and pieces. While watching Lost, you will remember Vidya Balan’s Kahaani (2012). Kahaani had everything and was a perfect thriller which had everything to offer the audience, be it tension arising situations, the thrills, suspense, the investigation part, the conclusion, etc. Lost has nothing of all these. Lost feels like a boring affair because the story doesn’t build up and when it reaches a point it’s very late.
Talking about performances Yami Gautam carries the film on her shoulders. She plays the role of journalist with so much ease. Pankaj Kapur is best at what he does, but in Lost his character could have been presented well. Pia Bajpai gets a good role and her character had many shades and she delivers upto the mark. Rahul Khanna as a minister, looks like one but doesn’t act like one. His accent and dialogue delivery felt irritating. Neil Bhoopalam can be simply ignored and even his screen presence is not felt. And now Tushar Pandey, about whom the film is based, doesn’t get much to explore and this is one of the biggest drawbacks of this film. Direction of Aniruddha is really disappointing. Music of Shantanu Moitra is very weak and disturbs the whole narrative. Editing should have been more crisp.
Thankfully, Lost was released on OTT. If it would have come in theaters audiences would have lost their minds. Lost is half-baked and bits and pieces. This film won’t be remembered and will get lost in history books. The problem about lost is that it tries too hard to be a realistic and hard-hitting film but doesn’t become one. The film-making is very dull and you can see that in many scenes. There are plenty of flaws in the film and even Aniruddha wasn’t aware about what he is making. After one scene ends, the other scene starts suddenly without having any connection with the previous one and this goes on till the end where you don’t get a proper convincing answer. After completing the film, I was like what was the motive of the director behind making this film, what did he want to show us. Watch this one at your own risk, because after completion you will be like, I lost my 2 hours. Lost is completely Lost.
Rating – 2/5*
Lost is now streaming on Zee5.
Watch the trailer below:
