Do Lafzon Ki Kahani movie review: The most hysterical film of 2016 is not a comedy

QUICK PILL

• Yesteryear actor Deepak Tijori\'s sixth film as director
• Stars a tragic Randeep Hooda in yet another badly chosen film
• Deformed remake of Korean romantic drama, \'Always\'

Rating: 1 star

Over the last two years, Randeep Hooda has suffered more anguish, assault, thrashings, blood loss, broken bones, ruptured cartilage, facial disfiguration and general inhumanity on screen more than the combined gory fates meted out to ex-WWF wrestler Mankind, New York city in Hollywood superhero movies, boxer Rocky Balboa in the ring and Jim Caviezel in 'Passion Of The Christ'. This is no exaggeration. His recent turn as the titular character in biopic Sarbjit bordered on agonizing torture porn.

In Deepak Tijori's laughably awful 'Do Lafzon Ki Kahaani', he seems to still be using the fake wounds and busted eye prosthetics from his Sarbjit stint (though this one was made long before the biopic), going to physical heights no sane-minded actor would even consider for a film this delusional. To be fair, he buffs it up pretty good for a MMA fighter, gives it his all in the ring, though the muscles go into lockdown when he is required to speak or emote.

Painted as a typical Bhatt-movie brooder named Sooraj with a dark past in a neon-and-gloom South-East Asian city, his soft side is demonstrated when he offers a forkful of noodles to a kitten. Juggling multiple jobs to make up for past sins, he chances upon a very pretty blind girl named Jenny (Kajal Aggarwal) during his stint as a security guard. She is way too talkative, and makes it a routine to watch an Indian soap opera on his TV set - no pun intended.

Jenny seems like the kind of girl who isn't really aware of how attractive she is (apart from the fact that she can't really see her own face), and they fall in love. But he's just an overgrown bear who is sucked back into his brutal freestyle-fighting career to, of course, pay for her cornea-transplant operation. Some rubbish medical jargon in self-important doctor voices later, it is revealed that if he cannot arrange the money in twenty days, she'd be visually impaired forever. Which isn't such a bad thing, if you think about the face he comes back with after being beaten to pulp every day.

I've seen some terrible films this year, but none may be able to rival the sheer 90's dreadfulness of this one. Characters like his gym instructor (Mamik, who played big brother Ratan in 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar) exist to mouth phrase variations like, "Box him harder! Be a winner!" and there's a rather absurd Chinese man named Mr. Chang, Jenny's boss, who slurs and lusts immorally like a 70's Bollywood rapist. There's also a snarling rival fighter villain named Sikandar, who looks like a less agreeable tattooed lovechild of cricketers Ravindra Jadeja and Manoj Tiwary.

Because she had never seen Suraj's face when they were together, the last thirty minutes play like a bizarre reverse-Fanaa nightmare - where he is a paralyzed patient, and she can see again, but can't sense that it's him. Various devices from the past, like a dog, a pebble and a spine massage (really) pop up as teasing clues before a turtle seals the deal. You can sense the unrequited Asian-ness of him visiting the same spots (based on the Korean drama 'Always'), and those serendipitous 'almost' encounters, months or days passing in thirty musical seconds (there's a credit attributing "song conceptualization" to the director) and absolutely no link to plausibility or reasoning whatsoever.

The words "Love never hurts, love heals," shine bright in the final frame, thereby proving that this film is like that mysterious facebook friend (you don't remember why and when you added this creature) who keeps sharing emo Archie-card forwards on their wall in ghastly sMs LiNgO.