TE3N (2016)

Number Rolled: 80

Movie Name/Year: TE3N (2016)

Tagline: None

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Length: 128 minutes

Rating: TV-14

Production Companies: Blue Waters Motion Pictures, Cinemaa, EndemolShine India, Kross Pictures

Producer: Mohammed Attarwala, Saubhik Das, Deepak Dhar, Abhijit Ghatak, Sujoy Ghosh, Hyunwoo Thomas Kim, Woo-taek Kim, Ram Mirchandani, Suresh Nair, Ramesh Pulapaka, Sameer Rajendran, Gauri Sathe, Aniruddh Tanwar, Gulab Singh Tanwar, Vivek Tewari

Director: Ribhu Dasgupta

Writer: Bijesh Jayarajan, Geun-seop Jeong, Suresh Nair, Ritesh Shah

Actors: Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Mukesh Chhabra, Prakash Belawadi, Ricky Patel, Tota Roy Chowdhury, Padmavati Rao, Suneel Sinha, Anupam Bhattacharya, Deblina Chakraborty, Aarnaa Sharma

Stunts: Shyam Kaushal

Blurb from Netflix: Still desperate to find his granddaughter nearly a decade after her kidnapping, a devoted grandfather chases a dangerous new lead.

Selina’s Point of View:

I’m waffling back and forth on this film.

On one hand, there were some issues with TE3N.

The pacing of the film was a little on the slow side for me. I wound up bored a lot.

The way the story was told also required jumping back and forth between various characters. One part would be speeding up story-wise while the next was just another 10 minutes of watching the character say the same thing over and over. It was a little difficult to care at times.

The plot itself was also pretty typical. We watched a film with a similar plot only a few weeks ago for Foreign Film Friday. The main difference is that the other one was an action, where-as this one was a drama. I know it also says ‘thriller’ but I disagree with that genre for this film.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the ending of TE3N. I did eventually see it coming, but I didn’t at first. The story was told in such a way that it was easy to overlook the foreshadowing on it. I like that.

The acting also wasn’t bad. There were a few moments and actors I couldn’t really see as good, but the rest of it was decent.

I do think I’ll remember this film fondly, simply because the ending was that good, but I doubt I’d go around recommending it to people.

Cat’s Point of View:

I went into this Foreign Film Friday blind. I didn’t even realize this was going to be a Hindi movie until I pulled it up on Netflix just before clicking ‘play.’ I didn’t really have any preconceived notions about the film.

Chalk this up to one of those times that the movie’s title is such an obscure reference to the film that it baffles nearly everyone. TE3N conjured up an idea of something modern or having more to do with computers.

Of course, that could just be my inner geek whispering red herrings at me; but I digress.

This was pretty cut and dry as a drama rolled up in a mystery. Though, I do want to give two thumbs up to the person in charge of both the soundtrack and the subtitles for this film. 

Not only was the music on point to evoke the emotions of the story, but they did a great job in putting a translation on the screen for everyone to understand. The score was moving and added an elevated dimension to the movie.

At some point, I forgot I was reading the screen as I watched. It had nothing to do with understanding Hindi and everything to do with falling down the rabbit hole of this tale. My heart was in my throat for much of this film and my insides twisted. There were some ugly tears. We’ve established I’m a crier by now, right? This one gave me plenty of reason to leak all over the place as it sucker-punched me in the feels and twisted my mind into a pretzel. That’s a good thing, though.

I absolutely loved this movie. I can’t say that I’d watch it again, but only because it touches on a topic that leaves me with a queasy feeling. It has nothing to do with the film, itself. I would certainly recommend it.

Languages

Speech Available: Hindi

Subtitles Available: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 86%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 64%

Metascore - None

Metacritic User Score – 7/10

IMDB Score – 7.2/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 2/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4.5/5

Movie Trailer: