Humraaz

A wealthy businessman marries Priya, who works as a dancer. Priya has a long-standing lover, and the marriage is in fact a plan the two of them made: take the money and disappear. Then one of them changes their mind. The film is not interested in a love triangle. It is interested in whose favour the plan collapses in: the second half keeps switching sides and deliberately keeps the audience unsure who is deceiving whom. The form is the Indian thriller template of the turn of the century: ship and hotel settings, long song sequences, a running time of about three hours. The duo Abbas-Mustan directed. They are known for adapting suspense structures from Western cinema into Indian commercial film; the same team's Baazigar is another well-known example of the method. Bobby Deol, Akshaye Khanna and Ameesha Patel lead. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian thrillers and plots built on deception. Who it is not for: anyone who tests the logic of a twist. Several turns rest on coincidence, and the length is long for viewers new to the genre.