706 movie review: A drab whodunnit

What are these secrets? How are the deaths of a woman in Varanasi and a man in Mumbai connected? There appears to be enough meat in the story for an engrossing who-dun-it.

But 706 turns out to be one more of those terrible could-have-beens. Ill-constructed scenes are piled up with characters explaining their every move. A romantic angle is bunged in, with the popping up of a neurotic depressive (Bakhirta), and the lines keep getting increasingly more bizarre.

You begin watching this in the hope that the two seasoned lead actors will give us something. But both Kulkarni and Dutta are left to fend for themselves, the former having to grapple with a ‘baba’ who says things like ‘uss ladke ke andar pishaach ghusa hua hai’; the latter with a lonely ‘spirit’.

You wonder how Dutta’s psychiatrist can keep a straight face while saying: ‘main dawaai kam deti hoon baat zyaada karti hoon’. Which almost pips this one: ‘love ek chemical reaction hai’.

You don’t say.