Fox Star Studios India Pvt. Ltd. and Vishesh Films’ Mr. X (UA; 3D) is the story of an anti-terrorist agent, Raghuram Rathore (Emraan Hashmi). His girlfriend, Siya Verma (Amyra Dastur), also works as an anti-terrorist agent. The two plan to get married and live happily together. But one incident changes their lives forever.
Just a day before their wedding, their boss, ACP Bharadwaj (Arunodaya Singh), seeks their services. While Raghuram is deployed for chief minister Dwarkanath Dutta’s (S.M. Zaheer) security at a press conference along with other agents, Siya is sent to a hotel room to keep tabs on a terrorist putting up in the same hotel. To Raghuram’s horror, his boss asks him to kill the chief minister, failing which his men would kill Siya. Raghuram soon realises that Bharadwaj is hand-in-glove with the chief minister’s son, Aditya Dutta (Jignesh Joshi), who is the mastermind behind his own father’s killing.
Left with no alternative, Raghuram shoots down the chief minister in full view of the media persons and the murder is captured on camera. Bharadwaj’s stooges show Siya the breaking news on television about Raghuram gunning down the chief minister and she is devastated. Raghuram escapes after the murder but is soon caught and held captive in a chemical factory. Within minutes, the factory is blown up and Raghuram is presumed dead due to burns. But Raghuram survives.
He contacts his friend, Popo (Tanmay Bhat), who also works in the same anti-terrorist department. Popo takes him to his sister (Shruti Ulfat) who works in a laboratory. She gives him a liquid to consume, which cures Raghuram of the burns but he becomes invisible. Raghuram can now be seen only in daylight or in blue neon light.
It’s now revenge time. Raghuram targets Bharadwaj, Aditya Dutta and Tiwari (Susheel Pandey), one of Bharadwaj’s stooges. He kills Tiwari first, in his invisible avatar, calling himself Mr. X. He also meets Siya but does not reveal that Bharadwaj was involved in the chief minister’s murder. Siya, who had believed the news on television, realises that Raghuram had murdered the chief minister, who is said to be corrupt, so that he could save her life. While sympathising with him, she doesn’t agree with his plans to seek revenge as she feels that the law must take its own course. Unaware that Bharadwaj is responsible for Raghuram’s misery, she actually spills the beans about Mr. X’s identity before Bharadwaj.
Siya’s boss, Bharadwaj, now uses her to get to Raghuram. What happens thereafter? Who wins and who loses? Is Raghuram alias Mr. X able to prove his innocence? Does Bharadwaj have to pay for his evil deeds? Is the chief minister’s son, Aditya, made to pay for the murder he masterminded?
Vikram Bhatt has penned a story which doesn’t even pretend to be original or novel. Incidents unfold one after the other without involving the audience. Vikram Bhatt’s screenplay is an exercise in convenience. Raghuram opts to murder the chief minister to save his girlfriend, Siya. But is he such an idiot as to think that Bharadwaj would spare him and/or Siya after the murder he commits in broad daylight and in the presence of hundreds of media persons and cameras? Again, Raghuram could have easily told Siya when he meets her as Mr. X for the first time, that Bharadwaj is the man responsible for making him kill the chief minister, especially because she still works for him. But for absolutely no reason at all, he does not reveal Bharadwaj’s identity. Of course, this is just so that the drama can progress further and there can be some excitement when Siya spills the beans before Bharadwaj. But because the audiences immediately understand that Raghuram has withheld the identity of one of the persons responsible for the chief minister’s killing, they don’t experience the excitement they are supposed to when Siya reveals all to Bharadwaj. In fact, the entire revenge drama of Raghuram is full of holes in the script so that the audience disconnects almost completely from the drama. Clearly, the cheating in scripting is evident at every stage of the drama. Another example of the lack of application of mind while writing the script: much after Raghuram has killed the chief minister, it is mentioned merely in a dialogue that the chief minister was corrupt. This is, perhaps, just so that the audience may not feel that Raghuram (who is the hero) had murdered an innocent man. But if that is so, why are Bharadwaj, Tiwari and Aditya Dutta treated as villains? If Raghuram is a hero even after killing the chief minister, shouldn’t the three also be treated as heroes for getting a corrupt man killed?
Shagufta Rafique’s dialogues are routine and commonplace most of the time.
Emraan Hashmi does an ordinary job as Raghuram and Mr. X. Clearly, the lack of conviction in the script gets reflected in his performance too, which appears half-hearted. Amyra Dastur is also average, maybe partly because of the weak script. Arunodaya Singh’s performance as Bharadwaj is commonplace. Shruti Ulfat is earnest in a brief role. Tanmay Bhat is alright. Jignesh Joshi (as Aditya Dutta) and Susheel Pandey (in the role of Tiwari) leave their individual marks. Girish Pardeshi (as Amar), S.M. Zaheer (as chief minister Dwarkanath Dutta) and Atul Mathur (as the terrorist) do as required. Major Bikramjeet Kanwarpal is okay as Siya’s father.
Vikram Bahtt’s direction is very ordinary. Like the script, his narrative style is also lacklustre and offers no novelty whatsoever. The 3D shooting adds little to the film and seems to be a waste of expenditure. Jeet Ganguly and Ankit Tiwari’s music is alright. ‘Tu jo hai’, composed by Ankit Tiwari, is a hit song but the other songs are not as good. Lyrics (Rashmi Singh, Mohnish Raza, Abhendra Kumar Upadhyay and Manoj Muntashir) are nice. Raju Khan’s choreography is ordinary. Raju Singh’s background music is uninspired. Pravin Bhatt’s camerawork is so-so. Abbas Ali Moghul’s action and stunt scenes are routine. Jayant Deshmukh’s production designing hardly deserves mention. Kuldeep Mehan’s editing could’ve been sharper.
On the whole, Mr. X is a clear case of a job done half-heartedly and without much conviction. It will fail to strike a chord with the audience and will, therefore, flop miserably at the box-office.