Trapped movie review: Rajkummar Rao's brilliance makes this survival film worth a watch

RATING: 3

MOVIE: Trapped

CAST: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa

DIRECTOR: Vikramaditya Motwane

GENRE: Survival thriller

Bollywood has finally dared to make a survival movie in the form of Trapped, and it indeed is a good attempt. Starring Rajkummar Rao in the lead, Trapped is a film about a young man, who gets locked inside his own flat and struggles to survive for 4-5 days without food or water.

PLOT

Shaurya (Rajkummar Rao) is a shy young lad who falls in love with one of his office colleagues Noorie (Geetanjali Thapa). Soon the girl also starts liking him, and the duo plans to get married. For a valid reason, the couple needs to get married in just one day's time, and thus, Shaurya sets out on a house-hunt.

After much difficulty, he manages to find a flat in an otherwise vacant building called "Swarg Apartment". Shaurya has no idea that this "Swarg Apartment" will make him go through Nark (hell).

Shaurya is thrilled and moves in but just when he is about to leave to give this good news to his lady love, the door of the flat gets locked. To make things worse, the apartment faces power cut and his phone's battery also dies. The supply of water too is scarce in the building. 

Considering he resides on the top floor of the huge building that has an old watchman with hearing issues, Shaurya's repeated calls for help from the balcony go unheard. With no hopes of help from the outside world, he struggles for survival as he runs out of food and water. How Shaurya survives for days inside the 2 BHK flat without food and water, and whether he is able to come out of this situation at all, forms the crux of the story.

PERFORMANCES

Trapped is all about Rajkummar's performance and the actor once again proves his mettle with this one. The young actor brilliantly portrays the feelings of fear, joy, anger, frustration and depression. There are a couple of sequences in the movie where Rajkummar's character gets a little hopeful about getting out of the trap and the way he portrays that joy will get you equally excited. Geetanjali does not have much screen time in the film but has done justice to her bits. 

POSITIVES

Apart from Rajkummar's brilliant expressions, Trapped has a number of thrilling moments that will bring you to the edge of the seat. Although there are a couple of incidents in the movie that will make you wonder if any person can really have such bad luck, none of it appears illogical. With a runtime of around 1 and half hours and no interval, the makers of the film have kept it short and crisp. The director, who had made critically acclaimed films like Udaan and Lootera, has successfully added a good survival film to his credit. 

NEGATIVES

The only drawback that Trapped has is that it gets a tad sluggish at times and the audience may lose interest in parts. However, that is something the director is almost helpless about as survival genre movies are necessarily slow at certain points. Of course, you cannot expect a person, who is dying of hunger and thirst, to be energetic throughout the movie to create thrilling sequences.

VERDICT

After Hollywood came up with excellent survival movies like 127 Hours and The Shallows, among others, Trapped is a good attempt as far as Bollywood standards are considered. It may not have too many nail-biting moments, but with Rajkummar Rao's excellent performance, Trapped is a decent one-time watch.