When Kareena embraces the gloom

The Buckingham Murders doesn't feel like an Indian film but it certainly is for them

- KARTIK BHARDWAJ

WHEN we first meet Kareena Kapoor Khan in The Buckingham Murders she is sitting on a public bench, deadfaced under a grey England sky. Her stardom is nowhere in the frame. There are blink-and-miss flashbacks, of a sunny day, of a young boy laughing while running over the green grass, of a ball hitting the bowling pins, of red and blue police car lights, of Kareena with the same shellshocked expression she is wearing now. We jump inside a court hearing. A young man confesses to opening fire inside a restaurant. Says he was tired of being invisible, says he didn't intend to shoot the child. Kareena is silent. She is in a corner of the frame when the judge sentences the boy guilty. It's only when he is being escorted by the cops, that she charges at him and lets out a long-held squeal.