Riffing, Se7en-like, on the Hindi word for three, this remake of 2013’s Korean thriller Montage splices together a disparate trio hunting a long-gone girl: grieving grandfather Amitabh Bachchan, guilt-racked priest Nawazuddin Siddiqui, no-nonsense cop Vidya Balan. We’re watching Bollywood respond to grimtertainments such as True Detective – hence director Ribhu Dasgupta’s lugubrious, lights-off aesthetic – while wondering whether Te3n (pronounced “theen”) has taken on too much baggage. The first half proceeds at such a crawl, even the songs sound like somebody’s last gasp. Yet Dasgupta’s playing a reasonably intricate long game. The pulse quickens with a mid-film ransom drop, and skilled playing shepherds us through the twisty second hour. A touch tentative – the work of an industry straining to mature in line with its audience’s tastes – but creditably committed to a new realism. It’s a rare contemporary item to have licensed its sleuths to pursue their leads through Google, rather than the now-standard “FastFindz” or “Netlook”.
