Emraan Hashmi is a busy man. After his 'Good Boy Bad Boy', he has 'The Train' coming this week which would be followed by 'Awarapan' in a few weeks time. Here he talks to Joginder Tuteja about what made him take up 'The Train' with his 'The Killer' directors and how the film not just entertains but also comes with a social messaging.
Over to Emraan:
People ask me that what attracted me towards working in 'The Train'? Well, let me say that after I worked with Raksha Mistry and Hasnain Hyderabadwala in 'The Killer', I realized that here are these two guys who are quite commercially sound and have a knack of pitching to a larger audience. This is why when they came with the script of 'The Train', I knew that the film is for a much wider audience.
The kind of characters the film had with the right emotions and drama in place, I knew that it has a potential to click across different segments of the audience. The film is about this man who makes one reckless decision by getting involved with a working woman and his life goes for a toss forever.
He looses his job, his wife, his daughter and that one moment of straying away costs him so much in his life that it all seems so unnecessary in the end. He had such a wonderful life to live but one wrong step and he now has a long way to go to repair the damage. All of this is explained so beautifully in the film by the directors. This is why I have complete faith in them as they have doe a very good job in getting the emotions right.
The Train' has a kind of story that every man will relate to. Not that it teaches men to do what the protagonist does, i.e. stray away at a given opportunity, but if you and me look around us, we would see something like this happening so often. The film talks about a failing marriage and apart from the social messaging it does, it also entertains.
There is this whole new way in which the story is narrated and train plays one of the characters in the film itself. It was quite a challenge for me to be enacting the lead protagonist not just due to the different dimension of the role but also the fact that I was playing a father for the first time.
While I have dome different films in the past, most of them have seen me as a college boy or the likes. Whereas here I am required to be this mature man working abroad with a wife of few years and young kid. It was a whole new ballgame altogether.
Still, what I like is the overall commercial setup of the script that does have believable characters and situations but refrains from any unnecessary dialogue-baazi. There is no overplay of drama or shouting involved that takes away from the basic essence of the story.
Now coming to the way train enters the script. See, this train is what becomes the meeting point of this man and the woman. They meet for the first time in a train and from hereon begins a relationship that only spells trouble for his life. The geography of the train completely dismantles the peace of his own home and life.
Some people feel that 'The Train' could be another 'Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna'. I tend to believe that the two films belong to completely different genres and have different treatment altogether. Moreover I haven't seen KANK as I didn't have time to catch it so I can't say if there is anything remotely similar between the two films.
Well, except for the fact that here too a married man finds solace in a woman from the outside world, I don't see any similarities.