Kaun (film)

Infobox Film
name = Kaun


caption = "Kaun" film poster.
director = Ram Gopal Varma
producer = Mukesh Udeshi
writer = Anurag Kashyap
starring = Urmila Matondkar
Manoj Bajpai
Sushant Singh
music = Sandeep Chowta
cinematography = Mazhar Kamran
editing = Bhanodaya
distributor = Video Sound (Canada)
Video Sound (USA)
released = flagicon|World 26 February 1999
runtime = 90 min.
country = flagicon|India India
language = Hindi
English
amg_id = 354279
imdb_id = 0195002

"Kaun" (Hindi: कौन, English: "Who's There") is a 1999 Hindi film by Ram Gopal Verma starring Urmila Matondkar.

Written by Anurag Kashyap, the film also features Manoj Bajpai as a bumbling white collar worker and Sushant Singh as a thief. "Kaun" was an inventively minimalistic film using only one set and a cast of three actors (excluding the dead body discovered on the third floor of the house and a brief appearance of a room full of silent, motionless extras). The only costume change occurs in the film's final scene when Urmila Matondkar reappears the following morning.

Other titles: Evaru (Telugu title), Thriller (English title)

Plot

In the Malhotra household a young woman is preparing to spend a quiet evening with her pet kitty, and cable TV. The doorbell rings, and she sees through the peephole that it is a young man, who later identifies himself as Sameer A. Purnavale (Manoj Bajpai). She is reluctant to open the door, even to talk to this stranger, as the police had just issued a warning about a killer at large in this area. She does offer him a sandwich, but he tricks her into opening the door, and lets himself in on the pretext of protecting her from an unknown person, who is making a noise elsewhere in the house. When no one is found, she asks him to leave, and opens the door, and finds another man with a gun, who later identifies himself as Police Inspector Qureshi (Sushant Singh). The two doubt his credentials, and he phones the nearest police station and calls for help. The two men then get into a fight, and she gets hold of the gun, and asks them to sit quietly while she telephones her mother, and asks her to contact the police. As Purnavale goes upstairs he comes across a deadbody laying there and as he turns around, urmila is standing there holding a knife laughing like a psychopath. At the end she kills both of them and disposes their bodies and the movie ends with a door bell ringing asking if the real owner still lives there and she looks at the camera and simles.

Cast

* Urmila Matondkar as Ma'am / The Serial Killer: Ma'am is the main character in the film, her real name is unknown. It is known that "Ma'am" owns the mansion in the area. A man named Sameer A. Purnavale knocks on her door multiple times trying to get inside the house. Things start to change towards the film. The Ma'am turns out to be the serial killer and mental patient living in the home escaping from a mental hospital, she tricks the two men in to telling that one of both of them is a killer, but she's the killer. She murders the thief and Sameer. It appears that the Ma'am murdered Mr. Malhotra and took his house and named it as "The Ghupta House".

* Manoj Bajpai as Sameer A. Purnavale: Sameer is the man who knocks on "Ma'am"'s door numerous times trying to get attention of her opening the door. Sameer tries telling Ma'am that he is not the killer on the news she heard about in the area. Sameer turns out to be an employee of Mr. Malhotra and had gone to his home to find him, he then finds him stabbed numerous times by the Ma'am under the carpet. The Ma'am turns out to be the serial killer/mental patient on the loose. Sameer is murder on the rooftop of Mr. Malhotra's home.

* Sushant Singh as Thief: The thief who claims that he is the Inspector Qureshi, turns out to be a thief who was about to robb Mr. Malhotra's house. When the Ma'am comes out of the home, he turns the gun to Sameer. He is killed at the end when the Ma'am murders him on the rooftop.

Trivia

Sushant Singh initially tries to pass himself off as a police inspector named Qureshi. Ram Gopal Varma later reprised the name in his 2003 film Bhoot when Nana Patekar played a character named Inspector Liyaqat Qureshi.

External links

*imdb title|id=0195002|title=Kaun
* [http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll Kaun] at Allmovie
* [http://www.bollyscreen.com/movie.php?movieid=727 Kaun] at Bollywood Movies Online