It’s a shame then that despite the uniformly impressive performances, and Suri’s nifty directing skills, the film is only moderately fulfilling. If you’re still wondering, the real villain here is the lousy script.

Sidharth Malhotra is watchable, he just seems so nice and wholesome all the time. It is Riteish Deshmukh who sweeps the stakes.

Suri is an innate story-teller, and can keep things moving. All he needs is a strong, all-the-way credible, original plot.

If I were to review it in one word, I’d say Ek Villain is… Unnecessary. Given free tickets, sure, you could escape Humshakals in theatres this weekend with this mediocre effort, but I say do yourself a favour and seek out the Korean DVD. (Uncover it, even.) Now that’s bloody special.

The plot is fast-paced but highly indulgent. The hero seeks revenge. The villain doesn’t mind being killed. A cop who doesn’t know which villain he must side with. The question marks become hard to ignore after a point.

Watch the film for Riteish and Riteish alone just to see how effortlessly he slips out of his farcical ‘Humshakals’ pinafore into the heinous hood of ‘Ek Villain’.

The biggest of the villains in Mohit Suri’s Ek Villain is the screenplay itself. As a whole, this film, besides its surface flair, does not have too much to fall back upon.

Watch it only if that is good enough for you.

Siddharth Malhotra and Shraddha Kapoor are competent on the acting front but it is Riteish Deshmukh who pulls up a surprise. We know that he has a knack for comedy but he pulls off this role as well with admiration.

Like most plagiarized films, Ek Villain also misses bull’s eye.

To Suri’s credit must go the easy-on-the-eye treatment of the film which is what keeps it ticking (albeit painfully) apart from Sidharth and Shraddha.

Ek Villian had the potential to be a Dushman, the 1998 thriller starring Kajol, Sanjay Dutt and Ashutosh Rana.

There is only so much good actors can do when the screenplay is all over the place. Riteish Deshmukh’s performance deserved a better film. Hope he gets it soon. It would be appalling to see him go back to films like Grand Masti and Humshakals after this.

‘Ek Villain’ is touted as an intense film. It kind of lives up to it. But in its 140 minute duration, it ends up with so much relentless intensity that after a point you start looking for an escape from this heat. This is a classic example of a film that takes itself so seriously that it ends up looking manipulative and largely lacking in genuine emotions and soul. – See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/movie-review-ek-villain/15408191#sthash.OCS6O1vO.dpuf

In trying for a merger of mayhem and emotions the film finally falls apart like the shattered pieces of a broken heart.

We expect so much and get so little. That’s life.

Ek Villain could have been a far superior product. What it becomes is a lackluster thriller. You could watch it for the actors and the drama. Not if you wanted to watch the thriller Ek Villain was promised to be.

Ek Villain is a confused film with confused characters. Despite many loopholes, it is still a watchable film. Watch it for Mohit Suri’s style of direction, and songs.

By the end of it, you’re not sure if this is a soft passionate number on how love conquers all. Or a hard-core psychotic pic about a serial killer with a screwdriver, like one of those crazy Korean blood-fests, one of which, Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil (2010), has inspired the filmmakers here.

The film tries to be both. You don’t want to know how they’ve linked these two genres together. It doesn’t matter. The serial killer needs psychological help. You will too, if you get too drawn into the story.

The unveiling of the visceral saga has a lot of strong characters and Mohit has done a good job in adapting a foreign film and complimenting it with the drama that the Indian audience is used to. But he has gone a tad over in making a thriller. Maybe, filmmakers should step out of this trap more often and we wouldn`t be too far from making beacons of world cinema.

Ek Villain, or a manual on different ways of killing women, is a gory film that‘s hesitant to acknowledge its dark layers. On the surface, it’s mostly an optimistic movie with a preachy ‘Darkness can be destroyed only by light’ message.

Watch if it a film that’s essentially unoriginal, with plasticky emotions, and unnecessary gore fills up your soul. The only redeeming aspect is Riteish Deshmukh’s performance, but that would mean enduring the rest of the film as well!

The film is also very loud, in general, with almost one or the other character shouting under the guise of being full of life or full of anger. It doesn’t help that the characters are voicing out their thought instead of showing them with action. We know a lot of the villain’s characters from their own description of themselves to others, as a monologue.

There is no doubting that Suri’s vision is clear in its own space-evident from the usual heady cocktail of lilting tunes and brooding antagonists – but his storytelling leaves much to be desired. Ek Villain is a prime example, and even as a standalone effort (as it will be, for most viewers), it is perhaps his weakest.