Vodka Diaries is a very bad, very poor, often-incoherent and illogical pirated copy of Shutter Island.

Debutant director Kushal Srivastava is trying to create a twisty suspense thriller – a la M. Night Shyamalan. But the script is riddled with football-size loopholes.

The film drags on 30 minutes more than the earlier film, with even less material to go by. In both cases, we end up wondering if we had not been better off watching even “1921,” if not some other really good film.

Vodka Diaries is not a great suspense drama  when compared with theHitchcockian  tradition  . God knows, the genre has not been  much explored in Bollywood. Still in its infancy the whodunit gets a rather likable shake-up on this occasion . Vodka Diaries  stays true to  the path of  deception and betrayal that the suspense genre adapts and makes some sharp swings into  the unexpected towards the end.

Watch Vodka Diaries for it is a brilliantly shot film capable of keeping you on the edge of your seat. But remember, the big reveal might not live up to your expectations if you have watched enough psychological thrillers.

As a one-time watch Vodka Diaries could be called as a good entertaining movie with some really well-directed scenes and power packed dialogues. But do not let your expectations soar too high because the fall after that might hurt you real bad and you might return home with a baggage of disappointment and unsatisfaction with you.

Do stay for the end credits to hear Rekha Bhardwaj and Ustad Rashid Khan crooning “Sakhi ri”. It’s a sobering send-off to a suspenseful and original journey.

Despite their best efforts, the moments between Bedi and Menon are awkward and though the seasoned Menon throws in all he’s got, even his handlebar moustache looks weary by the end of this sobering slog.

Imagine Shutter Island’s big twist taken completely out of context to reiterate Bollywood’s hurt on the same spot again solution.

What emerges is as plausible as a pig head in a frog’s body.

On paper, Vodka Diaries, starring Kay Kay Menon, Raima Sen, Mandira Bedi, Sharib Hashmi, may have sounded like an engaging whodunit. But what we see is clearly not.

Vodka Diaries is about under-utilised actors and losing a promising opening. It probably needed a more thorough approach.

The film’s dialogue writing also leaves much to be desired. While the mystery should be intriguing in a suspense thriller, what remains a mystery is the lack of anything intriguing.

The end only makes you feel as there’s not enough Vodka that’ll help you survive this film, which it seems, is also the result of a bad Vodka hangover.

If you do decide to watch the film, you’d do well to take a cue from the film’s title and go in comfortably inebriated to get through the brain scramble that it is.