Teresa Reviews Now or Never (1997)

Teresa reviews Now or Never (1997), (a.k.a. Aar Ya Paar),

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 4½ blunt objects

But only for The Sucker Punch, the novel the movie was really based on. There’s very little Agatha present, despite what other sources tell you.

Quality of film: 3½ blunt objects

Despite bad editing, a major mistake in the subtitles, an often incoherent and wildly melodramatic plot, it held our interest for nearly 3 hours.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

No matter what you may have read elsewhere, Aar Ya Paar is not based on Endless Night. The closest it comes to that seminal novel is that a man marries an heiress under false pretenses and has a hidden girlfriend on the side. This is not a trope that Agatha and only Agatha used. Marrying an heiress for her money followed by her untimely death is an ancient plot. Fortune hunters are why careful millionaires have always verified their daughters’ gentlemen callers and set up trusts to ensure, after their death, that their daughters remain free of unwanted entanglements. There is nothing new under the sun.

There is one Agatha plot point. It’s the tape recording providing an alibi when the speaker is somewhere else doing something nefarious. You saw it in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). In Aar Ya Paar, the tape recorder plays while two unimpeachable witnesses hear it in the next room. When they have questions, the villain’s accomplice reassures them.

At the same time there is, unlike in Endless Night and Ackroyd, a very reliable narrator. When Aar Ya Par opens, our antihero Shekhar Khosla (you swiftly learn why he could be the antihero poster boy) is dictating his confession into a tape recorder for the benefit of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Khan.

Shekhar is bloody and obviously guilty. He doesn’t deny it, either. He’s proud of how he lived. His sole regret is getting caught. He concludes that it was always his fate to come to a bad end. Mike Rogers (Endless Night) and Dr. Shepherd (Ackroyd) lied to you, dear reader, and to everyone else. Shekhar lies to everyone but you. You never have much doubt Shekhar will ruin lives and so it proves. What you don’t know is how he ends up in that pavilion by the sea, alongside the body of his dead girlfriend. Nor do you know, yet, how he murdered his wife, Veena, which is what his confession to APC Khan is about. The rest of the film gets you to the pavilion and what happens next.

Moreover, unlike Mike Rogers, Shekhar shows not one shred of remorse about murdering Veena nor realizes that he loved her.

Since none of the plot resembles Endless Night, where does it come from?

It comes, virtually scene for scene, from The Sucker Punch (1954). This is a novel from the prolific pen of English writer James Hadley Chase (1906-1985). In his day, he was considered one of the best thriller writers of all time. He wrote 90 novels, many of which became films. He specialized in double and triple crosses topped by twist endings making you reevaluate everything you’d just read. His violent, explicit books race along at breakneck speed and are just as readable today as they were 70 years ago.

Did Agatha read James Hadley Chase’s novels? It’s possible. He was a bestseller, and she read widely. Are his books anything like hers? Other than tropes like marrying for money, followed by murder, or hidden couples, no. They are not.

I believe claims that Aar Ya Paar is based on Endless Night is because reviewers never watched it. Or, reviewers heard an heiress is married and murdered for her money while the lower-class murderer carries on a clandestine affair with her personal assistant so what else could it be other than Endless Night? This shows that Agatha Christie remains the most widely-read novelist in the world while once-bestselling James Hadley Chase is largely forgotten. But if you’re familiar with The Sucker Punch, you’ll recognize virtually every plot beat, despite it taking place in contemporary India and withered old crone Vesta Shelley (the heiress) morphing into hot & sexy Veena Sanghvi.

Since Aar Ya Paar isn’t Agatha Christie nor is it Agatha-adjacent, does it work on its own merits? Yes, it does. It held our interest, despite multiple problems. For a nearly three-hour film, it raced along madly.

But it has its problems.

The film is melodrama at its most overblown and melodramatic, but melodramas need to be clear as to who is who and how they’re related.

The subtitles are acceptable except when Shekhar has a lengthy conversation with girlfriend #1, Julie. She’s a nightclub entertainer (explaining the presence of two elaborate Bollywood musical extravaganzas) with few — I think! — moral scruples. Shekhar explains his new marriage with Veena to Julie and she tells him that money is necessary for a good life. Over and over and over, the identical subtitle repeated for a good five minutes. Did Julie give Shekar permission to marry, cheat, and possibly murder Veena because, after all, wives do die sometimes?

There’s this weird interlude at a wrestling match.

It took forever. Big-name wrestlers (wrestling fans will recognize Owen and Bret Hart) showed off. I think the purpose was for Shekhar to add excitement to Veena’s boring, rich, sheltered life.

Far too much time is spent on a Venice honeymoon montage, time that could have been spent explaining more about Anu, Veena’s personal assistant. Anu has a boyfriend who plays a crucial role at the climax but he’s seen so little that he appears out of left field.

Too much of the plot was compressed so I had trouble following it. Time that could have been spent with characters was spent on musical montages. It’s quite possible an Indian audience didn’t have trouble with this, because subtitles always miss nuance and details. Events came up, such as when Shekhar took over Veena’s finances, and then those complications involving tax fraud, stock shenanigans, and evicting tenants to turn Veena’s property into brothels largely vanished. Shekhar’s boss who kept him on because of Shekhar’s father (who never shows up) appears and vanishes, as does Shekhar’s coworker.

Then we get personal. Shekhar is presented from the first moment as a player. On a bet with the bartender, he seduces Julie. How much does he know about her? She disappears for long stretches. Was Julie conducting an affair with Anu’s estranged boyfriend, Anil? It’s implied but not spelled out. If so, that meant Julie was triple-crossing Shekhar. She’d encouraged him to marry Veena (despite their own relationship) for the money. She was fine with being a mistress? Or did she encourage him to marry and then murder Veena so they’d be rich? But her real motive was that Shekhar would get caught, leaving her rich and happy with the hidden boyfriend? Who was Anu’s ex?

It looked like Julie was as involved in the plot to murder Veena as Anu was, but I can’t say for sure. And how involved was Anil, who was playing off Julie and Anu? Was any of this his idea, leaving him rich and happy?

The film is a wild ride and should be watched twice so you can figure out what’s going on. But it is not Agatha Christie, nor does it have much to do with Endless Night.