So here comes Provoked: A True Story, with a strong British technical sheen and an underplayed Bollywood melodramatic sensibility, all to win our hearts and make us gasp in horror at what the protagonist went through. Sadly, it doesn’t always hit it right on the head. You notice a lot of people coming out of the screening apologetic for not liking the film enough.
Let’s get the tale out of the way first. One summer night in 1989, British-born Indian Deepak Ahluwalia (Naveen Andrews) is burnt alive as he sleeps. His wife Kiranjit (Aishwarya Rai) is discovered inside i....