Nine Hours to Rama (1963)

In theory, this ought to have been an interesting look at just what drove Nathuram Gohdse (Horst Buchholtz) to plan and assassinate Mahatma Gandhi (J.S. Casshyap). Instead, what we get is a rather ploddingly miscast historical affair that though it does try, and try quite hard, simply doesn't really work. We are told by retrospective just why this Hindu held Gandhi responsible for the murders of many thousand Hindus by Muslims - acts for which he is determined to seek vengeance, and how he is prepared to travel the length and breadth of his country to achieve his goal. The casting of Horst Buccholz, an attractive man who is a master at illustrating fear and panic - he has a wonderful face for conveying these emotions - is bizarre, but not so odd as Robert Morley, Harry Andrews (Gen. Singh) and a really wooden José Ferrer as Gopal Das - the policeman determined to try and thwart the myriad of ongoing plots. Though beautifully shot and with some considerable attention paid to the look of the film, the story lacks pace, the characters depth and but for an almost doppelgänger performance from an eerily familiar looking Casshyap, this struggles above the parapet of a procedural melodrama. There is certainly an intensity to Buchholz's performance at the end, but otherwise I found this all took way too long to get anywhere...