The film is based on the real life story of a family who survived that night, but is still juggling to get justice. The first part of the first half of film is slow as the director takes a lot of time to establish the life that Sikhs used to live before the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi. Tejinder Kaur (Soha Ali Khan), like other housewives, looks after house-hold chores and Davinder Singh (Vir Das) is a senior official in DESU office. The film introduces the viewers to all their extended family members and then shows how each one of them gets killed later. Davinder and his family survive because their Hindu friends help them in rescuing. In spite of having a powerful subject at hand, writer Harry Sachdeva fails badly by making it on the religious sentiments. The plot of the movie is extremely flimsy, the characterizations are limited by casting and imagination and the pace is too slow to be effective. The performances also lack grit. There is of course the forceful inclusion of information on Sikh community such as the reason why they wear the turban, why they are considered brave and the five things that make a Sikh. Even with the good intention and real life background, 31st October lacks at few places. The direction, the screenplay and the music fail to impress the views at the box office. The movie might suffer to perform well at the box office. Go and watch it if you attached to the roots of patriotism. We suggest giving it a miss!

Director Shivaji Lotan Patil’s film opens with a sneak peek into the lives of some Good Samaritans. Good-natured, god-fearing beings who look for a moment of affection and solace. They know each other for long and are as closely knit as a family. To establish a well-meaning premise, characters refrain from showing their grey sides. The camera hovers at amateurish angles, mostly trying to provide a feel of the claustrophobic space. You also see the famous monuments as you enter the bylanes with Gold Spot and Bournvita ads splashed on unfinished walls. The canvas is big and budget constraints force the crew to go for easier options. The actors also falter. Their accent, makeup and visual effects don’t really set a benchmark but the film does manage to create that atmosphere of fear and tension. But it gets a bit stretched despite the 102-minute length. Twists are predictable and secondary actors appear half prepared. Also, they keep shifting gears between Punjabi and Hindi. 31st October is an important film, especially when many have gone scot-free in the anti-Sikh riots cases even after so many years. It’s going to be 32 years in 10 days. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

Ready or not, here comes a history lesson! A story as simple as that has been embellished with a dozen unnecessary characters (each one's death adding to the runtime), lessons on the Sikh community, Sonu Nigam singing over slo-mo riot scenes and a B-story of blossoming love, that is altogether forgotten 15 minutes into the movie. Entirely too much time is spent on the set-up, the first half is dialogue-heavy but characters seem to ramble and the sound is terrible. When actors speak, you feel them dubbing the lines right there, next to you. Producer-writer Harry Sachdeva's heart must have been in the right place, but a lot else wasn’t. In parts, the movie ends up looking like a dramatic reenactment of riots from a crime show. To its credit, the movie is only 102 minutes long, and you can see a sense of honesty in it. But the final product is underwhelming and looks like a small-scale remake of the Hollywood film franchise, The Purge (innocent people running scared on the streets, dodging murderous mobs).

It isn't enough for a film to be well-intentioned. It still has to get most of its punches in to put points on the board. 31st October, a rare Hindi film focused on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, decisively checks the first box. It, however, fails to score big on the second count. Directed by Marathi filmmaker Shivaji Lotan Patil, 31st October makes the right noises but is unable to direct and land its blows with the ferocity that could get the audience all pumped up. 31st October suffers for want of a sharper and stronger screenplay. The quality of the acting, too, is rather rudimentary. The film could certainly have done with a more apt lead pair than Soha Ali Khan and Vir Das, neither of whom look right for the parts of a Sikh man and his wife. Despite all the time and footage that the film invests in this middle class family caught unawares as the anti-Sikh rioters go on the rampage, the couple does not emerge above the din. Its theme is of pressing relevance. Yet, 31st October doesn't leave a lasting impression. It isn't half the film it could, and should, have been. Be that as it may, it is still is a film that needs to be widely seen.

There has been almost nothing in mainstream Bollywood about those dark days. 31st October had the chance to re-construct that ghastly day and show just how an event can spiral out of control, and just how easily hatred can be fanned and spread when the law and order machinery has been told to look the other way. But the film has nothing – neither narrative nor engaging characters—on offer. Das is hopelessly miscast. The others fare no better. Khan at least tries hard to look the part, but cannot rise above the sheer ineptness of this enterprise, which neither tells nor shows us anything we do not know.