Most Hindi films are about dil-vil and pyaar-vyaar. Actor-turned director Shekhar Suman's debut directorial is about that for the first (and large) part of the film. Once the jazz of the regular rich boy-poor girl romance, met with parental opposition is over and done with is when you arrive at the heart of the problem in Heartless. The romantic-medical thriller throws light on a condition called anesthetic awareness, a scary situation in which a patient seemingly unconscious to the doctors is able to hear sounds and experience pain. With so much going for it, sadly the film takes too long, in fact very long to arrive at a fixture from where you would want to remain glued to your seat. Shekhar Suman wastes far too much time making his son look super cool in song and dance sequences. The songs are the biggest road block in the smooth flow of the narrative of this thriller.Truth be told. Shekhar Suman, the actor in Heartless, is more impressive than the director of the film. Better luck next time.

You really can't put a good man down. Even when his heart breaks he bounces back stronger than before. So it is believed. But watching actor-turned-director Shekhar Suman's directorial debut I am not too sure. His vulnerable ailing protagonist Aditya (played by the director's son Adhyayan) goes through a series of life-changing knife-in-the-heart experiences that leave him disenchanted and shattered. Heartless is no ordinary coming-of-age story. It tells the powerful if illogical story of a young heir whose urgent need for a heart transplant puts him in an incredible medical and emotional crisis. The screenplay by Nina Arora weaves the story of love and betrayal into a tenable if somewhat far-fetched medical condition known as anesthetic awareness. But all said and done Heartless works within its ambitious realm of love, betrayal and mortality. It makes an endearing departure from routine romances about broken hearts and mended morale. Director Shekhar Suman doesn't quite manage to hold the audience's attention in that spellbinding grip which the plot suggests. But the drama never sags. This is a stylish career-relaunch for Adhyayan Suman.

This is no romance film. It's a vanity project. The camera spends more time on Adhyayan Suman in Heartless than it did on Hrithik Roshan in Kaho Na... Pyaar Hai -- with both films being directed by the actors' respective fathers. Of the 110 minutes that the the film runs for, 100 of those have our beloved poor little rich boy on screen. However, the trouble is that even though Adhyayan's character is made to dominate the film, Addy could just as easily have been a Subtracty and it wouldn't have made much of a difference -- you still wouldn't be able to recognise him on the street. The rest of the casting hasn't been done too well either. Veterans like Puri and Naval find themselves on the sidelines with few sloppy dialogues to mumble and a whole lot of tears to shed. The soundtrack is mediocre -- listenable but nothing refreshing -- with the only song worth downloading being Fuzon's Ishq Khuda. However, if you slept in/don't actually own a car/are still stuck in jail, there's still no need to worry at all. You're not missing anything. Despite being well shot and fairly well edited, this film has nothing of value to offer. Heartless is, in fact, without a soul.

The only reason to watch this one was to see what Shekhar Suman would do in his directorial debut.  It is ostensibly made to alert viewers to an anesthesia glitch which propels patients into a state of awareness where they can feel pain and can hear everything, but are unable to say it.  The second half is a hoot. I’m sure it was not intended to be. If a real-life surgeon actually sees what happens in this make-believe operation theatre, I’m convinced he’d laugh his head off. He’s fibbing, he’s fibbing, exclaims Dr Trehan ( Puri, who seems to have wandered into the film wondering what he’s doing there), and you see a bunch of masked fellows rushing to resuscitate our hero, who is roaming around in his hospital gown gasping for breath. There’s a plot, and it needs unraveling. They should have just let it be.

Shekhar Suman's directorial debut Heartless is inspired by the Hollywood medical thriller Awake. The film, nicely adapted and understated (except for the misplaced title track) deals with the disturbingly real phenomenon of anesthetic awareness in which surgery patients, though paralyzed are conscious of everything they are experiencing including pain. It's an absorbing thriller. And one doffs one's hat to Shekhar for handling this difficult subject with such finesse. Though lavishly mounted, the first half is routine with emphasis on the rich-boy-meets-poor-girl angle. Post intermission, the real plot is unravelled. Though the twists in the tale rest largely on a dry medical fact, the film becomes a thrilling roller-coaster ride with terrific punches. The mother-son relationship is emotionally gratifying. In a lighter vein, it's Adhyayan's turn to borrow a line out of Yash Chopra's Deewar and preen like Shashi Kapoor did, saying, "Mere paas maa hai." For someone so young and inexperienced, Adhyayan turns in a faultless performance. Ariana passes muster. Of the songs, Arijit's rendition of main dhoondne ko zamaane mein that plays with the end credits has that haunting quality.