(Crisp) Movie Review: BLACKMAIL by FENIL SETA

Blackmail is a very unusual comic fare for Bollywood standards but for a typical Hindi moviegoer, the film does provide dollops of entertainment. Director Abhinay Deo had rocked with Delhi Belly and with this flick, he returns back in that zone. The manner in which the blackmailing game begins and then goes in a different, unexpected path makes for a hilarious watch. There are so many characters but each one of them has his/her quirks, which further make the goings-on interesting. Moreover, its 140 minutes long but it doesn’t feel so as there’s so much of madness happening in the flick. On the flipside, Abhinay Deo tries some interesting stuffs to make the first 15 minutes interesting but it doesn’t work. As a result, the film initially seems very dry. Also, the climax is a downer and the film ends abruptly, leaving few crucial questions unanswered. Talking of performances, Irrfan Khan as always rocks the show. Surprisingly, he doesn’t get to mouth too many dialogues but he manages to do a great job. Kirti Kulhari surprisingly has less screen time but she’s quite a great performer. Arunoday Singh is the surprise of the film, in terms of performance and also length of the role. Pradhuman Singh Mall (Anand Tripathi; popularly known for playing fake Osama in Tere Bin Laden) is funny, especially in the second half. Anuja Sathe (Prabha) leaves a tremendous mark and is an actor to watch out for. Divya Dutta gives a killer performance while Omi Vaidya is as always funny and good to see him after ages. Urmila Matondkar looks glamorous but the song is disappointing. The rest of the songs, especially the ones composed by Amit Trivedi, are brilliant and after a long time, I enjoyed the soundtrack of a film so much. The song ‘Badla’ is so cool! On the whole, despite the minuses, Blackmail deserves a watch!

My rating – *** ½ out of 5!

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