Who killed the privileged and despicable Vicky Rai (Jatin Goswami)?
His father, state Home Minister Jagannath Rai (Ashutosh Rana)?
Former Chief Secretary Mohan Kumar (Raghubir Yadav), the unpleasant bureaucrat-turned-Gandhian?
Abused actress Shabnam Saxena (Paoli Dam) who called him Vicky leechad Rai?
Waiter Munna Chaurasia (Shashank Arora) caught with a gun?
Andamans’ tribal Eketi (Mani PR) on the trail of a stolen idol that he must take back home?
Vicky’s sister Ritu Rai (Rucha Inamdar) who too had her reasons?
Ashok Rajput (Sharib Hashmi) Welfare Officer, Andaman Islands with his family secrets?
CM Vohra (Kenneth Desai) who plays a deft game of politics?
Guru Atmadev (Vivek Mishra) whose ashram was raided?
Socialite Rita Sethi (Himanshi Choudhary) who’s always game for a new bedroom partner?
What’s the game CBI officer Suraj Yadav (Pratik Gandhi) is playing?
Can police officer Sudha Bhardwaj (Richa Chadha) crack what’s going on?
Writer-director Tigmanshu Dhulia, along with co-writers Vijay Maurya and Puneet Sharma, takes Vikas Swarup’s murder mystery novel Six Suspects, and has a whale of a time going all over the country with half-a-dozen potential culprits.
With childhood traumas in the rich Rai household, politics taking its stranglehold and crime strewn over every threshold, timelines and locations go dizzy. Chattisgarh is created. The narration moves jauntily. Delhi, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kolkata, the Andamans, Chennai, with background scores to match the region.
When a CBI officer starts off by telling a minister, ‘Plate lagayiye’ to show his acquiescence, it’s apparent that the well-connected will get away, the innocent will be framed.
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What unfolds is fairly familiar territory but mercifully without disgusting visuals. Sleaze, scam, politics and bent cops. Tribals passed off as Naxalites. Surreptitious surveillance, conspiracy, crime, shady motives and secrets up every sleeve. There are the usual spots where filthy abuses flow. And people being bumped off like flies. Also, stretched chases that never seem to end.
But there’s amusement in the quirky writing (seen in films like Ludo) with characters on the periphery taking centrestage turn by turn, criss-crossing one another and joining the main track. There’s some quirky photography too especially at a Gandhi exhibition.
After travelling all over the country and unearthing the motives of every suspect, the only question to ask is, ‘So who killed Vicky Rai?’ Your guess is as good as mine. And that’s what keeps it moving.