A man wakes up not looking forward to the day ahead, only to watch it worsen by the hour. The cornered man is whirling into a vortex, and you realise why his name is Abhimanyu (Sohum Shah). “aah…clever,” you say and hear the riff of a song from your teenage years. “Naaaice!” you say, and a few minutes later, the song blares out loud. I felt a little disappointed that the makers didn’t trust us to get it without them spoon-feeding us. That about sums up how the film made me feel. I appreciated it mostly, but would sense a slight, “oh no…why did they do that!” every once in a while.

The one sequence post-interval, though, Sohum Shah outdoes himself by showing all of this at once. And without once letting it feeling like a “performance”.

I enjoyed the ambience created from the word go. The sense of urgency comes through even in its super-slow first few minutes. And that the makers picked that pace is a testament to their skill. The film is only 90 minutes long and has a lot going on, yet it chooses to take its time to expose us to the set-up and set the tone for the film. All departments seem perfectly in sync with the camerawork, and the editing doing a lot of the heavy-lifting.

And then, of course, Sohum Shah takes over. He’s the only actor you see completely on screen until the last scene. Most of the others are either voices on the phone or faces on DPs or photographs, and there is one on a video call. There are these two bit-roles, one of whom is masked, and the screen has only half a face of the other. I wouldn’t say they created fully fleshed-out characters before you despite none-to-very-little screen time. But they did their job, which was to tell you the relevant past and present of Abhimanyu’s life.

Sohum Shal, on the other hand, is mind-blowing. You know Abhimanyu is the kind of character who is composed and loving when he wants to be but pretty self-centred otherwise. Not the most likeable character, but you understand his motivations. The one sequence post-interval, though, he outdoes himself by showing all of this at once. And without once letting it feeling like a “performance”.

The film then goes ahead and wraps it up with a nice message, but it also made me wonder, “What if that person* wasn’t as capable?” and “Do we really want to say end justifies the means?” I am not too sure about that, and it bothered me enough to not like the movie as much as I liked most of it.

- meeta, a part of the audience