While Abhay Deol’s character, “SV”, thinks he has managed to nail the politician, he soon realizes nothing is as it seems and that only the words “ Manorama, age 32” must make sense to unlock the heart of the mystery. A canal is in the making in the village, a project driven by the irrigation minister but opposed by civil society organisations who believe the promise of water is fraudulent. The foul-mouthed Brij Mohan, who's cusswords have been inexplicably blipped out here (if Saif in Omkara was allowed to use the 'b' word', why not poor Vinay Pathak), the two goons who cheerfully beat up SV (one of them is queasy about breaking fingers!), even the striped fish in the home-aquariums, have character.A strange lady arriving at his doorstep with a strange request – that of spying on her husband, the current irrigation minister, to catch him red-handed in the throes of an affair – turns his life upside down and sets him down a dangerous path of deceit and betrayal. Full marks for invention, and real-life, quirky characters, even if the pace sometimes falters. The delightful plot is inspired by the wildly popular pulp fiction novellas of the 60s and 70s in magazines like Manohar Kahaniyaan, and Satya Katha. Manorama, was that even her real name? How did she die? What was in the missing camera roll? What is going on in Lakhot? And then the late night caller dies a brutal death. The deed is done, and SV gets back to his life - riding the empty, dusty roads, sniping at unhappy wife Nimmi (Gul), and cribbing to brother-in-law Brij Mohan, a canny cop at the local thana (Vinay Pathak). What he gets, instead, is a troubled young woman, her face half-covered with a dupatta, an altercation, and a ghostly old woman in a wheelchair. Everyman hero SV, who's also a failed writer of detective fiction, takes her money, and sets out to the palace with his cheap camera to catch P P Rathore (Kulbhushan) in some red-hot action. Suspended PWD engineer Satyaveer (Abhay) is called to his door in the middle of the night by a mysterious woman (Sarika) who wants him to shadow her husband, the area's powerful MLA. And it tells a crackling good yarn, while at it. Manorama, Six Feet Under, former ad-man Navdeep Singh's remarkably atmospheric first feature is that rare Bollywood creature: it's unabashedly noir in the way it's styled, with a superb sense of place and character. And an ordinary man, living out an ordinary life, pitchforked into the murky goings-on, who uncovers the layers, and redeems himself, in the process. Lakhot, a sleepy desert outpost that time has forgotten, the surface of its small-town ordinariness marred by deceipt, death, and oozing corruption. CAST: Abhay Deol, Gul Panag, Vinay Pathak, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Raima Sen, Sarika
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