CuttPutli Is One More Pedestrian Remake

Cuttputli(Disney+Hotstar)

Starring Akshay Kumar , plus several  cadaverous entities

Directed by Ranjit Tewary

Rating: **

What can we say about a  killer-thriller  which starts with an Alzheimer’s joke? It only gets worse from there , as  we are  taken  through a  crime  wave in  Kasauli which can  be stopped  only by one rookie cop. And we  all know who that is. No police  investigation required  to  sort out that one.

If you  have seen the original Tamil  film Ratasasan about  a serialkiller  on the prowl, Cuttputli would look like a bit more of  the same. Akshay Kumar who gets an additional song, missing in the  original,  doesn’t look young enough  to play a struggling filmmaker . Akshay’s involvement with the crime scenes is  inexplicable. Since he has written a script  about a serial killer he  is shown to be qualified enough  to nab a serial killer who targets   school girls.The prime  suspect  is a creepy Maths teacher  whose  modus operandi is to  intimidate  and sexually violate his  helpless students. That he has not been  caught and convicted  only goes to show we are dealing with a  crime capital where  the cops are  not  at their brightest.

The maths  teacher ends  up dead  on  the  floor and the serial killer is  still on the prowl. The  storytelling is perched between  sensitive and exploitative. Some  of  the  gruesome tortured  bodies  of  the murder victims seem  inspired  by real-life crime serials. But the  plot  never  transcends  its pulpy  intentions.

The  last half-hour is particularly  problematic with  the killer’s past hurriedly  revealed  to explain the  present. The slapdash treatment  of  the  crime denouement is  among the many drawbacks in what  could have been a sturdy adaptation. Instead  it’s only a  servile  remake with some  scenes  looking like they could have done with some  serious second  thoughts.

 The ‘dicky’ sequence where Akshay  finds a girl’s body in the back of  a car ,is  milked for melodrama with  Akshay and Chandrachur Singh vying for  the lachrymose effect. The  climax is meant to be nerve wracking . It just gets on  your nerves. To use a young girl as a bait to catch the killer without her  knowledge or  consent is not  the smartest of methods  to solve  a  messy crime.

 But then  no one is accusing this fairly ho-hum crime thriller of  being  smart.