REVIEW: CUTTPUTLLI

Producer- Vashu Bhagnani

Director- Ranjit Tewari

Star Cast- Akshay Kumar, Rakul Preet Singh, Shagun Mehta,Hrishitaa Bhatt, Chandrachur Singh

Genre- Thriller

Platform of Release- Disney Plus Hotstar

Rating- **

Jyothi Venkatesh

Swift & Slick!

A blatant frame to frame remake of the Tamil hit Ratsasan, Cuttputlli is about aspirant film writer and director Arjan Sethi (Akshay Kumar), who joins the police force after a string of failed filmmaking attempts and to his chagrin, as soon as he joins the Kasauli Police Station, a serial killer goes berserk in the town, kidnapping and killing teenage school girls brutally, one after the other.

The peaceful town of Kasauli is taken aback by a series of murders and cops are racing against time to end the act of crime by this serial killer and bring back the peace to this town.

Arjan‘s senior officer, Gudiya Parmar (Sargun Mehta), treats his filmy brain low at first, but then realises her mistake after one more brutal murder. Arjan falls in love with the schoolteacher, Divya (Rakul Preet), and continues his search for the mastermind killer.

Comparisons are bound to happen on this front, as the original film gave enough time to establish the evilness of the negative lead, which is in a way missing in the Hindi remake, thanks to hurried screenplay in 2nd half, after editing out as many as 35 minutes from the original plot. Though the film begins interestingly, the pace suffers because at times you feel that the story just does not move ahead swiftly.

As the cop, Akshay Kumar aces his act, and brings in the much-needed maturity to the character, quite effortlessly. While investigative sequences come to him naturally, the biggest plus point is that he does well in emotional portions too.

We get to see some glimpse of his comic side in the first half in the initial interactions with Rakul Preet Singh.Rakul Singh Preet puts in a neat performance and succeeds in delivering a score which is above average while both Chandrachur Singh as well as Sargun Mehta tuck in performances which cannot be flawed at all.

Hrishitaa Bhatt as Akshay's elder sister is quite okay while the girl who plays her daughter shows a lot of promise

However, all said and done, while Akshay Kumar's movie scores on excellent production values, it seems the narration is not as engaging as that of the Tamil Ratsasan.

Moreover, the villain does not have a proper story like we saw in the Vishnu Vishal original movie, though Ranjit Tewari does have his signature tune moments in the film, though the romantic song between Akshat Kumar and Rakul dilutes the proceedings.

Though the original version is far better than the cut and paste weak copy, for those who have not seen the original Tamil version Ratsasan, will surely enjoy watching this remake, which is but for a few aberrations, otherwise crisp and slick most of the time.