Dark comedy is genre which has rarely seen success in India. And when a movie comes from the director of a cult in this genre, Delhi Belly, the expectation are huge. Directed by Abhinay Deo, Blackmail has a stellar star cast headlined by Irrfan Khan and a promising concept. But it is the craft and the writing that disappointed me the most.
As evidently shown in its trailer, Blackmail is the story of a regular middle-class Mumbaikar, Dev Kaushal (played by Irrfan) who finds his wife, Reena (played by Kriti Kulhari) in bed with another man, Ranjeet Arora (played by Arunoday Singh). Instead of confronting or attacking his wife or the man she's involved with, Dev decides to make some money by blackmailing him. To pay him off, Ranjeet extracts money from his rich alcoholic wife, Dolly (played by Divya Dutta). Soon, the movie turns into a game of charades with everyone blackmailing each other about the so-called clandestine affair.
One of the biggest problems here is the pace of the film, while the director uses symbolism to express certain emotions or actions, the pace is extremely slow and does not keep the viewers engaged. Fortunately, this does not mean the movie is lengthy. The writers also underestimate the intelligence of the viewers and weave a heavily contrived and hurried plot in the second half. Also, the urge to make it an adult comedy make them add weird sequences, for instance, the sequence where Dev steals the photographs of his colleague's wife's to shag off to. The makers seem to have started it on a promising note, but meandered in the middle and ended it with an illogical and disappointing climax.
Coming to the performances, Irrfan as Dev delivers an earnest performance and is a delight to watch. His raw, tense demeanor is endearing, yet funny. Arunoday Singh as the dimwit hunk delivers quite a few laughs with his brawny-sans-brainy portrayal of Ranjeet. Kriti Kulhari and Divya Dutta are decent, but do not have much scope. The other two characters that make an impact are Pradhuman Singh as Dev's 'non-veg' joke lover colleague, Anand and Anuja Sathe as the shrewd blackmailer no. 3, Prabha. Omi Vaidya is wasted and an irritating addition to the movie as Dev's boss DK (yes, pun intended and in Delhi Belly Dk Bose mode).
The trailer gives away most of the plot, and trust me, what you see in the trailer is probably the best part of the entire movie. The rest is chaotic and poorly written and crafted. Watch it only if you must.
My rating - 1.5/5
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