The film is based on the story of the notorious Raman Raghav who infested the streets of Bombay(now Mumbai) in the mid-to-late 1960s. The serial killer who confessed to doing away with more than 40 people, was the subject of Sriram Raghavan’s film in 1991. Kashyap’s contemporary retread is a return to familiar dark territory — kinetic hand-held camerawork in the slushy slums and narrow alleys, which he has been using since Black Friday, whose unforgettable chase scene is replicated here too, but not with such acuity.
And that’s the problem with this film, which doesn’t give its characters enough nuance to go on with. We submit to the unwatchable or to immense depravity in the hope that we will learn something about ourselves as a race. What turns us into ravening beasts? Or worse, because some beasts are truly gentle. We don’t get the layers which will lead us into an understanding.