The leading couple has barely met. They eye each other from a distance. Constantly. It’s a popular form of rural love. She disappears from the pind suddenly. He checks out from the village as well. The movie goes off on another tangent, on to another plain. So do your brains, from here on.

The movie is so stretched from both ends, you could see it tearing apart from the centre. The couple’s clueless fathers look on like notable ‘sideys’ in suits. All good things come to an end. Thankfully, that’s true for things not so good as well.

So much lower on logistics and ambition. It is, what they call, a quickie: As true for the movie’s subject, as for its unsatisfying outcome.

So, how’s it? Whatever. To be fair. That’s what it was supposed to be.

Audiences won’t find anything new in this movie either. Why bother.

Moving images can cause a genuine migraine to some. At least the ones in this film could.

The writing is entirely episodic, like a TV show. Scenarios recur. Actors ham it up. Loud background score informs every scene. You care for our man Mussaddi. Or at least wish to. He takes rounds of various ‘daftars’ (offices), literally living a farce. Democracy is probably both the problem, and its only plausible solution.

Devgn walks to beats similar to Salman’s Dabanng. He beats the crap out of ruffians outside a village theatre. He restores his woman’s honour. Besotted, she chases him. Audiences think even more highly of the hero. He beats the crap some more.

You still wish these kids well. So to the others who will go, watch this short film, extended to a full length feature, if they must. Do children ever have much of a choice at theatres anyway?

Besides, Murder (based on Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful) was an aesthetically lit, coherently structured, semi-erotic flick about a bored, married Bangkok mom, in an adulterous affair with her ex (Emraan Hashmi). Sure enough, there was a murder in it.