Nikhil Advani’s sixth feature film is an acutely accomplished work of art. It’s a thriller, yes. About the enforced extradition of a Dawood-like gangster. But what I came away with was a haunting love story between a mysterious Indian intelligence agent and a Pakistani sex worker, both wounded and scarred for life.

I recommend a national holiday for the entire nation to go and see this movie. It makes the other recent high-profile acclaimed films look hopelessly inadequate.

It is all fun to watch-loud, rumbustious, over the top, ear-splitting fun provided you are a Singham-Dabangg aficionado, and a Sanjay Dutt fan.

Let’s first get the picture right. Contrary to what the trailers and promotional images tell is Fugly is not a Fukrey-friendly flick about four friends having a ball in life. This film means business. Light on top and substantial underneath, this is the Rang De Basanti of the post-Modi era. Thoughtful and at times brilliant, it tells us a great deal about the state of a culture and people searching for reasons to keep the spirit of nationalism alive as self-serving corruption grown all around us.

Chittagong doesn’t portray the Britishers as only ogres and sadists. Thank Goodness for some restraint in the conflict. For cinema to accommodate history, there must be a sense of balance between drama and authenticity. Chittagong manages that balance quite well. One misses the sharp high points of drama that constitute the historical epics in Holywood by, say, David Lean. Bedabrata Pain. I suspect, doesn’t strive to create history, he recreates it.

“Kahaani” is one of those rare films that can easily lay claim to being a game-changer. And yet the narrative makes no claims. The destiny of the protagonist is charted in a breathless sweep of urgently persuasive episodes that tumble out as though God wrote Vidya Bagchi’s screenplay. Enthralling, absorbing and engaging the narrative never resorts to italicized emotions to get our attention. We are hooked unconditionally from scene one. We surrender to Vidya’s journey. She gives us no choice.

It is the underused Purbi Joshi as Himesh’s overbearing girlfriend who steals the show. She imparts a sense of lived-in authenticity to her role, almost at times going beyond the script in search of her character’s lost soul. Why don’t we get to see more of this pretty talented girl in our films?

Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster creates a world far removed from Guru Dutt’s classic, and yet the two works are miraculously joined at the hip. Almost every character from the Guru Dutt film is replicated if not parodied in Dhulia’s film.

The crumbling sepia-toned interiors and colour tones scream out a message of live and let live. But it’s too late, Dhulia’s characters are felled by their own greed and lust.

Khap should be commended for attempting a socially-relevant theme with some amount of detachment and equanimity. Should love between cousins or people from within one family be sternly discouraged just because the village panchayat feels it is damaging to the social framework?