Director Vasan Bala and screenwriter Yogesh Chandekar has made a delicious mix of wit, wickedness and whimsicality that defines the neo-noir comic thriller as a whole. Full of knowing winks thrown the audience's way, Netflix's Monica, O My Darling, is a wildly entertaining film packed with twists and turns that keep on giving until the final fadeout.

Rajkummar Rao plays robotics expert Jayant Arkhedkar, a small-town lad who has wormed his way into the corporate charmed circle. Branded a pretender and a parasite by a rival within the company, he is drawn into a fiendish conspiracy that can only spell trouble. Determined not to have the rug pulled from under his feet, he sinks deeper and deeper into a dark rabbit hole.

Huma Qureshi is Monica Machado, the top honcho's secretary, a femme fatale who employs her guiles to hold her ground on a slippery slope. And Radhika Apte, given an "and above all" billing a la Pran in Hindi movies of another era, is ACP Naidu, wisecracks her way through the grind of policing.

Aided by a terrific screenplay and a tremendous cast of actors, Vasan Bala assembles all that a twisted thriller should ideally have and then adds his own singular flourishes in the form of wonderfully organic, homegrown elements fuelled by an unbridled love for popular cinema and a sensibility that can turn familiar into fresh with minimum fuss.

Vasan Bala extracts top-notch performances from his actors. Rajkummar Rao is never off the boil as a chameleon driven by an instinct for survival. Huma Qureshi fleshes out Monica in all her splendour, a woman who revels in twirling men around her fingers. Radhika Apte takes to the role of a chatty policewoman who is always a step ahead of the rest like a fish to water.

Be it Sukant Goel, Sikandar Kher, Akanksha Ranjan Kapoor or Zayn Marie Khan, everybody in the ensemble cast adds spice to the dark universe but actually, it is the writing that makes even the minor characters stand out and leave their scent. The compositions of Achint Thakkar have the jazzy flavour of R. D. Burman and the lyrics by Varun Grover provide a sense of human greed and the ephemeral nature of life in a fun way.

At times there is an overdose of self-awareness and doffing of the hat, but Monica O My Darling... is not to be missed at any cost.