Director Vasan Bala strikes an excellent balance of style/ form and substance/ content while using the combination of cinematography, editing, music and dialogue to a devastating effect. A directorial flourish and elan not seen much. I would like to call it pulp panorama. Even during a deadly scuffle you have rock music in the background. There is a twist at the end of every scene. If you have liked " Ludo" and " Loop lapeta" you will also like this movie. There is quirkiness, bizarre situations, passion, blackmail, murder and more in nicely crafted scenes. This is a dark gripping suspense thriller in the noir genre. There are shades of crime based stories of Hindi films of 60s ( Shakti Samanta, Raj Khosla). Also there is the infuence of the Anuraag Kashyap, Anuraag Basu and Sriram Raghavan movies. With Vasan it is clear that there is an auter in the making.

A plus point is the almost perfect casting. Rajkummar Rao is brilliant as the small town guy caught in a web of his making. He is very convincing. ( Watch his terror as he confronts the cobra). Not lagging behind is Huma Qureshi who scores big time as the tantalizing temptress cum femme fatale. The characterisation seems to be patterned after the vamps of old films but with nicely laced contemporary hues and demeanour. Radhika Apte has done well as the cop drawling the one liners effectively. One however wishes her role was a little longer.

The rocking foot tapping music is splendidly interwoven in the narrative. The songs give a jazzy look to the movie. The cinematography and editing have given a fast pace with not a dull moment. Go for it.