Something is rotten in the world of ‘Cuttputlli’

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Rakul Preet Singh, Sargun Mehta, Chandrachur Singh, Hrishita Bhatt, Sujith Shanker 

Direction: Ranjit M. Tewari 

Rating: ★★

Streaming on Disney+ Hotstar 

For different but also shockingly similar reasons, many of us are obsessed with serial killers. That’s why so many series, movies and documentaries about them stalk us on every OTT platform. 

Cuttputlli, a remake of a 2018 Tamil film, Ratsasan (Demon), is also about a serial killer. This one lurks in the hills of Himachal Pradesh in a blue van, looking for school girls in school uniforms. 

That’s a fairly creepy, if standard, premise. And the expectation is that it would be a film that thrills, scares, excites and then offers a cathartic revelation and revenge. 

But these days, whichever film Akshay Kumar inhabits, he makes it stink a little. 

For a long time, Kumar’s films have carried the unbearable stench of his misogyny. And for the last few years, his films have been stinking of his sycophancy as well. All of this is always mixed and packaged with the stench of the ageing star’s megalomania.  

Mr Kumar is so in love with himself that every film he stars in must have him in every frame. That’s the case with Cuttputlli, too. It carries the stink of Kumar’s sexism and narcissism in equal measure.  

Written by Aseem Arora and directed by Ranjit M. Tewari, Cuttputlli behaves much like the serial killer – it kills girls with abandon, and has no sympathy or time for them. It is only devoted to serving the ego and stardom of Akshay Kumar. 

Akshay Kumar is 54 years old. But we are told that his character in Cuttputlli, Arjan Sethi, is a struggling, 30-something writer-director. 

Arjan is obsessed with serial killers and wants to make a movie about them that is true to its subject and free of filmy diversions. But as he and a friend of his who is not introduced to us properly hail autorickshaws and do the rounds of producer’s offices, they are met with creative constipation.   

Some want family drama, a behen, a bachchi, a mummy. Others want a love angle, some filmy items. Only one has a reasonable eye-on-a-sequel request. He wants that the serial killer not be killed. But Arjan says a righteous, indignant ‘no’ to that. The serial killer will be killed in my movie, he says, without explaining why.  

So, since his Bollywood career is not taking off, his doting behen (played by Hrishita Bhatt) goads him to move to Himachal. She lives there with her cop husband (Chandrachur Singh), who says annoyingly behenji things with a smile.  

Anyway, in a first for India, Arjan Sethi, who is shown to be the holder of a UK passport, is recruited as a sub-inspector in Himachal police. And obviously, between Parwanoo and Kasauli, skulks a serial killer.  

Through his cute niece, Arjan soon meets English teacher Divya (Rakul Preet Singh). She calls him sexist and begins to fall in love with him and the possibility of playing ghar-ghar. 

The serial killer keeps kidnapping school-going girls, leaving behind a small gift box. It contains the head of a doll with an eye gorged out and horrifying deep, red gashes on the face.  

Most of Cuttputlli is a pursuit of the mystery killer where Arjan Sethi seems to hold all the answers about how psychopaths behave, but his seniors in the local thana, led by SHO Gudia Parman (Sargun Mehta), prefer to beat out confessions from the usual suspects – lover, local stalker, etc. 

Every few days a girl’s body is found brutalised in a public place. Yet the cops keep picking up the wrong suspects. But Arjan-the-dogged keeps at it. He recalls stuff from his research, joins many dots, and even captures a serial sexual abuser. 

The film drops a major clue about the killer’s identity, and I am certain that like me, you too will figure out who the killer is. But it takes Arjan a long time to get there. His UK passport finally comes in handy to figure out who, what and why. 

Cuttputlli’s story is pivoted on violence against young women, but something is seriously rotten in its moral universe. 

Though school-going girls are the victims – they are physically assaulted, left dangling from bridges and sexually abused in classrooms – the film is not interested in them. It’s only interested in Akshay Kumar and his bae’s character.  

Apart from one victim who is close to Arjan, we are not introduced to any of them. They are just bodies wrapped in plastic, their teeth broken, eyes gorged out. And after almost every gruesome murder, a brief sad-family scene follows and then the film cuts to a cute scene or song involving Akshay and Rakul.  

In two very triggering sexual abuse scenes, Sujith Shanker creeps us out. But even this strand is sacrificed at the altar of Akshay Kumar’s megalomania. The film simply moves on without even a fleeting concern for the girls.  

In Cuttputlli, the girls exist only to be beaten, sexually abused, tortured or murdered. Their relevance is only as a whodunnit challenge in the life of our Bollywood hero.  

As is the template in all of Kumar’s films, he is cast here too as a traditional, desi guy, while Rakul Preet Singh’s Divya is a modern, feminist type who falls for his earthy charm. 

Akshay Kumar always drapes earnestness and goodness like a shawl. And that’s all we must see in all his characters. In Cuttputlli, his goodness is communicated to us in terribly tacky, cliched ways. In one scene, while he walking, he spots a pregnant stranger and, without asking her, bends down to tie her shoelaces. It creeped me out, but thrilled the girl.  

Cuttputlli is not an unbearable watch. It is okay. Timepass. And it did leave me with three images. First is the cuteness of Rakul Preet Singh that lights up the screen. And here she is even given one decent, funny scene. 

The other is Sujith Shanker. In two brief scenes, Shanker raises the film’s tension levels so high that I wish he had stayed on. 

The third is the doll’s plastic head. It is the creepiest thing in Cuttputlli. An unforgettable image. But scarier still is Akshay Kumar’s toothy grin that sits next to it, all the time.