The Chasing Iamb

The Plot
Amy (Kalki Koechlin), unhinged by childhood trauma, moves to Mumbai from LA with her rich family. She befriends KC (Gulshan Devaiya) and debauch company, an angsty bunch with money to spend. One night, they accidentally kill some people. Then the rest.

-5 For Anurag Kashyap’s Grim Face issuing statutory warning about drugs and alcohol. Please.

+5 To Amy For Refusing To Wear Those Salwar Kameezes. No wonder she feels disturbed.

-10For The Endless Foreign Film-Style Shots: pausing objects mid-fall and the annoyingly retro entry of mystifyingly angry cop Arvind Mathur (Rajeev Khandelwal).

-5 For The Squeamishness Most Of The Supposed Bad-Asses Display during truth or dare. Oh Amy, you are so much badder than them even in your Girl, Interrupted phase. You at least joke about Tanya’s rape.

+6 For Zubin’s Casually Tossed Of ‘Suck my dikra’.

+1 Because You Are going to need all the points you have later. We won’t even bother deducting for the scene in which KC in a Hummer struggles to beat an Audi in a race.

-6 For Amy Saying her father will send her to a convent if she behaves badly. Get thee to a nunnery, LA girl. Sure. Even Madhur Bhandar - kar is more up-to-date.

+7 To Arvind Mathur for using the corpse of the kidnapped tourist as protection against bullets. First surprise in the whole film.

+2 For Mathur’s Autorickshaw kick. Meet Mathur, president of the Meter Down campaign.

-8 For The Random shifts in perspective. Mathur is running into the church to save the day but we suddenly see glimpses of the cuckoo house inside Amy’s head. Salim-Javed would brain you with a television for such sloppy story-telling.

-10 For The Worst denouement in recent times. Why is Malvankar (Raj Kumar Yadav) getting the stick and the lecture from the police force for trying to make a quick buck from idiots? Because the police force is noble or corrupt? Who knows. Pavan Malhotra as police commissioner swings between playing Rakesh Maria and one of the Borgias so that’s no help. Watch out as Malhotra struggles to say maa ki aankh.