To steer clear of sanctimonious newspaper stories all your life, and then be saddled with movies like Kadak Singh — now there’s a rotten bit of luck worth moaning about, sighs Sreehari Nair.

Since most newspapers exist to convince the average reader that the world is a rotten place, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s art can be described as a formidable ally of the newspaper business.

Our rotten world, Roy Chowdhury believes, runs on the twin motors of greed and insensitivity, and if his PINK was a wheezy evocation of this belief, the controlling metaphor this time around is mourning.

In his direct-to-OTT release, Kadak Singh, an atmosphere of mourning pervades the proceedings.

The junkies in this movie seem plucked out of dreary public service ads.

The protestors have every appearance of being protestors-on-hire.

Those who are depressed don’t even try to force a smile, and everybody’s just a touch paranoiac.

The situation is so grim that one can, with impunity, quote from King Lear: In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; and the bond cracked betwixt father and child — that is to say, between A K Srivastava, senior investigative officer at the Department of Financial Crimes, Kolkata, and his two grown-up kids, who have code-named their strict father Kadak Singh, the silly cognomen being the only source of mirth in the otherwise joyless narrative.

Pankaj Tripathi, who plays Srivastava, hasn’t appeared as an Indian Roughneck for some time now, which makes the irritated father of this movie a welcome change.

As it is, playing the serene, life lesson-spouting type (an extension of Tripathi’s talk show personality) was starting to get rather easy.

The investigative officer is also, I must add, a love object — and that is no meager relief.

When the story proper begins, A K Srivastava is shown recuperating in a hospital, his memory severely impaired after a failed suicide attempt, cared for by a nurse, Miss Kannan. Parvathy Thiruvothu plays the nurse, and she does her best to look and act relaxed.

Miss Kannan is a smiling scolder (‘Are you bonkers?’, ‘You have no shame, do you?’, and other such harmless reprimands rendered in hasty Malayalam is her specialty), and the total lack of stiffness about the character led me to guess that Parvathy had agreed to do the part out of her reverence for the director of PINK and for the chance to work with Pankaj Tripathi.

The sage-like actor and the feminist role model share some bloodless banter inside the institutional grey of the hospital room, even as life rages outside.

The plot has it that Srivastava has been accused of colluding with the prime suspect in a huge Chit Fund Scam, and his two kids are not helping his cause.

The son is a puppy-faced wastrel while the well-meaning daughter, Sakshi (Sanjana Sanghi), uses Hinglish throwaways such as Scary Mod (which translates to Darawna Bend). The siblings have identical nostrils and share the same sense of gloom.

As investigative officer Srivastava tries to get to the bottom of the financial scam, he discovers that his path is beset by tripwires. And since the makers would prefer that this review not contain any spoilers, I can round it off with phrases like ‘and then we get more of the same.’

There is one standout scene, where the imaginative staging helps build considerable tension.

This scene has the daughter, Sakshi, walking into a decrepit mall and getting locked inside a store with flickering lights and just some lingerie mannequins for company.

The mannequins are all right but the most effective performances in Kadak Singh are belted out by those on the margins of the story.

As Jeetendra Tyagi, A K Srivastava’s boss at the Department of Financial Crimes, Dilip Shankar brings a certain dubious stateliness to his role, which is an interesting stance for mumbling those inconvenient truths of officialdom.

Jogi Mallang, as the super-boss, proves yet again that he is a master at playing the bureaucratic cur, especially in scenes where he has to suggest that he is working against the clock or putting the screws on people.

Jaya Ahsan, who plays Naina, Pankaj Tripathi’s love interest, colours her sequences with an indolence that jolts you out of the bleak state of affairs. Naina’s sighs are curious half-whistles; she has a Gertrude-like presence and can talk Hamlet with whoever is willing to go down that route; and she’s the one on whom Pankaj Tripathi rests his post-coital legs, an affectionate act of surrender that may not have done much for her but adds years to the performer in him.

Otherwise, Tripathi is characteristically cute and is shown solving the high-profile scam from his hospital bed, as Parvathy eggs him on with appreciative nods and, later, with I-knew-you-would smiles.

By the time all social and familial orders were restored and the whimpering sitar notes replaced by inspirational pop, I couldn’t wait to make my getaway.

To steer clear of sanctimonious newspaper stories all your life, and then be saddled with movies like this one — now there’s a rotten bit of luck worth moaning about.

Kadak Singh airs on ZEE5.

Kadak Singh Review Rediff Rating: