BlackMAIL Review - 97% Absurdity Rate

Watch the film to understand the title. I went with two stars for BlackMAIL.

Six years ago, three underdogs. One untested director, and a cracker of a film. Abhinay Deo’s Delhi Belly redefined Indian cinema’s urban genre. Unlike Farhan Akhtar’s more PG take on things with Dil Chahta Hai, Deo presented an urban contemporary masterpiece, which later inspired directors like Luv Ranjan. Five years after Delhi Belly, Deo came out with Force 2, an uninspiring and tepid sequel to Force. And now, one and a half years later - he comes with BlackMAIL, a film that is as confused about itself as Deo is about its storyline. Featuring an ensemble cast, BlackMAIL takes a look at a chain reaction that starts because one man (Irrfan) starts to blackmail his wife’s lover. It’s a clever idea.

What follows is a 2 hour and 20 minute ride with twist after twist. And it’s a shame that I walked out of BlackMAIL, over-satiated, an not in a good way. I didn’t know how to digest the meal that I had just had. The film is all over the place and is quite frankly, dead for the most part. The actors - especially Irrfan, Divya Dutta, Arunoday Singh and Pradhuman Singh. These four actors help to revive the film in spurts. There’s a running gag about masturbation in a toilet, and in certain scenes in both halves of the film, there is that spark that Delhi Belly had.

But ultimately, Deo and his writers seem so convinced that they’re creating a masterpiece, that they somewhat forget to make one. In parts, the writing is lazy, especially in a stint involving the murder of a colleague. Delhi Belly was not a perfect film. It had plotholes and Deo even lost the reins on the film, somewhere. But the jokes, the new-age urban contemporary setting and the crackling writing saved it and glossed over its bumps. Here, the jokes are few, and are quite frankly, too little too late.

By the time, you even start giggling, you’ll forget your laughter ten seconds later, because you’ll be confused again. The thing is that to pull off a fast-paced ‘thriller’ as this, you also need lack of emotion - a thing that Deo nailed in Delhi Belly. Here, too much time is spent skimming the surface of Irrfan’s inner pain (after all, his wife has cheated on him) and too little time is spent on the gags, and that is a shame. Because as a viewer, you will see many places where Deo could’ve inserted light humour.

The first half, to Deo’s credit, sails along. It’s a little too long, but the actors and their quirky sense of humour really help to inject effervescence. Deo’s crackling concept does invoke interest in you, to his credit. The idea that a blackmailer could get blackmailed is an interesting staring point. But there on out, the film plays like theatre of the absurd. As many twists as Deo can cram into the stretched runtime, he does. Omi Vaidya also gets his chance to shine as Irrfan’s boss in a toilet paper company, which has these pink pastel toilet paper rolls that really excited me. Whenever I was bored, I would see those rolls and the screen would light up again.

Coming to performances, Irrfan shines as always, but I’m a little tired of his awkward-type character, who’s rather shut off. He’s mastered the art, but I want to see him do something more creative and different from the usual. Arunoday Singh is funny and masterful as Ranjit, who cheats on his wife frequently with his childhood girlfriend. He gives some vitality to the script. Kirti Kulhari is a talented actor, who’s rather tainted in my mind after Indu Sarkar. Here, she fits the brief of quivering lips and an always worried look plastered on her face. I wish she had more to work with. Divya Dutta isn’t instantly convincing, but slowly, she makes you care for her.

These actors seem to be working in spite of their director, and not because of him. All the characters in the film are caricatures, and Deo creates an inspiringly clichéd film. The end of the film was way too open-ended for me and quite honestly, made me hate it a little more. I expected a more cracking end to pick up the pace. It didn’t. I hear the original title of the film was Raita - at least Abhinay was, at one point, self-aware as to how absurd his film was. Lucky for him, he got a great cast to work with, I’m going with 2 stars for BlackMAIL. It’s inspiring yet tepid and just beats you into submission in its final stretch.