Shamelessly tarting up a true-life society scandal, this period melodrama suggests director Dharmendra Suresh Desai has swallowed recent Todd Haynes projects whole.
Akshay Kumar is the eponymous navy man who enters a police station in old Bombay (as it was in 1958) and confesses to shooting the industrialist who cuckolded him – a simple crime of passion, complicated by gutter-press stirring, institutional corruption and the accused’s officer-grade tactical nous.
Screaming excess threatens to stifle the emotion and tragedy; Kumar has only to hit the same note of dogged honour and wait for the storm to pass. As an exercise in medium-high style, however, it retains the attention. Desai stages a month of interrogations in a single camera movement, the screen pops with candied pinks and peppermints, and among a characterful supporting cast, Esha Gupta as the deceased’s sister delivers just about the best vampish glowering this side of the Crawford/Davis era. Sign her up for everything.
