Kalyug Review

There was an 80s time period when Ramsays used to come up with numerous sex and horror products. In the 21st century, the house of Bhatts have played the sex'n'drama card pretty well to churn out numerous flicks belonging to that genre. 'Kalyug' takes the tradition forward and this time raises the issue of pornography emerging from the bedrooms of a common man. Director Mohit Suri, who made his debut earlier this year with 'Zeher' may have just created a record for debutants by coming up with another flick for the same producers before the close of year.

Porn industry is a 56 billion dollar industry worldwide - the opening slide conveying this information is good enough to set context for the theme of the movie. Beginning of the movie belongs to the Bhatts school of the movie making. The lead man Kunal [Kunal Khemu] is brought in a police van to the court and is surrounded by media people as soon as he steps. He is introduced to his lawyer who where he narrates his tale.

A Kashmiri migrant, he was working as a gym instructor in Mumbai. Soon he meets Renuka [Smilie Suri], an orphan, who had been sponsored by his father so far. They fall in love, get married and in order to get away from crowded Mumbai, spend a night in a hotel. To their horror, they are arrested on the charge of creating their own blue film and then selling the video off to porn websites. Distraught, Renuka commits suicide. The lawyer gets Kunal out on bail who has only mission left in life - to get back to the porn mafia that got his life to a standstill.

He comes across varied characters like a hotel manager [Ashutosh Rana] in India while in Zurich he meets a porn queen [Deepal Shaw], a sex shop owner Ali [Emraan Hashmi] and above all the person who runs the entire show [Amrita Singh] who runs a telecommunication company but dreams of leading the porn world one day.

How Kunal picks up one clue after another and reaches to the central protagonist of this racket while trapping her in her own game forms the major part of the story.

It definitely needs courage to even conceptualize a subject like this. And from the execution point of view it is even tougher as it needs to be molded as per the sense and sensibilities of the audience. In this regard, credit should go writer Mahesh Bhatt and the director Mohit Suri for keeping the subject in tight leash without falling for the temptation of showing something out rightly sleazy or provocative.

One thing that seems to be missing in the movie's script is the entire nexus theory of the porn racket. Everything appears so simple and straightforward that one feels establishing an empire like this could be anyone's play. There are just 2-3 major players in the entire chain that hardly seems to justify the 'nexus'!

This way Kalyug should be treated as a regular masala revenge potboiler [rather than an 'exposure' movie that many may have thought it to be] and in that way it works quite well. Though the flashback moments in the beginning are tender, one wants to get into a fast forward mode to get to the point. As expected the real drama begins as soon as the lead pair are arrested.

But the real action begins as soon as Kunal is relieved on bail with the song 'Aadat' playing in the background. The chase that follows between Kunal and Ashutosh changes the track of the movie and Kunal's subsequent landing in Zurich makes viewers completely hooked on. Things turn quite dramatic in the second half, though the romantic build up between Kunal and Deepal could have been easily done away with. Song 'Thi Meri Dastaan' towards the pre-climax should be immediately chopped to let the drama dominate.

Amrita Singh's introduction is apt and one senses of a fiery performance from her for the rest of the movie. All her scenes