Dev’s view of married life in cities is dim, courtesy his own experience of it.A blackmails C. Please.B takes money from A to give to C to pay A. But here we are expected to laugh every time “potty”, or “potty dhona” is mentioned — as if we were all kids in short-pants and panelled skirts, going delirious with excitement as we scream, “Haaw! Usne potty bola! Potty! Haaw! hehehehe”. Reena, however, receives it like a warning. He feels affection that he knows is not reciprocated. Yet they get very little screen time.And Blackmail is quite interesting and wicked till it ties itself in so many knots that the only way out is to off a few people.Every work night, before he drags his listless body and soul to his car and thence to his dingy, silent apartment where a lonesome plate — on which some rice, daal, sabzi have been thrown, and a taunting spoon shoved in between — awaits him, he sends his wife Reena (Kriti Kulhari) a text to say that he is leaving.

This makes A angry, but also very excited. The problem is with the screenplay and plot, of course, but also the characters. It’s strange that Blackmail, which pays so much attention to small details initially, glazes over massive glitches towards the end.In fact so contrived is the film’s long middle that it took effort to recall it.He puts his plan in action, almost immediately unleashing a zany, karmic circle of blackmails. His war on jet sprays, that he wages with the help of Russian babes and the municipality, takes up a lot of time despite the fact that it is terribly tedious and cloying. But what he sees that evening, through the little hole in the wall, shocks him. But that’s my wont..Shit made a special appearance on a red carpet in his Delhi Belly and here it’s discussed a lot — including in terms of humans’ needs to touch it while cleaning it. That’s funny and a great premise for a crime-never-pays kind of comic moral tale.Like Delhi Belly, which was inspired by Snatch, Blackmail is in the same vein, but it’s not half as much fun.A figures that there’s also a D who lives with and loves C. It’s blah and a big blur.

Though I didn’t do the math, by the end the original blackmailer had definitely paid off more to his sundry blackmailers.Dev has huge EMIs, payments to make for cable TV, and now he has a plan to settle scores. Boys, for sure.It goes something like fire alarm cable Manufacturers this:A loves B, but B loves C.Pretty much everyone recalls the silly skit from 3 Idiots, and every time Omi is wheeled out on screen, he instantly ignites that memory where we think we died laughing despite the politically incorrectness of it all. Only here, the cups keep growing in number. But more than that, the lack of water after doing the deed. Shit, however, isn’t the binding force of Blackmail. DK’s character, and sadly the actor inhabiting him, are like a poor joke that just don’t take off.Arunoday Singh’s dumb expressions and slow, idiotic reactions, framed inside the bulging muscles of a bodybuilder, are a priceless foil to Irrfan’s wily smarts. Instead, F blackmails A and, on A’s say-so, turns the spotlight on G…In all of this a sweet, stiff penguin with its mouth perennially open plays a stellar role, and two members of the cast are left cold, bloody and inert.But D’s daddy wants the money back.Director Abhinay Deo, the son of Ramesh Deo and Seema Deo, the doctor couple in Anand (1971), likes certain things. His comic timing is superb.All of Deo’s female characters are empowered, and either wicked or mean.A again blackmails C.  

But more so, boys in toilets.This is the kind of sexual undertaking — bold, delicious and rare in Bollywood — we should now expect of director Abhinay Deo who made Imran Khan go down on Shenaz Treasurywala in Delhi Belly (2011). In the end he simply waits and then follows a Mercedes to a mansion. Irrfan Khan, of course, is the king of sardonic humour, with snarky lines delivered straight-faced.This dejection, frustration has, over time, morphed into a fetish that makes Dev risk his reputation by attacking photo frames resting on the desks of colleagues and emptying them of their smiling, inviting inhabitants to do gandi baat.Apart from Dev, and Ranjit to some extent, the film isn’t really interested in any other character.DK (Omi Vaidya) is an America-obsessed businessman who sells pink and blue toilet rolls as the ultimate weapon to fight water scarcity. C gets the money from D to pay A.So A again blackmails C, who now engages F to investigate A and to procure a gun.But C has no money, so C again asks B for money…It’s like that shell game played on streets with three cups and a stone. I belabour the point, of course.As Dev waits by the microwave, his plate of food rotating inside, he shifts some achar bottles that hide a hole in the wall to stare in secret at his pretty wife.One night, on the drunken coaxing of a colleague, Dev goes to great lengths to procure a bouquet of red roses to surprise Reena. And I would love to see the two of them together again.

Enter E, who blackmails A for blackmailing C.So expectations are high. He gets to do that a lot here, and he gets to run around naked.Rating: Cast: Irrfan Khan, Arunoday Singh, Kriti Kulhari, Divya Dutta, Omi Vaidya, Anuja Sathe, Gajraj RaoDirector: Abhinay DeoLate at night in a dark, empty office, one computer screen is lit, its glow shining on the tired face of Dev Kaushal (Irrfan Khan) who sits there killing time, quite literally, by playing Packman.Sameness and staleness creeps in all too soon and the build up to the big climax dies whimpering.It’s a gesture spiked with anxiety and hope — that she may stay up for him.Though most of them are packaged and presented with much drama and promise, they amount to little.Blackmail is really held together by Irrfan and Arunoday.Initially its plot — crafty, confident and mildly risqué — is accompanied by the dazzle of quirky shots set to hip music and cool crooning.The detective, the blind gunrunner, Dolly’s mummy, Prabha… All suffer the same fate — all except Dev’s boss. So C asks B for help. Time has been spent on what they will look like, how that look will be shot, but then they are given nothing.The moody tilt of the camera, the whimsy of cuts give the rather mundane proceedings on screen a deliberate zing and the suggestion, with a wink, that lots of fun is in store for us. And, of course, shit. Sukh Niwas belongs to Dolly Verma (Divya Dutta) and her husband Ranjit Arora (Arunoday Singh). Also toilet flushes.But, as Dev’s plan goes awry, so does the film.Angry and upset, various reactions and the ensuing scenarios play out in his mind