Cuttputlli, Akshay Kumar’s latest film, has been
released on Disney+ Hotstar. This is Kumar’s most successful film this year in
terms of earnings since the producers avoided a theatrical release and managed
to sell the film to the streaming platform for a reported sum of Rs. 125
crores. In terms of content, it is an improvement when we consider Kumar’s
recent ventures like Bachchan Pandey, Raksha Bandhan, and Samrat Prithviraj.
But generally speaking, the film is a run-of-the-mill thriller that hardly
offers any thrill. An Akshay Kumar film is never complete without the lead actors
breaking into songs, and the makers do not think this will be out of place even
in a thriller where mutilated and murdered bodies of teenage school girls are
being discovered at regular intervals.

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Kumar plays 36-year-old aspiring filmmaker, Arjan
Sethi, who has studied cases of serial killing in detail in order to make a
thriller film. When no producer is interested in his project, Arjan listens to
his sister and brother-in-law and gets enrolled in a police academy. Stylized
shots of Kumar performing stunts during his physical examination help us
remember that this is no ordinary rookie cop. This is superstar Akshay Kumar
just portraying a rookie cop.

The film starts with the mutilated body of a young
girl being discovered in a small Himachal Pradesh town called Parwanoo. Police pick
up a boy who had publicly threatened the girl, but Arjan, who has deep
knowledge of serial killing cases, tells his seniors that is a psychopath at
work. No one listens to him since he has never solved a single case in his life
and Arjan is humiliated in front of his colleagues by the Station House Officer
(SHO), Gudia Parmar (Sargun Mehta).

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Rakul Preet Singh plays the character of a school
teacher, Divya, who lives with her niece. She meets Kumar when he poses as the
father of his own niece and goes to the school to collect the latter’s report
card. The film soon takes a turn and becomes something of a romantic comedy in
the middle of a serious investigation and loses the ground it had built up until
that point. Singh has a strong screen presence and does her job well, but her
character is not that well-written.

The film does touch upon a serious and sensitive issue
like paedophilia, where the criminal uses their powerful position to have
control over a susceptible young victim. Some of the scenes are quite shocking,
but they do not add up as a whole to make this a compelling mystery. Things become
too convenient for Arjan and all kinds of coincidences lead him towards his
target.

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Kumar, a veteran of over 30 years, performs his character
with ease, but the director can’t help but make Sethi a hero for all seasons
who never does anything wrong and proves to be a better investigator than all
of his experienced colleagues. Chandrachur Singh (of Josh fame) plays his part as
Narinder Singh, Kumar’s brother-in-law, with nuance and moderation, but the
screenwriter again does not put much on his plate to chew on.

The film could have done away with its songs, which
are forgettable at best, and added more layers to the leading characters. The
film is an Akshay Kumar vehicle that puts on the garb of a psychological
thriller. Director Ranjit M. Tewari is eager to play it safe, and by doing so
loses the edge that makes the best thrillers stand out.