Movie Review - Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! - by Suhel Johar

Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! Is A Senseless and Stupid Film.

Kudip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! begins with an assassination, in September 2013, of three-term chief minister Varun Chadha (played by Pravin Dabhas), and brief shots of the alleged assassin standing not far away. It then rewinds to 15 minutes before the murder.

The flashback bears little fruit and we are back at the assassination and arrest of a poor upper caste man Kuldip Patwal (Deepak Dobriyal) who was in the audience at the rally where Varun was shot dead. Kuldip insists he is innocent. The local cop Ajay Rathore (Anurag Arora) is soft on him. Lawyer-philanthropist Pradyuman Shahpuri (Gulshan Devaiah) is roped in to defend him.

When Pradyuman meets Kuldip for the first time in jail, the film flashes back to 11 years earlier. Then at some point it travels to 18 months earlier. The telling of Pradyuman’s story is interspersed with snippets from Varun Chadha’s life. Raima Sen plays the dead Varun’s wife who is also the lawyer for the state in her husband’s murder case.

Flashbacks reveal that Kuldip had much to simmer about. A victim of ruthless politics, he has lost all he ever had due to a new reservation policy and a law against hawkers. At every step, it was Varun Chaddha whose policies led to Kuldip Patwal's downfall and ultimate grief. It's more than enough reason for Kuldip to assassinate the minister. But did he?

While cracking the mystery of the murdered chief minister, writer-director Remy Kohli’s Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! offers an unrelenting, undisguised lament for communities once privileged by birth. In Kohli’s worldview, clearly hapless upper castes are now perennial victims of uncaring politicians and reservations unfairly being granted to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes whose plight seems irrelevant to him.

The claim of the filmmakers is that this is inspired by true life events. The premise is intriguing but... This is a big but that the screenplay moves at the speed of a bullock cart out for a stroll. With flashbacks that hark back to a few months and then to a few years, it almost becomes comic instead of highlighting the tragic. It's ultimately a classic case of a promising plot that goes wrong in its telling. The non-linear narrative does not serve any purpose in either building up suspense or empathy for the sketchily written characters. In fact, after the first half hour of this 127-minutes-long enterprise, you lose interest in whether or not Kuldip Patwal did it.

Direction by Remy Kohli is weak. Writers Remy Kohli and Rahul Ramchandani might have started off with a credible idea but lose the plot along the way. Cinematography by Vikram Amladi is below average. Editing by Aalap Majgavkar is just about okay.

Performancewise, Deepak Dobriyal gets into the character of Kuldip Patwal completely with an amazingly natural body language. Gulshan Devaiah as the defence lawyer gets the Punjabi accent perfect. Pravin Dabhas fails to shine. Raima Sen as the slain minister's wife appears stiff and a pain to watch. Priyanka Sethia as Kuldip's wife is average. Anurag Arora passes muster.

On the whole, Kuldip Patwal: I Didn’t Do It! is an avoidable fare.