Team FC
Aneethi captures the inner battles and sufferings of Thirumeni aka Thiru (Arjun Das), a young delivery guy who suffers from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, wherein he has recurrent thoughts of killing people. Sometimes you see him murdering someone, with his rage and vengeance on full display, but it is actually happening in his head.
Barun Sobti brings in both the brash extrajudicial violence that is required of a police officer in Punjab solving a crime that has more questions than answers, and a softness from the intensity of a personal life that is both twisted and lonely.
The charm of his performance is that you are with him throughout the arc - even when he is silly, goofy, wrong, troubled, and definitely when he swings progressive values in his favor and performs a kathak performance that strikes a hot hammer over any demands of conventional masculinity.
As the grizzled and seemingly unflappable sub-inspector Balbir Singh, who ties his turban with neat precision and whose personal life is unraveling, Vicky is a revelation. Balbir is someone others look up to, unaware of the terrible secrets he carries deep within himself.
Vijay Varma has become Hindi cinema's go-to talent for portraits of criminal men-next-door and toxic masculinity (Dahaad, Darlings, She, Pink, even Gully Boy). But he comes full circle in Kalkoot. Varma keeps it afloat with this deceptively layered performance.
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