Review: Aarvi, a new singer on the block, has an unusual kind of a relationship with the rich and spoiled heir of a business empire, Gautam Mehra. She goes missing one night after a strange set of occurrences at her residence. The blame for it is pinned on her e-boyfriend Gautam. In the meanwhile, Bhairav, a taxi-driver circumstantially surfaces in the picture, connecting Aarvi, Gautam and him to a sequence of murders, kicking off a love-led action-drama.

Director Mohit Suri’s film offers a simple story with several twists throughout the runtime, right till the last frame rolls in. Things slip on the editing table while treating the non-linear presentation of the story. One wishes this was paid a lot more attention to in order to create a better balance between the first and second halves of the film, to make it a more taut and gripping romantic thriller. While adding pace and spice to the screenplay and dialogues, the writers have missed on adding more heft to all the central characters. Yes, the characters are human and flawed, but sadly, that doesn’t make them relatable or earn them much empathy.

Also, one could have done away with the toxicity directed towards women in the film, which takes away from the point the story is trying to make about love, loss, rejection and heartache. Roles like the ones written for Shaad Randhawa and J D Chakravarty needed some thinking as did the police procedures depicted in the film, since they could have provided much-needed support to the narrative.

The reprised version of Galliyan, that often plays out throughout the narrative, has a soothing effect to the proceedings which are otherwise fairly intense throughout the runtime. One wishes that the other tracks in the album were as hummable and memorable, too, given that they form an important aspect of a romantic thriller’s narrative. The songs in the album are decent but they don’t create that magic of Ek Villain’s album, which is a few years old now.

The performances in the film don’t really stand-out, and most of the actors in their parts feel limited. If their characters had been better fleshed out, it could have probably given them more scope to rise in their individual performances. Ek Villain Returns dishes out plenty of twists and turns but doesn’t make you emotionally cheer for any of the characters or the story, though you wish the situation was different.