KATHAL : Movie Review

Ratings : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Moba MLA Munnalal Pateria (Vijay Raaz) is furious. Two ripe Malaysian breed jackfruits, each weighing 15 kilos, have been stolen from his front yard. Pateria was growing them for a rarefied pickle, a promised gift for the state Chief Minister (the setting is Uttar Pradesh).

The inspecting officer, Mahima Basor (Sanya Malhotra), is both bemused and aghast; as she tells her superintendent, this is not a legible case. Still, it becomes her lot to find the jackfruits, assisted by constables Kunti (Neha Saraf) and Saurabh (Anant Vijay Joshi), the latter of whom is also her beau.

The dedicated and principled inspector Mahima Basor (Sanya Malhotra) is a quick-thinking woman who gets the job done.

From entrapping and arresting a career criminal to supervising the police protection at a local celebration and being made in charge of a case of missing jackfruit (kathal), Mahima is at the centre of all the action and then there is the case of a gardener, who was employed at MLA's house but was fired because of something harmless he said to the grandson of the politician.

Devoid of his livelihood, he also finds his young daughter missing.

But the resources of the police department are stretched thin and his pleas go unanswered. Until, that is, he becomes the prime suspect in the theft. Only somebody recently fired would bear animosity towards the MLA, after all. 

Pateria (Vijay Raaz) cries foul and wants the thieves to be arrested and the two Uncle Hong jackfruits to be retrieved immediately. Pateria’s political ambitions are linked to the pickling of the jackfruits.

Local varieties will not do. As the superintendent of police (Gurpal Singh) explains to a befuddled Mahima, Uncle Hongs are as different from local Indian jackfruits as Mysore dosa is different from Mysore Pak.

The missing girl, meanwhile, turns out to be only the latest in a series of disappearances — something the compromised law enforcement police have turned blind eye too. Oh, and the girl used to roam around a pair of jeans ripped at the knees. Of course, Mahima is told by people, something like that was just waiting to happen.