The sequence introducing the heroine of RK Nagar ends with the camera focused on her backside, with a double entendre thrown in for good measure. However, the plot of RK Nagar is clearly inspired by the Pollachi sexual assault case that has made its way into several Tamil films which are just as blatant about objectifying women. It’s a contradiction that our directors seem incapable of grasping even if it’s leaping out of the screen in waves of nausea-inducing neon.

Released directly on Netflix after a long delay, RK Nagar, directed by Saravana Rajan, begins on a chilling note with a group of schoolboys filming a teacher secretly to take revenge. However, the screenplay abruptly shifts to the goon wars between Mannu (Inigo Prabhakaran) and Lottai (Sampath Raj), with an elaborate voice-over introducing the characters and their conflicts.

But the film is not about them, we’re told. In comes the hero, Shankar (Vaibhav), a part-time tailor and part-time goon who only manages to interest us part-time through the course of the film, thanks to the weak writing. And he’s introduced to us in a cringe-worthy dream sequence with two bikini clad women. Yay.

While one plot line is about the goons and their stand-offs, the other is about the schoolboys who are up to no good. Ironically, the schoolboys with their secret camera do exactly what the cinematographer and director do in the other half – focus on women’s body parts, treat them as mere sexual objects (and I don’t mean just the mandatory item number) – but we’re supposed to compartmentalise and accept this. Maybe the whole thing is so meta that I don’t get it.

What should have been a tight thriller suffers from a bloated script that struggles to make sense. The romance is especially awkward. Sana Althaf plays a wide-eyed Ranjini who falls off a balcony and is caught by Shankar. He tells her that she ought to be grateful because men reject even beautiful women without any flaws, and that if she’d been crippled by the accident, nobody would marry her. When Ranjini goes home and her mother repeats the same line, she blushes. I was hoping that the explanation is that Ranjini’s fall had addled her brains but apparently, it’s just good old love, Kollywood style.

But then, this is a film where the hero has stitched a dress for his future wife and will only marry a woman who fits into that, so the less said about the romance, the better.

Since the film is called RK Nagar and is set in North Madras, Shankar speaks an exaggerated Madras bashai and mouths template lines about love and life every now and then. The director wastes too much time in these skit-like exercises, and we get into the thick of action only when the film is nearly drawing to an end. The scenes with sexual violence are shot with a voyeuristic gaze and have little sensitivity. All the blustering dialogues about “family ponnunga” that are chucked in like a sermon along with the usual blame game on technology, do not mitigate any of this.

Akash and the boys in his gang are appropriately creepy, and I wish RK Nagar had been an interesting film focused on juvenile crime. However, it’s content to be a shallow mishmash that can’t be bothered with the details (a senior cop, for instance, happily reveals the names of the boys in a press conference when the law expressly forbids it). As it stands, it looks like a film that got written right out of a WhatsApp forward on the Pollachi case. That’s three lines stretched into 132 minutes. It shows.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.