Arshad Warsi says a line about a cow around the thirty-minute mark of Fraud Saiyyan that sounds like it was recorded in a wardrobe during a thunderstorm. It is a small thing, completely disconnected from the plot about a man marrying dozens of women for their provident funds, but it stayed in my ear for the rest of the afternoon. Hindi films have this persistent issue with audio patch-work where the budget clearly ran out before the Foley artist finished the rural sequences, leaving actors shouting lines into condenser mics while ceiling fans hum overhead. You sit there in the dark waiting for the mix to settle down, wondering why nobody bothered to ADR the ambient noise out of a crucial confrontation scene. That particular bit of sloppiness sets a low ceiling for the production value right from the start.

Sourabh Shukla wanders through the early scenes looking like he got lost on his way to a better movie, bringing a weary gravity to material that demands the frantic energy of a cartoon. He plays the beleaguered brother-in-law or police inspector type, I honestly lost track of his exact profession because his scenes blur together into a grey smudge of expository dialogue shot under harsh tubelights. Director Sourabh Shrivastava shoots these confrontations with the flat, uninspired coverage you usually see on a daily soap opera after the main crew has gone home. There is no visual rhythm to the scam sequences, no sense of geographical space as Warsi's character navigates multiple households across different towns, just a series of medium shots cutting back and forth between people yelling indoors. It treats the premise—a literal matrimonial serial killer of bank accounts—like a stage play recorded on a phone, dragging down the pace until the runtime feels twice as long.

Flora Saini and the rest of the rotating cast of wives do what they can with roles that consist entirely of looking either suspicious or oblivious while standing in identical living rooms. Warsi himself relies too heavily on that familiar swagger he perfected back in Munna Bhai MBBS, leaning on a sideways grin when the script fails to provide an actual joke. He is watchable because he is Arshad Warsi and he has spent twenty-odd years figuring out how to make mediocre dialogue sound slightly conversational, but he looks tired here. The charm wears thin around the fourth or fifth bride, especially when the screenplay keeps repeating the exact same wedding scam beats without escalating the tension or giving any of the women actual agency.

The cinematography looks like it was lit by someone who discovered diffusion gels yesterday and decided to smear them across every window regardless of where the sun was supposed to be positioned. Colors wash out into pastels during daytime exteriors and turn a bruised orange whenever the characters step inside a government office, giving the whole affair a cheap digital sheen. Then the background score kicks in with a brassy cue every time Warsi pulls a fast one, treating the audience like we forgot what genre we bought a ticket for. It is loud, obvious, and constantly telling you how to feel about a narrative that is essentially about a predator exploiting systemic gaps in rural employment and marriage registries.

There is an attempt to frame this as some kind of satirical look at small-town desperation, but the movie lacks the teeth for actual social commentary because it refuses to spend any time with the women after they get swindled. They exist as punchlines or narrative hurdles for our charming rogue to leap over before moving on to the next district. Hindi cinema has occasionally pulled off the lovable scoundrel trope without losing sight of the human cost, but this script treats the victims as interchangeable props in a recurring sketch. By the time the climax limps toward a predictable wrap-up in a courtroom or a police station, the exhaustion in the performances matches the audience's fatigue.

The soundtrack features a couple of item numbers that drop in out of nowhere, grinding the already sluggish plot to a complete halt just so we can watch backup dancers sweat under strobe lights. If I'm honest, those songs are at least visually distinct from the drab interior scenes that make up the bulk of the runtime, even if they belong in a completely different movie. You leave the theater or close the streaming tab without any lingering anger, which might actually be worse than hating it outright. It is just a thing that happened on a screen for two hours, drifting out of your head before you even reach the exit.