There is a specific kind of digital color grading that makes every street in Mumbai look like it was washed in a mixture of engine oil and diluted blue ink, and Ungli swims in it from the opening sequence. If I'm honest, it's a small thing, but that particular brand of teal-and-orange grading has given me a mild headache since about 2011, making even a sunlit afternoon on Carter Road look like a low-budget sci-fi dystopia. You are watching people walk through a mundane municipal office, yet the light hitting their cheeks has the synthetic punch of an aggressive LUT applied by a colorist who just discovered the shadows slider in DaVinci Resolve. It immediately puts you on edge, not because the imagery is striking, but because it feels scrubbed of any actual grain or grit, substituting a glossy sheen where a bit of raw texture might have actually sold the desperation of five vigilantes losing their minds over potholes and bribe-heavy bureaucrats. I found myself staring at the background extras, wondering if they too were being subjected to this relentless blue wash, or if it was just the principal actors who had to suffer through the digital tinting.

Rensil D'Silva directs with the frantic energy of someone who watched a few too many episodes of 24 over a single weekend and decided that every conversation needed to be shot over the shoulder with a shaking lens. Characters are constantly pacing around small rooms, gesticulating wildly, and dropping dialogue about the system while the camera circles them like a bored housefly. The screenplay tries to balance this high-octane cynicism with domestic beats that don't land because nobody is ever allowed to just sit down and drink a glass of water without someone bursting through a door to yell about a corrupt minister. It reminds me a bit of Sarkar in how it treats municipal corruption as a kind of moral playground for men in leather jackets, though without the oppressive, heavy-lidded atmosphere that Ram Gopal Varma used to make those proceedings feel weighty. Here, everything moves at a sprint, skipping the quiet corners where a Hindi movie usually breathes, meaning you never really understand what these people do when they aren't painting graffiti on corrupt politicians or kidnapping traffic cops. They just exist in a state of perpetual adrenaline, shouting at each other in cramped apartments that look like they were thrown together by a lazy props department on a three-day turnaround.

Emraan Hashmi plays Abhay, a reporter who is somehow always loitering around crime scenes with a half-smirk and a leather jacket that costs more than his fictional monthly salary, bringing that specific brand of weary charm he usually deploys when he is playing a cynical cop or a hustler in a Bhatt production. He doesn't stretch himself here, but he has this innate ability to make even the most clunky anti-establishment monologue sound like something he might actually mutter under his breath at a traffic signal. Sanjay Dutt, on the other hand, lumbers through his scenes as a senior police officer named Kale who is investigating the vigilante group, looking distinctly exhausted by the sheer volume of exposition he has to deliver while leaning against various filing cabinets. His voice is a low gravel pit of fatigue, and when he stares down Hashmi, you can sense two different acting philosophies colliding—one trying to squeeze life out of a pulp thriller, the other just trying to hit his mark before lunch. Kangna Ranaut pops up as Maya, playing the token female member of the crew with a sharp tongue and a habit of rolling her eyes whenever the boys start talking about blowing up a toll booth, though she is given so little actual narrative terrain to traverse that she mostly exists to deliver sarcastic remarks from the background of group shots.

Randeep Hooda is actually the most compelling presence among the core gang, playing a foul-mouthed fitness instructor named Ricky who handles the physical intimidation with a casual, terrifying ease that makes you wish the whole film had just been about him shaking down local extortionists instead of getting bogged down in grand socio-political commentary about the decay of democratic institutions. He has this scene where he corners a corrupt clerk in a damp stairwell, and instead of giving a grand speech about justice, he just quietly counts down from ten while slowly tightening a zip-tie around a wooden railing, and for five seconds you actually believe you are watching a thriller instead of an extended public service announcement about civic responsibility. Neha Dhupia and Riaan Malhotra fill out the rest of the crew with varying degrees of success, though the script forgets they are even in the scene for twenty-minute stretches while Hashmi and Hooda argue about who gets to hack into the local municipal database. Shraddha Kapoor makes a brief, entirely unnecessary appearance in a romantic subplot that exists solely to give Hashmi something to do between raid sequences, disappearing for long stretches before returning just in time to look concerned while someone bleeds onto a linoleum floor.

The soundtrack, composed by a committee of people who clearly never spoke to one another, relies heavily on aggressive electronic beats that blast through your speakers during scenes where characters are literally just walking across a zebra crossing. There is one particular techno track that kicks in every single time the gang puts on their matching black hoodies, and after the fourth time it blared through the mix, I found myself muttering at the screen to please just turn down the bass and let us hear the dialogue. The cinematography by Amalendu Chaudhary tries to mimic the kinetic feel of contemporary action cinema, but it cuts so frequently during dialogue exchanges that you lose all sense of spatial geography, leaving you adrift in a sea of medium close-ups of angry eyebrows and flared nostrils. It is a very loud film, not just in terms of its music and its constant shouting matches, but in the way it handles its themes of youthful rebellion against a bloated bureaucracy, hitting every single moral nail on the head with a sledgehammer until the wood is completely pulverized.

There is an irony to watching mainstream Hindi films attempt to tackle systemic corruption through the lens of vigilante justice, because they almost always end up endorsing the very authoritarian impulses they claim to critique, wrapping up their anti-establishment rhetoric in flag-waving speeches about waking up the sleeping masses. Ungli is no different, shifting gears in its final act from a scrappy little caper about annoyed citizens messing with petty bureaucrats into a melodramatic courtroom-style confession about why breaking the law is fine as long as your heart is in the right place. It’s a messy, often incoherent journey that wastes a reasonably charismatic cast on a script that can't decide if it wants to be a gritty urban procedural or a music video for a youth empowerment NGO. By the time the closing credits started rolling over yet another gratuitous tracking shot of Mumbai traffic, I wasn't angry or moved; I was just mildly annoyed by the persistence of that blue color grade and wondering if anyone involved in the production had ever actually stood in line at a municipal tax office in their lives.