A young child and her mother are travelling through a wooded forest in their car when all of a sudden, out of the shadows, they hear a startling commotion and see a shadow darting across the road. Any sane person would continue driving, roll up the windows, and wait it out. However, this is a movie where you know terrible things are going to happen but the character doesn’t. Naturally, the mother gets out of the car right away, looks ahead and notices something, turns around, and of course, everything goes dark.

Cut to a village with a car load of relatives who have come for their daughter’s wedding and are insisting that it take place at a structure that has been closed up for years, a cranky man who interacts by shouting, and a woman who screams her eyes out whenever she comes on. Cut to bodies hanging from trees, bodies in a nearby well, and masked people dancing around fires in the bush. And a mysterious man emerges out of nowhere, poses as a cop, and engages in ongoing conversation with a young child who is constantly holding a doll.

Cut to your devoted critic, who is now left perplexedly gazing at the screen. Given how it seems to start, is this a period action-adventure geared toward children. Or a tale of retribution centered on a struggling family whose members the local bullies routinely disparage? Amidst all of this, there is indeed a runaway who may or may not have been involved in the theft of priceless gems.

The only thing that is certain is that Kichcha Sudeep portrays the title character, Vikrant Rona, with a slit-eyed flair that would have been more appropriate for a movie that understood what it was doing. The film has been released in several languages, but none of the complicated storylines, which feature an unconvincing romance between an unsuited couple (Nirup Bhandari and Neetha Ashok), nor the contrived dialogues and their delivery make for an enjoyable watch. Perhaps something was lost in translation in the Hindi dub. 

You are only left with a series of queries. How can the inclusion of so much violence and gore work in a movie aimed towards children? Why is there so much ambiguity when caste is the cause of the violence? Why not just state it? There is forced humor. When Jacqueline Fernandez unexpectedly enters the stage for an item number, her athletic bouncing leaves no room for interpretation. Characters conversing in Hindi with a noticeable Marathi accent are in a setting that is clearly in the south.