Revolver Rita

Revolver Rita Movie Synopsis: A family of women ends up with a dead gangster in their home and have to dispose of the body before it is discovered by his son — an even more fearsome gangster, a corrupt cop, and a rival gang leader seeking revenge.

Revolver Rita Movie Review: Just a few minutes is all we need to spot the trigger point of Revolver Rita, which plays out like a cross between the female-driven, quirk-filled Kolamaavu Kokila and the dark-comedy skeleton of films like Soodhu Kavvum and Moodar Koodam. Sadly, the genre, by this point, is about as cold as water-soaked ammo.

Writer and director Chandru assembles all the parts that might be needed to fire his comedy weapon. There's the tease of how two seemingly unrelated events might lead up to a culmination years later that's pegged around karma. We have the heroine who is the caretaker of her family, her comic sidekick of a mom, a couple of gangsters with their own rivalry, an assortment of henchmen, a gang of wannabes who plot against the warring gangsters, a lecherous cop who has his own grudge against the heroine, shabby chic visuals (by Dinesh Krishnan), and so on.

The way all these come together, at least in the writing, seems good enough for an engaging comedy. But like a dish that doesn't taste as it should despite having been cooked with all the necessary ingredients, Revolver Rita never quite hits the mark it’s clearly aiming for. What we end up with is a mildly engaging but mostly middling dark comedy.

A committed Keerthy Suresh tries, but doesn't seem commanding enough to hold the film together even though she gets a couple of mass moments. It takes a valiant effort from Raadika, who shows what experience can bring in and gets her timing perfectly, to fire off the handful of laughs that come our way.

The blackness of the premise never fully loads, the comedy struggles to find its rhythm, the plotting feels predictable, and the rest of the cast can’t muster enough spark to set off anything memorable.