CAST: Gautam Gupta, Nisha Kothari, Kay Kay Menon, Rajpal Yadav

DIRECTOR: Manish Srivastav

Boy and girl, on the run. Cop and crooks, hot on their heels. In Ram Gopal Varma latest production, one of the oldest stories in the book gets older, and sadder: actors come and go, mouthing their lines, and everything else around them proceeds on auto-pilot.

RGV gets his director to borrow liberally from his own (RGV’s) movies: the staged killing of a ‘neta’, a cassette which has the plot “recorded on it”, a hero (first-timer Gautam) desperately trying to be one and failing spectacularly, a heroine (Nisha) whose only task is show her belly-button, and a bunch of faceless walk-on characters who seem to walk in and out of Ramu’s films.

‘The Factory’ has been turning out stinkers for some time now (RGV Ki Aag and Darling), but this one has no redeeming features. Not even Kay Kay, who has been turned from compelling actor to unwitting clown: he plays a cop in fancy dress, alternating between a black-raincoat-with-a-hood, and a Hawaian shirt and straw hat and glinting shades, careering from one bad scene to another.

Ramu’s on skid row. Go, dear viewer. Far, far away.