Navdeep Singh’s Manorama, Six Feet Under is a first-of-its-kind Indian noir. Its leading man, Abhay Deol again, is a suspended PWD inspector in a small dusty down on the Rajasthan/ Haryana border, who is dragging his feet through his ‘saadharan si zindagi’, till he runs into a mysterious woman. Murder is afoot, as are dirty secrets, buried six feet under, and more.

Yes, it is inspired by Chinatown, and the director acknowledges the debt in a superbly crafted scene. But those who are so quick to see that part of where it’s coming from, fail to notice that it is the first Hindi mainstream film which takes its amazingly authentic, rancid, small-town-intrigue flavour from yesteryear suspense rags like Manohar Kahaniyan, and the madly popular detective sagas featuring the Fearless Captain Ranjeet: only if you’ve picked up these pulp fiction novellas from an A.H. Wheeler cart, and devoured them in rattling train bogeys, will you recognise the connect. Manorama is an outstanding debut.

Another 2007 stand-out is Johnny Gaddar, whose hero is a baby-faced killer. He sets about eliminating his gang-members one by one, to get his hot little hands on a multi-crore booty, as a bevy of hot beauties shake their booty to the rousing retro beats of ‘move your body, baby’. Sriram Raghavan, directing his second, finds his groove, which races off from the starting block, and keeps up the pace, with unabashed nods to all its ‘inspirations’: the grungy novels of James Hadley Chase, the music of the 1970s, and a Bachchan movie in which AB plots a perfect murder.

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