‘Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa’ movie review: The pathology of a bully

Quietly subversive and more interested in human frailty than genre payoffs, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa is a quintessential Rajat Kapoor film. It doesn’t reinvent the whodunit, but it humanises it, turning a murder mystery into a mirror held up to the insidious violence we inflict on the people we claim to love. The final reveal and tonal balance don’t fully satisfy, but it is a respectable experiment that fiercely tugs at the deepest strings of the heart.

To celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, Raman (Neil Bhoopalam) and Jayanti (Palomi Ghosh) invite a close group of friends and family for an intimate getaway at a sprawling century-old mansion in the hills. Among the guests is Raman’s business partner, Sohrab Handa (Vinay Pathak), a sharp-tongued, unapologetically abrasive presence who dominates every conversation with his acid wit and honesty. Sohrab is perceptive, knowing which insecurities to poke and how to cloak them in humour.