This rape-and-revenge thriller plays it strictly by the numbers: the heinous crime (involving the gang-rape of a mother and daughter), the aftermath, the wounded woman picking up the cudgels and going after the perpetrators. The roll-out of Maatr is as formulaic as they come, and sometimes that can be okay too, but a film like this needs to be deeply sensitive and alert to lift the sordidness of the material. Maatr fails on this score from the first frame on, with its improbable plot-points, and the crassness which seeps through: I cringed from beginning to end.

In fact, much of it is jaw-droppingly horrifying. A cop, observing the scene of the crime says : ‘PM desh ko shape karne ki baat kar rahe hain, aur yeh rape ki baat kar rahi hai’. Seriously? Who writes these lines?