Guilty review: A wasted opportunity

In the new Netflix movie ‘Guilty’ by Ruchi Narain, Vijay Pratap Kumar, aka VJ, is the college heartthrob, son of a politician and lead singer of a band. Nanki Dutta (Kiara Advani) is his girlfriend who reads Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf.

The songwriter Tanu Kumar (played by Akanksha Ranjan) is an overly friendly girl who allegedly gets raped by VJ and gets the Me Too movement going in her college.

Given VJ’s privilege, his father puts a man called Danish (Thaher Shabbir) on the job to become their lawyer and file a defamation case against Tanu.

While unveiling the truth of what happened on that Valentine’s day night, which also happened to be the day of the annual day celebrations where everyone was either drunk or high, Danish begins to understand the corrupt system he’s working under.

‘Guilty’ is relevant to our times, it highlights the Me Too movement and talks about the ambiguity in a case of sexual assault, but the acting and the way it is told falls flat.
Kiara Advani has a Kartik Aaryan-style monologue in the film which goes on to explain the crime, but it starts off badly and ends up worse.

Akanksha does fairly well as the victim but very often, you cringe at the overacting.

There are plenty of snide remarks about the movement and slut-shaming that takes place in the movie that after a while, you cannot just pass them off as “college student talk”.

For a story that had potential, ‘Guilty’ turns out disappointing.