Starring: Jeet, Nusrat Jahan, Partha Sarathi, Kharaj Mukherjee, Supriyo Dutta, Dipankar De

Directed by: Raj Chakraborty

“Ei Singher ekta thaba, bhule jabi ke tor baba!” — thunders tough cop Dibakar ‘Jeet’ Singha.

Shatru is one cop story Tollywood has not seen before. Snazzy and stylish, it goes zip, zap, zoom from start to finish.

Here the characters, all white and black, snap their fingers while talking, make a show of machismo in every scene and pick a fight without much provocation. The baddies don’t get away easily in the village where Dibakar Singha lives because one punch is enough to make their knees wobble.

There’s also a softer side to him; he loves Pooja (Nusrat) and dreams of cooing love ballads into her ear on the ruins in Turkey.

When he is transferred to Calcutta, the mafia (Supriyo Dutta) tries a bribe-or-kill method on Dibakar, which obviously doesn’t work. The righteous cop that he is, Dibakar hunts Arjun down and throws him behind bars but not before he has lost a few good cops and his sweetheart has taken a bullet.

After Josh and Wanted last year, Jeet carries his angry-young-man act forward with a performance that is several notches above his earlier acts. Armed with ceeti-taali dialogues, and his gym-worked body, Dibakar Singha is a delight to watch. Newcomer Nusrat doesn’t have much to do except smile coyly and sing songs. But she is got that zing, so watch out guys!

Southern fight master Rocky Rajesh is bang-on with the action sequences, shot stylishly by cinematographer P. Silva Kumar. Each action sequence is different from the other and considering that there is one too many, both men deserve a round of applause. After the rocky road trip of Dui Prithibi, Raj Chakraborty has got his groove back.