Mystery films and whodunits have placed the rich and powerful in their crosshairs for generations now, and Murder Mubarak proudly follows in that tradition through a tried and tested formula. So while there isn’t anything particularly surprising here, the film nails the tone it needs, smartly placing the focus away from the central crime and poking fun at the entire ecosystem of privilege and ego that gets revealed in its wake. Unfortunately, the movie also doesn’t sustain this momentum till the end, as it abruptly stumbles toward its inevitable revelations without giving itself time to let the consequences breathe. When it’s all over, it actually feels like we don’t know many of these individual characters any better than the overall situation they’re in.
When a gym trainer is murdered at an elite Delhi club, a wily investigator unravels the sordid secrets of its ultrarich members to find the killer.
A detective investigates a murder at an elite country club, where he uncovers secrets being kept by multiple guests.
It might not seem like a big deal at first, and it's hardly the main point of the film, but from the very beginning Murder Mubarak gets you to think about how these characters use language—especially English. There's a class dimension inherent to how this more "upper-class" language tends to be deployed only in certain situations or towards certain people to whom one wants to appear more superior. To viewers who are already bilingual or multilingual, this might seem like common sense. But for those who might only be fluent in one language, noticing how words can be twisted to gain leverage in certain situations is a fun Easter egg to discover.
Pretty fun, but could've used a more ridiculous mustache.
