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Traffic is inspired by a real-life incident from 2008 in Tamil Nadu that was reported in the news media. The story of the Hindi film version, as far as can be told without spoilers, is this: A 12- year-old girl called Riya, daughter of film star Dev Kapoor (Prosenjit Chatterjee) and his wife Maya, is struggling for her life in Pune.

Meanwhile, newbie journalist and road accident victim Rehaan Ali is on a ventilator in a Mumbai hospital. Doctors have virtually given up hope for him. His parents agree to donate their son's heart to save Riya. With time running out for her and all flights grounded due to poor visibility, the organ must be transported 160km by road in 150 minutes.

How cold does it have to be for revenge to be served sizzling hot? 'Badlapur', Sriram Raghavan's latest, is a mixed bag of a movie: it has a cracking set-up, a middle with the occasional unsettling prod, and an end which fizzles. A bank heist goes horrifyingly wrong, resulting in the death of innocents. One robber gets away, the other is caught and incarcerated. And the young man whose cozy, comfortable life is overturned by the incident, vows 'badla'. In the way it opens, 'Badlapur' is so riveting you don't even want to blink. You watch, heart in mouth, willing the critically injured to keep breathing. You are hooked, by a beginning which is such a brutal shocker that you cannot wait to see how this tale of darkness and promised destruction will pan out. The rest of the tale is choppy, sometimes leaping off the screen with the right degree of unpredictability, bringing us back to the edge of our seats again, and then letting us off. The look is all lush noir-thriller and transfers instantly, but getting the feel across feels like a stretch.

The fight between good and bad has been the fodder of many a Hindi film of the 1970s and 1980s. However, for some inexplicable reason, masala films became extinct or, should I say, disappeared from the face of Hindi cinema over a period of time. Ghajini and Wanted revived this genre, bringing back memories of the bygone era. Now Dabangg takes this genre one step ahead.

Be forewarned. Dabangg is rustic, has loads of action, harps on the age-old mother-son and varied relationships, eventually turns into a vendetta fare, has a number of songs placed smartly in the narrative... but the packaging is slick and polished