Ahead of 'Thar' release, here are five of its potential USPs

1. Thar is set in a remote village of Rajasthan where men are being brutally tortured and killed. It’s a pounding ultra-violent thriller, with cinematographer Shreya Dev Dubey shooting the deserts with ruthless unsentimentality, stripping them of all romance. Dubey is the real hero of Thar.

2. The father-son pair Anil Kapoor and Harshvarrdhan Kapoor are not cast as father and son. That’s the good part of the script. They are on the opposite sides of the firing line like Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan in Bunty Aur Babli. That’s the part to worry about.

3. Anil Kapoor is closer to his own age than ever before. He is playing an aging cop, sports grey hair, uses reading glasses and suffers his wife (the monstrously underused Nivedita Bhattacharya)’s taunts.

4. Watch out for the supporting cast especially Fatima Sana Shaikh playing an abused wife, Jitendra Joshi playing her abusive husband, and Mukti Mohan playing an over-sexed local woman. These characters add a tangy flavour to the grim glum sweltering environment of mounting tension.

5. Harshvarrdhan Kapoor’s character is sullen from first to last, and with reason. He plays a tormented, battered soul who knows that no amount of revenge can bring him back what he has lost. Ironically the theme of the futility of violence is embedded in a mood of seething violence. Thar is one of the most brutal films in recent times.

6. The film borrows the style of the spaghetti western, with unbathed macho men trotting into camera range in horses and jeeps, and galloping into the horizon after having meted what they think to be justice.

7. Luckily, Thar goes directly to the OTT platform. If it had to go to the theatres via the censor board it would have been mauled and mutilated, much like Harshvarrdhan’s victims are in the film. And even after the violent journey it would have got no audience in theatres.