Mardaani 2 movie review: Rani Mukerji and a chilling antagonist are the lynchpins of a gripping thriller

"When a woman is talented and successful, then society expects that in exchange for being allowed to go so far, she must be willing to conduct herself with humility and an unassuming demeanour," Shivani Shivaji Roy's boss tells her one day.

Shivani fills in the spaces he leaves blank: "...and if she does not, then in big cities she is called a bitch and in small towns a nakchadi kutiya."

Ms Roy's boss is not being a jerk. He is, in fact, an ally putting into words what most smart, professionally successful women face every day. This harsh reality lies at the core of writer-director Gopi Puthren's gritty, gripping thriller Mardaani 2, a sequel to the 2014 box-office hit Mardaani. As in the first film, here too Rani Mukerji plays Shivani, a brilliant, no-nonsense policewoman who ruffles feathers with her disinterest in social niceties and indifference to the male ego.