From what I understand of Qulfee, an Eid release that came with bad word-of-mouth from critics and audiences, the plot goes like this:

Xulfee (Shehroz Sabzwari) is a hacker who wears a Guy Fawkes mask one time at his entry, and then discards it mid-action sequence as if he didn’t mind revealing his identity at all (Fawkes was the revolutionary anarchist whose guise was immortalised in V for Vendetta).

Fresh off the heist, Xulfee and his hacker friends — played by Maryam Ansari, Wali Hamid Ali Khan, Uzmi — make off with a special programme called ‘Qulfee’ that puts them at odds with a local hood (Adnan Shah Tipu) and a totally bonkers villain GC (Shamyl Khan), whom no one knows the identity of, and who somehow gets a high killing his subordinates without rhyme or reason.

The group flees with Komal (Saeeda Imtiaz, playing Xulfee’s love interest), supposedly escaping from one end of Pakistan to another, but somehow returning to Karachi, the city they initially ran away from. The plot then adds a tough cop with no backstory (Moammar Rana), a cybercrime officer (Layla Dastan) and a Superintendent of Police who appears as if she is a special-ops operative (Sana Fakhar) — who, by the way, has about four or five shots (not even full scenes) in the film.

Qulfee belongs to the company of releases that does not make Pakistani cinema proud

Then there is an unsurprising big reveal: Xulfee turns out to be the son of a gangster (Babar Ali) who was killed in the first scene of the film. The whole set-up against GC had been personal, and no amount of love, romance and death could put out the fire of retribution.

That is what I, and perhaps everyone lending any modicum of interest, would have understood of the film… if, that is, they

stayed till the end credits (yes, people walked out). Qulfee belongs to the company of releases that does not make Pakistani cinema proud.

With minor exceptions to Shehroz and the over-the-top, logic-deprived antics of Shamyl, the acting ranges from amateur to outright bad. The scenes and the direction, credited to celebrated cinematographer Saleem Karim Daad (Chakkar, Wrong No., Jawani Phir Nahin Aani) and television director Abdullah Badini, lack finesse.

Daad, by the way, has a unique credit of ‘On-Set Director’ and Badini gets ‘Additional Scenes Director’. This points to the long, tumultuous production writer, producer and ‘Visual and Creative Director’ Mashood Qadri faced since filming began in the pre-Covid-19 days.

One can still see the ghosts of the chaos on the big screen.

The edit by Aseem Sinha and the late Asif Zedi has tell-tale signs that whatever had been shot has been twisted and reshuffled into a story that makes some sense. Somewhere in the middle of

these sequences one hears a good song or two (the ‘Music Director’ credit goes to Wali Hamid Ali Khan, with the ‘Music Composer’ credit going to Bollywood’s Sumanto Bhattacharya aka ‘Bappi’).

Technically though, Qulfee is quite poor. The sound is two-decibels too loud; 2 dB in a cinema is a nightmare for the eardrums. The loudness is augmented by a louder colour-grade that kicks up saturation and contrast to eye-straining levels.

Even if technicalities turn out to be a nightmare, a film can somewhat be saved by its storytelling and characters. But with sparse motives and no backstories, the characters or their plights don’t evoke much empathy. All one sees them doing is scampering from one scene to the next, hoping something will stick.

Well one thing does stick — and turns your stomach: the appalling double-meaning dialogues (imagine how Qulfee, amongst other words, are used). The tasteless innuendoes are packed into nearly every nook and cranny of the film. It is especially sad when an actor of Javed Sheikh’s calibre is relegated to playing an uncle whose only trait is that he non-stop watches — and sells — adult content. So yes, quite a few things are wrong with Qulfee.

At this point, I am inclined to make a joke about Qulfee turning out to be a melted one with bad taste, but I won’t. Those who

have seen the trailer and stayed away, or those who have shelled out the cash and watched it in cinemas, already figured that out on their own.

Released by BoxOffice, Qulfee is rated U, and is suitable for audiences of all ages… provided they can stand the innuendoes

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 13th, 2025