Anurag Basu had utilised the multiple story format last in Life In A... Metro (2007). The film was a multistarrer which touched upon the various aspects of life in a big city. Here, the focus is on a smaller city somewhere in Jharkhand or Bihar. The director uses the motif of the board game Ludo to tell intersecting stories. In Ludo, the moves made by one player affect the others and such is the case in the present film as well.

I like how Anurag Basu confuses the audience between reality and fiction. Many of you would contest this but he was at his creative best in Jagga Jasoos, a film where the line between imaginative and realistic storytelling was so blurred that it became difficult for the viewer to chaff out how much of Jagga's story should be taken seriously. His frames, his understanding of movements and aesthetics, everything displayed his strengths, unique narration techniques and subtlety as a creator who wouldn't like to be confined in a particular zone or genre.

Anurag Basu's Ludo unfolds through a conversation over a board game between an important figure in Hindu mythology (played by Basu himself) and a curious questioner. Beyond this clever device and the discussion that plays out between them through the length of the narrative is this simple truth: the film is good old-fashioned, light-hearted fun.

Whatever faults you might find with an Anurag Basu film, lack of invention isn't one of them. The director creates worlds filled with whimsy and wonder, set to Pritam's pulsating soundscape. Think of the blend of surreal, sad and funny in his last film Jagga Jasoos. I go into Anurag's films expecting the unexpected and he rarely fails to surprise.

LUDO is the story of quirky characters and how their life gets interlinked in a series of bizarre circumstances. Alok Kumar Gupta aka Aalu (Rajkummar Rao) loves Pinky (Fatima Sana Shaikh) like crazy since childhood. Sadly for him, Pinky ditches him and marries Manohar Jain (Paritosh Tripathi). It's been three years since she's hitched and she even has a son. Yet, Aalu continues to love her.

The game of Ludo is all about luck by chance. You have to be careful with your move and predict how can your opponent go wrong with theirs. Anurag Basu, who is also the narrator of the film, shows not only his directorial skills but acting prowess too. He has taken up a unique task of moulding a game into a movie with a bunch of incredible talents.

Basu welcomes you to his world, and he takes just a half of second for the same. Two people discussing random things about life & death on a hill that's apparently a 'watchkeeping' point for a mafia's adda. Mafia in the question being Sattu Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi) who believes he's not killing people but setting them free from their pain. Every story in the film is highlighted by Ludo's four colours.

The popular board game that has become especially popular during lockdown gives Anurag Basu a framing device for his second anthology feature after Life... in a Metro (2007). In the Netflix original film Ludo, four separate stories are set into play by a gangster's roll of dice. Written by Basu and also lensed by him and Rajesh Shukla, Ludo is a colour-coded saga of crime and consequence, with a bit of pitiless comedy thrown in.

Ludo begins on a prophetic note. The local don of the area, Sattu (played by Pankaj Tripathi), celebrates a not-so-clean kill by singing along to Bhagwan Dada's song, O Beta Ji, from perhaps the biggest hit of his career, Albela. The actor, whose dance steps reportedly inspired Amitabh Bachchan early in his career, found immense fame and wealth after the film - a 25-room sea-facing bungalow in Juhu, Mumbai, and a fleet of fancy cars.

Even before the twin words: hyperlink cinema were officially keyed in film critics' lingo, Anurag Basu made Life In a Metro. You could say that since then, all his stories were mounted on a large canvas with multiple narrative threads, even something as pedestrian as Kites.

It is easy to liken life to just about anything, especially when it comes to sport. So, ludo is fair game. It may not throw curve balls at you but it is deadly dicey all right. Largely driven by luck, it mirrors, in its sheer weird randomness, the vagaries of human existence. Anurag Basu's Ludo, a Netflix original film, takes the analogy all the way down to the home stretch - and a little beyond - to come up with a screwball action-comedy that is as delightfully peppy as it is unapologetically pulpy.

Anurag Basu's 'Ludo' which blends in characters, stories and genres starts off with a grisly murder by Sattu Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi). Then, as parallel stories and characters emerge, so do some varying situations.Akash (Aditya Roy Kapoor) and Ahana (Sanya Malhotra) find themselves in a pickle when they discover that a video clip of them having sex has gone viral on the internet.