'Polite Society' is a familiar but satisfying combo of action-comedy

Ria (Priya Kansara) and her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya) are two misfits in their community. Ria wants to be a stuntwoman and trains in martial arts, while Lena is an art school dropout going nowhere. While their parents are supportive, they're thrilled with Lena meets and begins a relationship with Salim (Akshay Khanna), a handsome doctor and his wealthy family. Ria, however, believes her sister is throwing away her potential and concocts a daring plan to rescue her...

Even though Edgar Wright's filmography has been somewhat less conspicuous of late, his early work in 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World' has now reached a maturity where there are now directors coming up with that inspiration in mind. In 'Polite Society', Nida Manzoor's directorial debut throws the style and visual concepts of these into the hopper with a well-worn story about sisterhood, familial and female pressures, and Desi culture.

Like 'Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World', 'Polite Society' is broken up into clearly marked chapters, each with a clear objective and a fight sequence that sees Priya Kansara's character square off against secondary school bullies and even her own sister. She's thrown through walls and furniture, uppercutting and roundhouse-kicking her way out of it and all of it to a rip-roaring action soundtrack. Yet, between these flights of fantasy, you have quite a thinly-written story about lost potential in Priya's on-screen sister, played by Ritu Arya. She was in art school, but dropped out and fell into depression. Likewise, their mother and father's own societal pressures is given short shrift.

To their credit, both Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya do fantastic work with what they're given. Ritu Arya, in particular, really takes the emotional burden of the story on and is able to communicate all of the frustration and the fear in just a few short scenes. Priya Kansara, meanwhile, gives the action setpieces a messed-up but vital quality. It's never close to the sharpened, highly-choreographed action of Hollywood movies, because why would it be? She's a stuntwoman-in-training, and her dream fights are limited by her lack of knowledge and expertise. In fact, for most of the movie, she keeps trying to figure out how to do one particular spinning kick.

Nida Manzoor's script and directing match the lo-fi, DIY feeling that both sisters have in their creative endeavours. It doesn't always work, it sometimes strays too far into outright pilfering in parts, but there's a good heart behind it and it's done with the best of intentions. Manzoor's previous work on the likes of 'Doctor Who' has obviously stood her in good stead, as she's able to balance action, drama, and comedy together with relative ease. Moreover, her comedy work in the criminally underseen 'We Are Lady Parts' is evident here as she's able to throw in some cracking one-liners along the way.

'Polite Society' doesn't always fit together smoothly. Its final act is quite ropey, with a shift towards sci-fi horror towards the end that doesn't really land as well as it possibly could. Equally, the constraints of time and budget are evident in a few of the fight scenes and you can see the movie straining to fit them all in. Yet, for all of this, it's still an enjoyably combo of action-dramedy with a strong and unique essence underpinning it all.