Pakistani cinema’s latest social crusader, Item, arrives in theaters with the subtlety of a brass band in a library. It’s a film that wants to be a fierce TED Talk on misogyny but gets distractedly sidetracked by the glittery allure of the very exploitation it claims to decry. Think of it as if a Hallmark card about female empowerment had a chaotic, contradictory baby with a 1970s exploitation flick.
Our heroine, Mahnoor (played by Aliya Ali), doesn’t just face adversity; she navigates a veritable obstacle course of male grotesquerie that would make the villains in a Dickens novel blush. Her daily commute is a masterclass in harassment, a non-stop gauntlet where every male from teenager to senior citizen seems to have graduated with honors from the Creep Academy. It’s less a realistic portrayal and more a curated museum of male toxicity. When her one decent male relative succumbs, you half-expect a subtitle to flash: “SEE? EVEN THE GOOD ONES DIE.”
The plot’s pivot is where the film’s logic performs its first spectacular backflip off the cliff. After a trauma-dump of tragedies that would break a superhero, Mahnoor reinvents herself as Mahi, a glamorous actress. Her big project? A meta-film, also called Item, designed to… well, that’s the billion-rupee question. The film’s argument, eventually screamed at the camera in a climactic interview, is a head-scratcher for the ages. It’s like justifying arson because you’ve seen a candle. Mahi cites examples of cultural benchmarks, with the defensive energy of a student blaming their failed exam on the existence of advanced calculus. Meanwhile, the movie she’s in proudly leads with a leering item number, essentially using the flashy, objectifying spectacle it supposedly condemns as its opening act. It’s a baffling strategy, like launching a health food brand with a free cigarette.
Director-writer Huma Shaikh charges toward her message with the focus of a zealot and the finesse of a runaway train. The narrative contradictions aren’t just plot holes; they’re narrative sinkholes. Why does our secretly philanthropic heroine star in a film that undermines her cause? Why is the solution to street harassment presented as if John Wick storyboarded a women’s self-defense PSA? The final kung-fu showdown is so jarringly out of tone it feels like someone spliced the climax of a different, much sillier movie into the reel. One moment we’re in grim social realism, the next we’re in a low-budget Captain Marvel scene where the superpower is primarily shoulder throws.
Technically, the film is as nuanced as its message. The score seems to consist of a single, mournful synth loop on life support, accompanying every scene from workplace harassment to a cup of tea with identical gloom. Aliya Ali does what she can with Mahnoor/Mahi, but the character is written as a permanent sorrow-sculpture, leaving little room for the light, shade, or agency the film theoretically champions.
Item is ultimately a cinematic placebo—it gestures vigorously at curing a societal ill but contains none of the coherent, thoughtful medicine required. It’s the film equivalent of writing “EMPOWERMENT” in glitter on a protest sign while wearing the problematic costume from the party you’re picketing. Well-intentioned? Perhaps. A coherent piece of storytelling? That’s a trick question the film never stops arguing with itself long enough to answer. It’s destined not for the cinematic canon, but for the cultural curiosity cabinet—a fascinating, frustrating relic of what happens when the sermon gets lost in the spectacle.
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