Let me begin with a confession. I struggled to stay awake in Hansal Mehta’s The Buckingham Murders. To be fair, I’d walked into the film with great expectation for a moody, slow-burn. The setup invites this possibility. Detective Sergeant Jasmeet “Jass” Bhamra (Kareena Kapoor) has just been transferred to High Wycombe. She’s in the throes of a personal tragedy, having just lost her son in a shootout. The screenplay defines her solely by this loss. It becomes the excuse to dole out scattered flashbacks to the fateful night of her son’s killing, as well as glimpses of happier mother-son days which look plucked from some bright, artfully fake commercial.