Only if a crime can be proven is a person actually guilty of it, says the lawyer who has never lost a case. Nobody takes the lawyer’s observation more seriously than his creators.System, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s first full-length feature in six years, is about the fundamental slipperiness of culpability and innocence. Out on Prime Video, the Hindi film follows Neha (Sonakshi Sinha), an advocate like her celebrity father Ravi (Ashutosh Gowariker) and her brother Alok (Adinath Kothare).Neha is slaving away as a public prosecutor at a Delhi court. She’s stumbling along until she’s steadied by the court stenographer Sarika (Jyotika).A self-taught legal expert after having typed up numerous arguments, Sarika becomes Neha’s collaborator. As the working-class wife of a disabled man (Nishant Singh), Sarika also gives Neha a glimpse into how the other half lives.Sarika’s experience is sorely needed for Neha’s latest case. Ravi’s regular client, the shady builder Vikram (Vijayant Kohli), is accused of murdering a social media influencer. Neha finds herself facing her father in court.Written by Harman Baweja and Arun Sukumar with additional credits by Iyer Tiwari and Tasneem Lokhandwala, System moves on seemingly parallel tracks that are destined to meet. The 123-minute movie is both courtroom drama and murder mystery, which leads to an unconvincing and bland denouement.But System is something else too. The dynamic between Neha and Sarika, for whom the courtroom is a meeting point as well as a leveller, makes a strong impact before it gets relegated to the background.Jyotika in System (2026). Courtesy Baweja Studios/Prime Video.Their equation reveals bits of their selves to each other and to themselves. Neha is charmed in a wide-eyed way by the genteel poverty in Sarika’s home. Sarika is always alive to class differences, her sharp eyes taking in everything that reminds her of her station.Both characters are deftly played: Neha by Sonakshi Sinha with intelligence and effortless feeling; Sarika by Jyotika with supressed bitterness but also dignity. Had the film stuck to a character study of these two women, rather than succumbing to the imperative for a neat conclusion, it might have been special.The understated performances – Ashutosh Gowariker is especially solid – are complemented by clean dialogue by Akshat Ghildial and smooth editing by Charu Shree Roy. Even at its most contrived, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s System emanates poise and purpose, neither of which wavers even as the plot thickens. But thickens it does, because the lawyer who has never lost a case declared it to be so and he is never wrong.