Anuj Kumar

Over the years, carceral imagery has been an important creative device for shaping tales of confinement and social control. This week, Shambhunath Mishra (Sanjay Mishra), a prison guard struggling with financial burdens and personal isolation, forms an unlikely bond with Manju Singh (Neena Gupta), an inmate serving a life term for crimes she may not have committed. The intimacy amid isolation gets a jolt when one night a politically-connected predator disappears from prison, triggering an investigation. As a determined officer, Ateet Singh (Amitt K. Singh) takes charge, and elements of caste dynamics and power struggles surface, involving a strict but prejudiced superintendent (Kumud Mishra) and a perverted inmate (Akshay Dogra).

Mounted more than a decade ago as a challenge to the action-hero archetype, Mardaani‘s third instalment begins as a fiercely committed, unflinching crime thriller that delves deeper into the horrors of child trafficking and the begging mafia, delivered with raw brutality and social urgency.

A tale of damaged people caught in a psychological swamp, Daldal is a thriller that is more keen on uncovering the motivations behind the crime than on who committed it. The plot follows DCP Rita Ferreira (Bhumi Pednekar) investigating a series of gruesome murders while confronting her guilt-ridden past and a patriarchal system that projects committed female police officers as mere showpieces.

As Dhurandhar continues to tell cinegoers that Pakistan’s deep state views Hindus as pushovers, Border 2 arrives to underscore that the 1971 War stemmed from the neighbour’s belief that Indians are meek until confronted by Sunny Deol on the western front.

Those who have followed Vir Das’ comedy specials would know that he blends satire with observational humour better than most. He voices the experiences of the misfits, and his skits capture everyday absurdities arising from cultural clashes, racism, and jingoism. This week, Vir shifts stage, turning his pet peeves into an irreverent and frenetic parody of our times. Making his debut as a director, he turns up ‘in and as’ Happy Patel, a clumsy British spy with Indian roots. More at ease in the culinary terrain, perhaps because of his genetic composition, than picking clues, Happy is sent on a mission to Goa to rescue a British scientist from the clutches of a vicious crime lord, Mama (Mona Singh). Her favourite recipe is ‘cut-let’ and she is seeking a formula for fair skin. Happy mispronounces Hindi, and here lies most of the ingenuity in writing. Tum (you) becomes Tom and so on. On his crazy hunt for Mama, he rhymes with his Sikh handler (Sharib Hashmi) and loses his tasting finger to Mama and his heart to dancer Rupa (Mithila Palkar).

Neeraj Pandey has this knack for taking us to those forbidden spaces where offenders and upholders of the law become two sides of the same coin. He teases you with dribs and drabs of information, making us guess which side his characters would flip. This week, with Taskaree, the coin is golden, and the field of special ops is Mumbai International Airport. Celebrating the unsung heroes of India’s customs department, the series portrays their battles against organised crime with limited firepower.

History lovers often crave the human drama behind epochal events. They pine for the backroom intrigue, the clash of egos, the creases in the starched characters that decorate our history books, not to forget the impact of their moral stand on the man on the street. These days, ancient and medieval history offers plenty of elbow room to play with the past, but when it comes to modern Indian history, filmmakers tend to draw back, as the wounds are still fresh and memories of Partition linger.

These are interesting times in popular Hindi cinema, as a battle of perspectives rages at the turnstiles. Filmmakers known for overtly jingoistic tentpoles are turning to dark espionage dramas to convey their political intent, while those celebrated for their noirish, intricate thrillers are turning to patriotic dramas with predictable plotlines, in what seems like a well-argued counterpoint.