Bharathi Pradhan

Show creator Neeraj Pandey shifts the men (and one token woman) in khaki across the state border to plonk them among the gangsters and politicians of West Bengal. Netas and criminals go hand in hand whichever state they may be in. It takes off with police officers Aartrika (Aakanksha Singh) and Himel (Mimoh Chakraborty) meeting with an accident. They’ve been hit. There’s a mole in their team. CM Shirshendu Chatterjee (Subhasish Mukherjee) and suave, wily party heavyweight Barun (Prosenjit Chatterjee) would like to continue with pliable police officers and have their secret alliances with gangsters like Shankar Bagha (Saswata Chatterjee). But opposition leader Nibedita Basak (Chitrangada Singh) is screaming her lungs out about the destruction of Bengal by the ruling party and its criminal buddies. “The City of Joy has turned into a City of Bhoy (fear)”.

Schoolgirl Dhara (Inayat Verma) dreams of taking a bow under the spotlight, convinced that she’s born to dance. She is also chirpily precocious as dad Shiv Rastogi (Abhishek Bachchan) dons an apron, makes her breakfast, plaits her hair and mom’s only a wistful memory in a photograph. Choreographer-turned-director Remo D’Souza is on familiar terrain when he sets up a superstar dance competition. A dream platform for Dhara. Renowned dancer Maggie Madam (Nora Fatehi) spurs Dhara’s dream by trying to convince Shiv that Mumbai’s where they should be for Dhara to train for the competition. Set in Ooty, bankers Shiv and father-in-law Nadar (Nassar), a doting thatha (grandpa) to Dhara, banter with a few words of Tamizh thrown in.

Clad in a full black burqa and looking like Kashmiri jihadi Ashiya Andrabi, a young woman desperately seeks asylum and help from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. Is Uzma Ahmed (Sadia Khateeb) a plant, a suicide bomber or a genuine case for humanitarian aid from the Indian Embassy? Does her story ring true? She’s an educated Indian, job hunting in Malaysia, who fell in love with Pakistani taxi driver Tahir (Jagjeet Sandhu) and took off alone to his country to marry him. Her first impressions despite finding Tahir togged up differently from how he seemed in Malaysia and his insistence that she cover her head right from the airport: “Kudrat ki mehr samajh baithi.” Where did she go in Pakistan? To Buner, deep into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “A place even the average Pakistani would fear to go,” she’s dryly told by Deputy High Commissioner JP Singh (John Abraham) who’s vetting her case and gauging her authenticity.

It was a blood splattered Baisakhi on April 13, 1919. When a jashan (celebration) turned into a janazaa (funeral) for the hundreds gunned down at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. General Dyer went down in history as the butcher. He was the cruel perpetrator, also the puppet. But mastermind, ringmaster and puppeteer Lieutenant-General Michael O’Dwyer was never formally indicted. (Udham Singh did shoot him dead more than 20 years later.) Is it time for an unwritten chapter to be brought to the fore? Director Ram Madhvani who had shown glimpses of how well he can segue imagination into history when he made the short film That Bloody Line (on how Sir Cyril Radcliffe cut off bits of India on the west and on the east), goes down the same path, same era.This time to recreate the Amritsar of 1919.

The Principal’s dying to be cool. The acronym-loving kind of cool that says YOLO, You Only Live Once. That’s a hat tip from debut-making director Shauna Gautam to mentor Karan Johar in whose debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Archana Puran Singh had played the same ditzy role. The rest of the film too, continues to be Johar territory, revisited, recycled. I’m going to cut some slack for the freshers behind and on screen. This is a new start for the director and for new hero Ibrahim Ali Khan (playing ‘Noyyda’ boy Arjun) while it’s a third attempt for Khushi Kapoor (Pia Jaisingh).

It’s a motley bunch of characters. Hari (Bhupendra Jadawat) wants a posting in Germany. Wife Raji (Shalini Pandey) and he pretty much talk of Germany more than anything else. Hari’s mother, the Gujarati saree-clad Ba (Shabana Azmi) is more the onlooker than a participant. Only the book she’s reading ‘Poisonous Shadow’ is at odds with who she seems to be. Ravi’s harried boss Shankar (Jisshu Sengupta) makes a stylish, upper crust couple with wife Varuna (Jyothika). Her ambitious garment venture ‘Sitara’ is fashionably losing money. She does seem the nose-in-the-air rich man’s wife living it up on husband’s funds. Shankar and Ravi are a part of the Viva Life building and company, a pharma company that’s been dodgy with a now-banned product called Modella.

The Sohum Shah filmmaking banner comes with a suitcase, currency notes blowing out of it. Start and Finish come misspelt. It’s a wonky world. Tall, suited-booted surgeon Dr Abhimanyu Sood (Sohum Shah) strides towards his Range Rover, a duffel bag stuffed with cash is stashed in the boot. Rs 5 crore, you soon learn. There’s menace hanging in the air. Inside the car with White Coat calling, hyper and bossy. “I’ll be there on time,” the surgeon assures White Coat. Outside, a wheelie-performing two-wheeler dashes across the Range Rover, the rider cheekily showing a blurred middle finger. Our doctor is hot-headed. Must give it back. Chases the two-wheeler, returns the finger gesture before resuming his drive to God-knows-where. A man with a mask leers at Abhimanyu from the window. Currency notes have been peeping out of the bag in the boot, prompting the mask to leer some more. The scene is set for the unexpected.

In 2019, a production house went into the slums of Dharavi, into the lives of Murad Ahmed (Ranveer Singh), his ladylove Safeena (Alia Bhatt) and the gully-origin rap music that emanated passionately from their mohalla. It was Zoya Akhtar’s delicately unobtrusive look at a troubled family in a community which is in no conflict with any other. Safeena, she cast, as a surgeon in the making. Six years later, Zoya’s filmmaking partner Reema Kagti replicates the community in a different setting, driven by a different passion. Doffing her hat to Faiza Ahmad Khan and her crew for their 2012 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, which is the springboard for Varun Grover’s feature film screenplay, the camera moves to Malegaon, a small town in Maharashtra, earlier known for its (hand) loom factories.