Priyanka Roy

The law of averages — that a brilliant father rarely gives way to an equally illustrious son — was turned on its head as early as the 17th century when Sambhaji took over the reigns of the Maratha empire from his father, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj’s depiction in history — despite tales of his unwavering valour — are unfortunately sketchy. Even the name by which he was referred to — ‘Chhaava’ aka ’lion’s cub’ — is more of a nod to Shivaji’s larger-than-life courage and persona. To cite an almost as-good-as-it-gets allusion, it refers more to Mufasa than it does to Simba. Hence, the unsung story of Sambhaji, and his relentless fight against the Mughals, led by the tyrannical Aurangzeb, needed to be documented. Chhaava does that, with its source material being the eponymously named historical novel by Shivaji Sawant. Which brings us to the tricky question of how much of Chhaava — the book, and by logical extension, the film — is fact and how much of it is exaggerated fact? We will, perhaps, never know.

For those not in favour of remakes — I am one of them, considering most turn out to be a lazy copy-paste job — the decision to let go of Mrs because the memories of watching The Great Indian Kitchen are too sacrosanct, will not be unfounded. But Mrs is not just any other remake. It is a thriving, breathing, nuanced film in its own right. It is the kind of film that takes the best out of its source material and enhances it, setting itself in a socio-cultural context that is relevant and relatable. Mrs hits hard — just as hard as The Great Indian Kitchen did when it released at the tail-end of the first wave of the pandemic. The Malayalam film with a seemingly simple story of a newly-married woman struggling to fit into a conservative and patriarchal household, ignited conversations around gender roles, casual sexism, toxic relationships, male entitlement and a woman’s role in a world she is constantly stereotyped in. It became a mirror of the suffering that most Indian women, at some time or maybe all of the time, have been subjected to. In that film, what remained subtle and innocuous at first finally boiled over into rage that resulted in a moment of gut-wrenching catharsis. Like the woman at the centre of it, we felt elated, but we also cried.

There are flawed protagonists. And then there are problematic men masquerading as heroes. Dev Ambre aka Deva belongs to the latter category. Deva is a trigger-happy Mumbai cop whose designation is disproportionate to the body count he has notched up. Deva has severe anger issues, conveniently notched down to him being a rebel. He doesn’t think twice before sticking the barrel of a gun into the mouth of a woman who is not a criminal by any measure. Dev is a huge proponent of police brutality, but gets away with it every time. No one can say ’no’ to him. For that would mean that person’s body parts could be in real danger of being distanced from his body. When Dev asks his girlfriend Diya (Pooja Hegde) what she likes about him, she replies with: ‘Besides your arrogance, your grumpy face and your huge anger issues, I like the fact that you have a child in you’.

A year ago, almost to the day, when Fighter released and didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, director Siddharth Anand put forth a bizarre claim. He said that the Hrithik Roshan-Deepika Padukone starrer, described by its makers as “India’s first aerial action film”, had not found much favour with the audience because “90 per cent of Indians haven’t flown in planes”. By that logic, one would have to be an Italian mafioso to appreciate The Godfather. The good thing is that you don’t have to sign up for a fighter pilot licence before you walk in for a show of Sky Force. This bi-annual Akshay Kumar deshbhakti dose — ‘a fictional story inspired by real events’ — has the kind of thrill and drama that every viewer, brought up on a steady diet of Bollywood patriotic films, is familiar with. Which is both a good and a bad thing.

Mother’s Instinct could have been named ‘Mom gone bonkers’. Turning the concept/ idea/ theme of a mother’s selfless love for her child on its head, this 2024 thriller, now streaming on Prime Video, is a pulpy watch, with maternal instinct going into a zone dark enough to result in murder. A couple of them, in fact. Set in the 1960s and headlined by Hollywood A-listers Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, the directorial debut of acclaimed French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme has a Hitchcockian feel of unease and foreshadowing, but never really lives up to its ultimately pulpy potential.

When we first met Hathiram Chaudhary in the summer of 2020, humanity was in the grip of a severe pandemic, and ‘paatal lok’ — to now put it lightly — didn’t seem to be too much of an alien word (or world) at that moment. The show provided a much-needed distraction, and was a rare watch that gave us food for thought, metamorphosing from a police procedural to a tightly-knit thriller that compelled us to examine the fault lines of caste, social prejudice, marginalisation, vote-bank politics, fake news and religious divide. Five years later, Hathiram — played like second skin by the irrepressible Jaideep Ahlawat — is back. In Season 2, the stakes may be higher, the socio-political environment more tense and the cocktail of betrayal, deceit, double-cross and revenge more tricky and tenuous… but Hathiram has remained the same. A man still world-weary and honest to a fault. But if angst defined Chaudhary in the first season — a sincere if bullheaded cop thirsting for one challenging case in his predominantly unremarkable career — it is acceptance that forms his core this time. Hathiram hasn’t made any significant strides in his career, but as a man he seems content. ‘Seems’ is the operative word here.

For a film in which the leading man’s signature line is ‘I am unpredictable’, Game Changer feels as old as cinema itself. In fact, the plot of this film — stretching over an abominably long 165 minutes — is so stale that every second of it will remind you of some terrible movie you may have had the misfortune of sitting through in the past. Game Changer is vintage Shankar, which is more of a bad than a good thing these days. The man who once gave us films like Gentleman and Anniyan, Enthiran and Indian, has been stuck in a creative rut, recently illustrated by the torture fest called Indian 2. Game Changer is a definite improvement over Indian 2 but that isn’t saying much about a film that relies on every overused trope in the masala movie book — physical (over) acting, grating background score, expensively-shot but totally unnecessary songs and a story that goes here, there, everywhere… and ultimately, nowhere.

A Vikramaditya Motwane film (or series) will always have one standout moment that stays on with the audience long after curtain call. In his debut film Udaan, it is the final moment of brothers Rohan and Arjun triumphantly walking hand-in-hand to their long-deserved freedom. In Trapped, it is Shaurya’s almost gleeful taandav-like dance when he burns down his mattress in a bid to attract attention in the apartment he finds himself locked in. In Lootera, it is the painfully poignant penultimate scene of Varun hanging an artificial leaf in the blinding blizzard so that Paakhi has reason to live, for at least a day more. In Jubilee, among many memorable moments, it is the unbridled sense of joy, reminiscent of Awaara, where Jay and Niloufer lose their umbrella in the pouring rain, but discover each other in the process. Each of these scenes represents freedom — or the journey towards it — in many ways. Each moment, as is the norm in a Motwane directorial, is simple on the surface but is loaded with meat and meaning.