Priyanka Roy

The growing worry about lack of quality control in the OTT space now has a physical embodiment. Do Patti. A film which may have its heart in the right place but is otherwise all over the place. Do Patti aims to be a sensitive and scathing film on domestic abuse. The other tags it wants to earn for itself are a noir thriller, a police procedural, a film on sibling rivalry, a blistering criticism of privilege and a racy romance laced with sex, lies and videotape (or rather, mobile phone footage). It ends up being neither.

The millennial attempting to retain individuality and identity, while holding on to old friendships and coping with being a new parent, is a demographic that has hardly, if ever, been represented on the Indian screen. Even if it has been, it has been reduced to a strand or a subplot in a coming-of-age story. The fact that it even goes down this route immediately sets Raat Jawaan Hai apart. That it does it well, making its eight episodes a breezy watch which you want to hold on to and hope it doesn’t end, is a huge feather in its cap. This is a definite clutter-breaker in the Indian streaming space. One which has been long overdue.

Agneepath plays on the aircraft entertainment system, that telling scene of a young Vijay Dinanath Chauhan burning down a petrol pump being a visual allegory of a similar incident perpetrated by the protagonist in Jigra a few moments ago. This is just one instance. Throughout the runtime of Jigra, Amitabh Bachchan pops up as idea and inspiration, set-up and syntax. When Satya (Alia Bhatt), caught in a situation which may end in violence, is gently warned: “Abhi Bachchan nahin bann na hain… sirf bachke nikalna hain”, she rolls up her sleeves and says matter-of-factly: “Ab toh Bachchan hi bann na hain”.

“Let’s give the people what they want,” Lady Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) declares at a key moment in Joker: Folie a Deux. That seems odd coming from a film that is committed to giving audiences quite the opposite.