Rahul Desai

“Being careful is the new brave,” says R&AW chief Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor) while driving through Kashmir. He’s reminding his butt-kicking daughter, Durga (Sharvari), to stay alert and expect an attack from rogue forces. We soon hear another of his Kaulisms: “Sometimes you have to go backward to move forward”. He’s dispensing sound military advice, of course. But the film he’s in (Alpha), and the commercial franchise he’s in (YRF Spy Universe), follows this advice to a T. It takes every one of his words to heart, only to damage its own heart in the process.

As an assassin story, Baby Do Die Do is not out of the ordinary. The only novelty is that the brooding hero is a deaf-and-mute hitwoman, not a hitman. The tropes are Freudian and familiar. A childhood tragedy turns this woman named Baby (Huma Qureshi) into a cold-blooded contract killer. She works for a father figure called Papa (Chunky Panday). She’s slick and experienced at her job; a sharp-shooting umbrella is her weapon. She finds a good man (Rachit Singh), and suddenly, the secret is too heavy. She wants out of the profession. She wants to be human. Except it’s not that simple. She’s in too deep. A bloody mess is imminent.

A young man, Pritam (Vir Hirani), is jailed for threatening a lazy constable. It’s Goa, of course. Pritam watches as the inspector of the police station, Pedro (Arshad Warsi), hears of a high-profile ATM robbery. The middle-aged cops have no idea where to start. So Pritam offers to help in return for freedom; he is immediately allowed to use their computer, and in ten minutes, he tracks the culprits down. He does it with the grating innocence of a child educating his grandparents about electronics.

Welcome to the Jungle is that attention-seeking kid in class who loves playing the fool so much that not even he can tell when he accidentally sounds funny and smart. Ahmed Khan’s crowded action-comedy is staged as the third film in the Welcome franchise, but it’s really just Tropic Thunder given the Farah Khan treatment. Ben Stiller’s 2008 satire about four vain actors who inadvertently invite real-world dangers during a guerilla film shoot in a jungle is ‘adapted’ into a Bollywood caper about an incompetent movie crew who get mistaken for the Indian army during a patriotic shoot in a crisis-stricken border village. The meta-ness is the main character, of course. There’s Akshay Kumar self-referencing his Khiladi and Mohra days, Suniel Shetty named ‘Anna’ Shetty, Raveena Tandon taunting Kumar for “20 years of neglection,” Arshad Warsi paraphrasing his own Jolly LLB lines, Jackie Shroff as a kohl-eyed terrorist, Farida Jalal playing a dramatic old mother India whose ‘dialogue’ nobody understands, Jacqueline Fernandez as an airheaded blonde, and so on.

With Panchayat going downhill, you’d think Gram Chikitsalay would be looking to forge its own identity after acting like a stalker in its first season. But the essence of “TVF Rural Universe” goes beyond the template of an idealistic urban character arriving to work in a ramshackle village full of idiosyncratic residents, aggressively colourful dialects, mundane conflicts and backward mindsets. The shared formula is more of an excuse to make the same series twice over. It’s a bit like watching a famous South Indian director making his Bollywood debut by remaking — or culturally adapting — his biggest hit. The remake always looks more rehearsed, functional, designed, and bereft of spontaneity.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the hit of the year, Curry Barker’s Obsession. The horror film revolves around a lonely young man named Bear whose desperate wish — that his pretty coworker Nikki falls for him — comes true with terrifying consequences. The predatory entitlement of his wish turns her into a monstrous and obsessive girlfriend who loves without autonomy. It’s a neat subversion of the date-movie template. But I kept wondering why the movie left me unaffected. Worse, I didn’t find the mutating Nikki so shocking or scary. While walking out, it struck me. I realised that mainstream Hindi cinema has normalised women (in love) written by men for decades. I see an agency-free Nikki on screen in a flashy Bollywood entertainer every other week. Except, they’re presented as sane and new-age women by Bear-coded makers without a hint of satire. In other words, Cocktail 2 ruined Obsession for me before it was even made.

Disclosure Day hits the ground running. Walking is not its style. We’re flung into a story that’s already in motion. It’s a bit like joining a film midway through: no context, no beginning or warning. Catch me if you can, it seems to say. A young cybersecurity specialist (Josh O’Connor) has something in his bag that a shadowy supervillain (Colin Firth) and his deep-state corporation wants. They’ve abducted said hero’s girlfriend (Eve Hewson) to make the trade at a wrestling arena. But this hero, Daniel, somehow escapes with both girlfriend and bag intact. (If the baddies were competent, the story would’ve ended in a minute). So Daniel was being chased, stays chased, and remains on the run. A meteorologist with psychic powers, Margaret (Emily Blunt), joins him along the way.

Two teen-aged siblings wait at a bus stop on a rainy day. The sister is on her way to sing at a radio station; her brother accompanies (and annoys) her. They are offered a lift from two strangers in a fiat. They accept, but do not return. The panicked parents inform the police. The investigation is led by rookie SI Jayprakash; the kidnapping case soon morphs into a gruesome murder case and a nationwide manhunt. This search is intercut with the ‘adventures’ of Babu and Rajjo, the two criminals, in the days leading up to the abduction. These are separate timelines a week apart, but they run parallel to each other in how the police trace the escalating journey of the killers; the present must catch up with the past before the crime enters the future. Either way, they become a definitive moment in history.