Rahul Desai

Given Hindi cinema’s obsession with hypermasculinity and patriotism, I’m surprised it took so long for a spy comedy to emerge. Actually, I’m not so surprised; imagine offending 99 percent of the country by cajoling them into joking about national security. Humour is such a risk. Irreverence can be such a crime (ask our standup comics). But it’s only fitting that a Kunal — an affable, witty, unpretentious and naturally unserious observer of Indian living — leads the charge. After giving Dil Chahta Hai the dysfunctional-buddy treatment in Madgaon Express, Kunal Kemmu directs himself in Vibe, a slacker comedy that’s shamed into an identity crisis. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching two gloriously apolitical dudes accidentally pass a joint at a smoky house party to a proud WhatApp uncle; nobody is prepared for the night (and fight) that follows.

There was a time during the Covid-19 lockdowns when a new anthology of shorts would drop on a streaming platform every second week. While we understood the logistical challenges of producing full-length features, and the urgent need to keep churning out ‘content,’ the anthology fatigue was real. Bad habits crept into both sides. Box-of-chocolates storytelling became competitive film-making. Viewers and critics entered an endless loop of comparing segments; most anthologies were reduced to internal rankings. The format burned itself out and culminated in the release of the utterly forgettable Lust Stories 2 (2023), a limp post-pandemic sequel to a frisky pre-pandemic franchise.

Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (2015) presents three perspectives on the 2008 Noida double murder case, but it makes no secret about what it really believes, lamenting a system for not doing its job. Gulzar’s Chhapaak (2020) is based on the courageous life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, but exposes a system that makes little difference even if it does its job. Both films are shaped by the frustration of operating within the porous framework of law and order, in a patriarchal nation where nothing except headlines change. Gulzar’s latest, Daayra, completes this social-postmortem trilogy. The frustration has mutated into unbridled rage.

Termite, a 30-minute short, is documentary maker Shaunak Sen’s first fiction film. But it’s hard to tell the difference. He treats life as the introverted ally of storytelling; his nonfiction often designs the truth of an invisibilised India. It finds a controlled language to present what already exists. While Cities of Sleep traced the gloomy lyricism of Delhi’s insurgent sleeper communities, the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes shadowed two Muslim brothers who run a bird clinic in old Delhi. The camera — steady, studied, often static — reframes the people as characters, spaces as settings, and ecological relationships as cultural metaphors. Termite looks like it’s ‘following’ two men in the capital, too. A Tamil migrant, Ajith (Valavane Koumarane), shares a rooftop room with his Muslim friend, Saud (Faisal Malik); they spend tired evenings drinking tea and passively watching television.

If there were a world in which simply “Why?” could pass off as a professional film review, I’d happily live in it. But here I am instead, wondering how to do my job, after 164 minutes of precisely the kind of movie that makes Bollywood everyone’s favourite punching bag. Priyadarshan’s Haiwaan, a remake of Priyadarshan’s Oppam, is inane in so many ways that one is spoiled for choice. I had vowed to be kinder and calmer to bad thrillers; it’s easy to be entertaining when the only motive is to surprise the audience. But this kindness and calmness disappeared two scenes in, when the blind protagonist sings a happy-go-lucky song and dances optimistically on a ferry to Mumbai like a 1980s hero striving in the wrong decade; this is moments after he is introduced as a part-time wrestler, guitarist and all-round truster who has just fixed his sister’s marriage. It’s hard not to be defeated by the delusionally dated tone before the premise even begins.

Based on Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name, Ben Rekhi’s Last Man In Tower is defined by its curious relationship with storytelling. It starts out like a vintage Bombay movie with ‘characters’ and designs of a scrappy fairytale about the old guard holding down the brick fort in the face of rampant gentrification. There’s a sense of community and colour. It’s 2010, the setting is a crumbling colony called Vishram (“Rest”) in Mumbai’s suburb of Vakola, and the residents are diverse: the touchy Punjabi lady with a neurodivergent son, the generous old Catholic couple, the fiery single mom accused of ‘communism,’ the mild-mannered building secretary, the lone Muslim family, the street-smart hustler, and the single working girl who becomes the subject of gossip for having a sex life. Retired teacher Yogesh Mishra (Manoj Bajpayee) is the fair and level-headed patriarch of this unofficial family; he tutors the kids and schools the adults.

You can tell when a film-maker returns to their comfort zone. There’s something dry and unfussy about the storytelling, as if to say: No big deal, I know what I’m doing. There’s a conventional template and familiar tropes, but the padding is full of little observations, themes, subplots and set-pieces that don’t call for attention. The treatment is casual, confident. It’s almost like watching a tennis player competing on their favourite court after a while: all muscle memory and twitches. That’s director Tigmanshu Dhulia’s relationship with the hinterland crime drama. More than a decade after Paan Singh Tomar, his latest, Ghamasaan, tells a cop-and-dacoit tale in Bundelkhand of the mid-2000s. It’s soothing to see how relaxed the movie is. The prolific Arshad Warsi plays Maharaj (based on Dadua, the actual ‘Veerappan of Bundelkhand’), a god-fearing jungle king who terrorises villages and slaughters traitors; Warsi has been enjoying quite a second wind lately, and regardless of the tone he occupies — whether sullen cop, comedic gangster or serious don — he always brings something new to the table. The reliable Pratik Gandhi plays IPS Aditya Singh, the all-business outsider tasked with capturing Maharaj and his trigger-happy gang.

In theory, The Revolutionaries has a lot going for it. The sprawling historical drama tells the lesser-known story of the armed revolutionaries of India’s Independence movement: the underground rebels who fought the British with bullets and bombs before Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent crusades, and the freedom-fighting ‘ancestors’ who set the stage for future folk-heroes like Bhagat Singh, Udham Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad. Its primary antagonist is Lieutenant Colonel Dyer, before he became the world’s most hated Englishman for his role in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It’s the natural companion piece to the two seasons of Freedom At Midnight, also created and directed by Nikkhil Advani, who’s one of the more accomplished long-form filmmakers going around; he knows a thing or two about scale and period pieces. And it has a young cast, the kind that draws a ready-made Gen-Z fanbase to a ‘serious’ chapter.