Rahul Desai

The last few years have been spent watching the downfall of mainstream Hindi cinema. I’ve reviewed so many atrocious Bollywood movies that I often sound like a bitter Indian dad citing the example of the exemplary “Sharma-ji Ka Beta” when I write about a foreign film. I can’t help but compare — and wave my finger disapprovingly at my litter. But once in a while, an absolutely horrid Hollywood movie like Karate Kid: Legends arrives (last year it was Madame Web), and all feels right with the world. The mediocrity is almost soothing because, as an Indian cinephile, it doesn’t feel so lonely anymore. They can be just as bad as us; it feels so nice to say that. We’re all in this together: divided by borders but united by bad cinema.

If Mumbai feels too real to be cinematic, New Delhi feels too cinematic to be real. Every life is cursed to be a story; every person sounds like a character. Dilli Dark scrutinises these illusions and fictions of the Indian capital through the lens of an outsider. The outsider is Michael Okeke (Samuel Abiola Robinson), a Nigerian national who is trying his darndest to overcome casual racism, transcend his stereotypical African image as a drug peddler named Kevin, and find a real job with his MBA degree. Ironically, his skin tone is an obstacle in a culture that’s so busy playing victim to the first world and massaging its own brown-person complex that it remains oblivious to the third-world gaze it inflicts upon others. It’s a vicious cycle, but Michael’s 6-year relationship with the city comes to a head when he befriends a coke-addicted godwoman (Geetika Vidya Ohylan).

The framework of Kankhajura is ripe with promise. It’s a revenge drama going through an identity crisis — it doesn’t behave like one for the most part, and every time the theme emerges, it feels a bit surprising. Based on an Israeli series called Magpie, Kankhajura (“centipede”) revolves around the sticky ‘rehabilitation’ of Ashu (Roshan Mathew), a young man released from prison after 14 years. There’s something shapeless about him. He looks innocent in a deranged way, shows signs of neurological damage, has a trauma-infused stutter, and freelances as a police mole. Most of all, Ashu remains needy for the validation of his older brother Max (Mohit Raina), a real-estate mogul who aids his reintegration into society without fully embracing his return.

The crime scene: an upscale Bandra apartment. The crime: famous surgeon Raj Nagpal (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) is found holding the dead body of his girlfriend, Roshni Saluja (Asha Negi). The social angle: the person who finds Raj in this position is none other than his separated wife, Anju (Surveen Chawla), who lives next door. The dysfunctional-family quirk: Roshni was the nurse and caregiver of Raj and Anju’s neurodivergent 13-year-old daughter (Khushi Bhardwaj). The lawyer(s): working-class hero Madhav Mishra (Pankaj Tripathi) defends prime suspect Raj against old foe and public prosecutor Lekha Agastya (Shweta Basu Prasad). Other characters who may or may not matter: a shaken housemaid, two police investigators (also a divorced couple), Roshni’s ex-boyfriend, Raj’s bitchy friends, Anju’s jaded face, and the public spat that Raj and Roshni had at the daughter’s birthday party the night before.

I have my reservations about live-action hybrid remakes of animated Disney classics. I just don’t see the point. The original invariably does a better job of charming newer generations of kids and adults (on smaller screens). The odd tech and VFX updates aside, there’s no real add-on; it’s like watching the capitalisation and credit of cultural interest into a bank account that refuses to invest in the current market. Remaking beats a re-release, sure, but it’s a mighty expensive way of telling the same story twice. The commercialism is grating, especially when the film in question is a cutesy childhood fable about the wonders of being young. But the most pressing question surrounding this remake/adaptation cycle is: Have we run out of imagination? Is there no will to create something new?

It’s never a good sign when you watch a remake and immediately have to look up the story of the original to understand exactly what you watched. Being in the dark for 142 minutes can go two ways: either it happened or you slept early and had a fever dream. Kapkapiii is somehow a bit of both; the viewer is never sure where their own reality ends and fiction begins. It is disorienting, patched-up, sporadic and incomplete, and not in a good-psychedelic way. Based on the Malayalam horror-comedy Romancham (2023), it tells (but also untells) the tale of six male flatmates sharing a decrepit apartment in which strange things happen after they mess around with a makeshift Ouija board. There are also two young women who live above, a swaggy Muslim don, Kya-Kool-Hai-Hum-meets-Delhi-Belly innuendos that don’t land, a graveyard for rats (!), a weird houseguest, and jumpscares that exist for the heck of it. To be fair, they’re all as confused as we are.

I suspect this is going to be a short review. Not just because Kesari Veer is unwatchable in so many different ways that one is spoiled for choice. But also because I’m tired of writing the same thing about multiple Hindi period dramas — if one can call them that — over the last few years. As a critic, I’ve gotten to a point where I robotically tick off a mental checklist. Provocative? Of course. Islamophobic? Certainly. Hate-mongering? Obviously. Misinformation parading as creative license? Sure. Kesari Veer is a 162-minute inspired-by-true-events slog about a Rajput warrior who tries to defend the Somnath temple against the Tughlaq Empire in the 14th century, but it’s also another 21st-century excuse to demonise Muslims in a communally sensitive country through the elastic medium of history. In another era, it would’ve been banned. All of this goes without saying. It’s the starting point. Tell me something new.

Imagine an enticing cricket match. The players have serious skills. The spectators are having a blast. The momentum swings back and forth. Until suddenly, out of nowhere, a batsman does something controversial: he gets out on purpose. He ‘sacrifices’ his own innings so that his teammate, the more deserving candidate, can smash the winning runs. The commentators then play down the incident and reveal that this whole match was planned down to the T — it was all a ruse to prove that cricket is a selfless sport. Nothing was real. In fact, a multibillion-dollar corporation donated a small fortune to NGOs for every wicket and boundary. It’s not enough that cricket entertains; it must make the world a better place. Fans must be taught the value of humanity, even if it’s at the cost of the game. Some might call this charity. I call it ethical match-fixing.