Rahul Desai

The Mumbai of Kennedy is dark and dystopian. It’s straight out of a Bhavesh Joshi-coded graphic novel: the sort of city that breeds neo-noir lawlessness, stylised violence and broken vigilantism. Bodies are maimed to Tchaikovsky compositions (performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, no less); a lyrical voice-over haunts the central figure; an indie-hop soundtrack bleeds into set-pieces that use time and stillness as a narrative weapon; heroic masks are worn to protect and destroy. Except this place is real. The dystopia is Covid-era Mumbai. Face-masks are still mandatory. Cultural distancing is rampant. Capitalism is suspended between lockdowns and life. A desperate police force runs extortion and contract-killing rackets in a crumbling economy. They are part of the political pandemic, leaching on the power-dynamic between ruling parties and billionaire industrialists. Survival is a divisive religion.

For 8 impossibly long episodes, Bandwaale invents different ways to be forgettable. The musical dramedy is no Bandish Bandits (I’m no fan but that’s the genre bar), but to be fair, it doesn’t really try. The premise is almost reverse-engineered to justify its dearth of personality. Created by composer-filmmaker Ankur Tewari and writer-actor Swanand Kirkire, the series stages the modernity-versus-tradition conflict through a tiresome template: a small-town girl strives to break free with a little help from her friends. It’s a bit like seeing the alt-reality story of Simran from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge — there’s only the million-and-fifth reference at yet another railway station; an oppressive father; a spunky kid sister — except her liberation is not love but art. Mariam (Shalini Pandey) is a covert poetess who uploads her work online so that she can go viral before her textbook-patriarch dad (Ashish Vidyarthi) marries her off to an eligible bachelor. Along the way, she finds two unlikely male allies: an outdated brass-band singer unwilling to evolve (Swanand Kirkire, as Robo), and a hunky-and-aloof DJ (Zahan Kapoor, as Psy) with a penchant for remixes.

You can see what Vishal Bhardwaj is trying to do with O’Romeo. The film is inspired by a chapter from journalist Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai (Gangubai Kathiawadi was another). The chapter delves into the life of Sapna Didi, a damsel in distress who mutates into a femme fatale in her quest to avenge the murder of her husband and take down dreaded don Dawood Ibrahim. She takes the help of Hussain Ustara, a Dawood rival and sharpshooter, to disrupt the D-Company empire and aid her mission. The mighty Bhardwaj takes these factoids and runs with them; he also sprints, strolls, jogs and trips with them. The very loose adaptation means that O’Romeo — as per its title — reframes the Sapna Didi story as an Ustara tragedy. Keeping with the times, it is centered on a cold-blooded womanizer who is tamed by love. His masculinity finds purpose; even his violence becomes an ode to her. He doesn’t gatecrash her narrative; she supplies his. He is both man-child and male saviour at once. Her wish is his demand. Where have we heard that before?

The prominence of a crocodile in the promo material of Tu Yaa Main made me nervous. Don’t get me wrong. I love crocodiles. I’ve always had a soft spot for them; they like sunning and relaxing, and their snouts make it look like they’re always smiling. Before you think I’m weird (I am), there’s another reason for my fondness. You see, crocodiles have often gotten the short end of the stick at the movies. Unlike their more renowned colleagues — the dinosaur, the godzilla, the shark, the kong — they’ve rarely been the star of creature features. They’re often relegated to violent cameos in stories that don’t consider them agile enough to carry a whole film. Even the athletic ones in Mohenjo Daro and Phir Aayi Haseen Dillruba got a raw deal. That’s just reptile racism. So the publicity campaign of this film felt too good to be true. Given the names associated — director Bejoy Nambiar and Aanand L. Rai’s Colour Yellow Productions — I fully expected the crocodile to be a twisted gimmick. A red herring. Maybe the croc is hallucinatory, or worse, a brand prop (Lacoste?) used by two reckless influencers to go viral.

There is no dearth of slow-burning crime dramas in India. Every other show is a gloomy police procedural with an identical template: one gory case, two mismatched detectives, personal lives that reflect the subtext of the whodunit, and an investigation that doubles up as the postmortem of a country. The anticipation of the twist becomes its own cat-and-mouse game between the film-makers and the audience. The genre fatigue is real; it’s easier to blend into this fog of atmospheric puzzles than stand out. But Kohrra 2, much like Kohrra (2023), manages to do both at once. You sense the genre was invented for stories like these — stories where even the red herrings are just as socially valid as the reveal; stories where every detour supplies different shades of truth; stories where a place unfolds as an accumulation of time and not an isolated setting; stories where noir is nothing but reality persevering. It’s exceptionally staged, performed and written: a masterclass in suspense as a subset of cultural curiosity rather than narrative momentum. Its one-hour-long finale is close to television perfection. And it trusts the oppression of blending in over the tragedy of standing out.

“A manhole cleaner and vegetable vendor fall in love during secret meetings in a train bathroom” is a great one-liner. Especially for an indie made on a shoestring budget. Especially in an India that’s gotten too real and complicated for love stories to make sense. It’s even better if said India then gatecrashes the love story, revealing why the title contains the term “Ki Kahani (the story of)” rather than the Bollywood-coded “Ki Prem Kahani (the love story of)”. With those like Pinaki (Sanjay Bishnoi) and Mariyam (Eshita Singh), it’s not falling for each other that’s the conflict; it’s the audacity to fall for each other that is.

The opening minutes of Vadh 2 feature a surprisingly tender moment. It’s past midnight in a prison complex in the wilderness of Madhya Pradesh. A wall separates the female and male wards. Manju Singh (Neena Gupta), a senior inmate of 28 years, sits on one side of the wall and chats with Shambunath Mishra (Sanjay Mishra), a long-time constable, from the other side. It’s a ‘blind’ date of sorts; they can’t see each other, but it’s a routine etched from decades of familiarity (he’s the official bootlegger) and friendship (her friends refer to him as her “aashiq”). Under the stars, they discuss each other’s life now. Her term is ending and she doesn’t want to leave; he speaks of loneliness and offers her a bottle on his birthday. You feel for the old ‘couple’: united by shackles, divided by freedom. They could be a film on their own. One of the merits of Vadh 2 is that it never loses sight of this little film. It’s a moment that echoes across a story that keeps expanding: a moment that keeps reclaiming the eyes of companionship from the jaws of a crime thriller.

Sam Raimi’s Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, a disgruntled corporate employee who finds herself stranded on an island with the sexist young CEO of the company after his private jet crashes into the ocean. She’s the better survivalist (Survival is literally her favourite reality series), so the power dynamic is reversed on the island — and she starts to enjoy it a bit too much. Her injured but smug boss, Bradley, begins to rely on her like the volleyball Wilson might have depended on Tom Hanks in Cast Away. She likes his dependence. At some point, the two even threaten to enter romcom territory, what with the days and weeks of cohabiting and building sheds and cooking and hunting together. That’s how it goes: the two enemies fall in love, and their differences are fetishised.