Rohan Naahar

There is a long history of small-budget films that escaped the limitations of finance and showed the world what true innovation really is. Generations of filmmakers have relied on techniques indistinguishable from magic tricks to make up for budgetary constraints. Scores of these movies are now regarded as classics. Dial 1975, which dropped on the OTT platform Waves this week, isn’t one of them. The film features a trio of talented actors and traps them in a production so amateurish that it could be mistaken for a student project. The starting premise is familiar. It’s the Emergency (of the ‘70s) and civil rights have been greatly restricted by the administration of a prime minister, who, however, is never seen or heard in the film. It is up to the prime minister’s loyal aides to ensure that even the mere thought of rebellion is quelled before it can morph into something more damaging.

It would be safe to surmise that if you want to stand a chance at beating Novak Djokovic, you play him in an empty stadium, or better yet, fill it with fans. The tennis star will be thrown off track by all the love! Djokovic, widely regarded as the “greatest tennis player in the sport’s history”, famously thrives under pressure. He weaponises the disdain that crowds often show him and turns it into fuel that has pushed him farther than any tennis player in history. He has now reached that stage in his career where a documentary can be made about him. But the one we’ve been presented with by Prime Video is hardly the tribute that the champion deserves.

A week after Emraan Hashmi utilised visa-free entry privileges in Thailand (in last week’s Bollywood release Awarapan 2), it’s Jason Statham’s turn. What’s more unexpected is that Statham’s new movie, Mutiny, has essentially the same plot as that of Awarapan 2 — minus the songs of yearning, of course. Both films involve unpredictable scions of Bangkok businessmen, women and children in need of rescuing and a spunky heroine who teams up with the protagonist. Unfortunately for Statham, his new film is as disposable as its Bollywood counterpart. Directed by Jean-François Richet, Mutiny races along like a speedboat across 95 breathless minutes, but there’s little that sets it apart from the dozens of other action movies that Statham churns out on an annual basis.

Nearly two decades after dying quite unambiguously at the end of the 2007 release Awarapan — they even held a memorial for him (in Pakistan!) — the ‘selfless angel’ of a gangster Shivam Pandit (played by Emraan Hashmi) is back in Awarapan 2. The new movie is designed almost exclusively for Hashmi’s cult fanbase and the odd passer-by with nothing better to do at the multiplex. Remember, the first Awarapan was a flop; it gained a following thanks to multiple reruns on cable and Pritam’s evergreen music album. This time around, directing duties have been handed over to Nitin Kakkar, who simply doesn’t have the command over such material that original filmmaker Mohit Suri did.

A colourful portrait of one of football’s most complicated characters, Netflix’s Mourinho finds “The Special One” in characteristically charismatic form. It portrays football manager and former player José Mourinho as somehow both psychologically opaque and emotionally transparent; he claims that he has never felt pressure, but he seems to thrive in it; he is capable of forming lifelong bonds with everyone except his own flesh and blood; Mourinho is an enigma, one that would take more than a Netflix series to crack.

What if the Covid-19 lockdown never ended? What if the world’s entire population was forever imprisoned in their homes, with family members as their cellmates? What would happen after three weeks, three months, or three years? Netflix’s new original movie, The Last House, doesn’t take this admittedly intriguing premise to its potential. What if the Covid-19 lockdown never ended? What if the world’s entire population was forever imprisoned in their homes, with family members as their cellmates? What would happen after three weeks, three months, or three years? Netflix’s new original movie, The Last House, doesn’t take this admittedly intriguing premise to its potential.

Like so many visual effects-heavy productions from India, Netflix’s Operation Safed Sagar — inspired by the Indian Air Force’s operation in Kargil during the 1999 India-Pakistan war — sacrifices human drama in favour of flashy computer-generated sequences. These action scenes are obviously challenging for under-pressure VFX artists working on tight deadlines, but they’re also extremely difficult to perform for actors whose faces are concealed behind masks. As visual effects have advanced in recent years, there has been an increase in the production of aerial warfare movies in India. But instead of using these newly available tools to enhance the storytelling, these movies appear to have relied on embellishments to conceal the shortcomings in scripts.