Rohit Vats

Thug Life, also because of its such an English title, is the most unusual, borderline bizarre, film from master director Mani Ratnam’s repertoire. Add Kamal Haasan’s unique understanding of the milieu, where he oscillates between Vellu and Grandmaster Shifuji, and you have a strange film in front of you that would remind you of cinematic brilliance like The Godfather, Kill Bill and Gangs of Wasseypur. For such an artistic piece of work, it’s not easy for anyone to take a stand on whether they liked it for its distinctiveness or disliked it for the same reason! However, in between the cinema hall and my writing desk, I have decided to like it. So, from here onwards, I will be trying my best to drive home my point, even at the cost of sounding a little biased at times. It’s Mani Ratnam after all!

Netflix’s new steamy series tries very hard to play on the sexual undercurrent between its two leads—Ishan Khatter and Bhumi Pednekar—but the pressure to look vibe-worthy all the time hampers its chances. However, it’s breezy and enjoyable for the most of it, and gives viewers a nice binge time. A fierce new-age CEO Sophia Shekhar (Bhumi) and a modern-day prince Aviraaj (Ishaan) meet by chance and their frenemy phase begins. They need each other for financial reasons but their functioning styles demand a lot of tweaking. The physical attraction between them is also strong and that only complicates the proceedings. The Royals delivers what you can easily anticipate—a fading palace, hard to maintain lifestyle and the immediate need of money, and then some more money. Sprinkle this with bare body princes and tall horses with a lot of kissing, and you would get more or less the entire run time of The Royals.

Anurag Kashyap made a valid point when he said Netflix India lacks imagination and courage to go beyond the obvious. Its new show Khakee The Bengal Chapter is no different as it harps on cliches and fails to add depth to a story done to death. Just changing the language from Mumbaiya Hindi to Bengali-laden Hindi couldn’t lift either the script or the sheen. In the early ‘90s, Kolkata was infested with crooks and their patron politicians. Bagha (Saswata Chatterjee) has risen above the baseline and controls the crime syndicate under Barun Roy’s (Prosenjit Chatterjee) thumb. The state is reeling under pressure from all sides and as a result, it decides to crack down on the most wanted ones. IPS Arjun Maitra (Jeet) has been tasked to manage the situation with guns and gore. Chitrangada Singh plays rival politician Nibedita Basak.

Every now and then, we keep hearing Indian-origin gangsters shooting down each other on the Canadian soil. Sometimes it hits headlines and create panic and some awareness, and at other times it gives misguided dreams a channel and choice to pick up weapons. Kanneda, a colloquial term among ‘desis’ for Canada, the dream land for a prosperous life for a section, is quite obvious in its approach. It glorifies a life of guns and gore in the garb of being a voice against racial discrimination. In short, it wants to be the ‘desi gangsta’ series, on the lines of what we have been watching in Hollywood. Something like how 2Pac, The Notorious BIG, Snoop Dogg etc have been presented in various films and shows. Nirmal Chahal (Parmish Verma) has a troubled past and a talent for rapping in the early ‘90s. He wants to make a career in music but crosses paths with Canadian drug-dealer Sarabjit Singh Randhawa (Arunoday Singh) and politician Bajwa (Ranvir Shorey). As expected, he forgets the dreams he was supposed to go after and becomes a victim of his situations. Here onwards, it’s Vaastav reloaded sans depth and detailed characterisation. At the end of eight episodes of nearly 35-minutes each, you’re left wanting for something substantial.

The dark underbelly of Mumbai has shifted its business base to the illegal drugs trade in recent webseries themes. Netflix’s latest offering Dabba Cartel, directed by Hitesh Bhatia and presented by Excel Entertainment, mixes two popular tracks—drugs and dabbawallahs—in one, and the result is, frankly speaking, fantastic. With six episodes of nearly 45-minutes each, Dabba Cartel has everything you would need for a good timepass—nice tempo, well-paced and a great ensemble. Plots thickens with each episode and new characters are introduced to keep you hooked. And, at the end of everything, you’re left wanting for more! Shabana Azmi, Jyothika, Shalini Pandey, Nimisha Sajayan, Anjali Anand, Sai Tamhankar, Gajraj Rao, Jisshu Sengupta and Sunil Grover form the primary cast which drives this saga of guts and greed. The makers have avoided any judgmental tone and treat the drug business as any other survival business. More than well written, the characters are well-placed in the story that revolves from chawls to housing societies to farmhouses.

Sub inspector Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) of Jamna-paar police station has become more confident in life after the adventures of the first season. He finds himself entangled in a political murder that takes place in Delhi with its roots in Nagaland. He, along with IPS Iqbal Ansari ( Ishwak Singh), goes into the interiors of North East India to find out a complex society striving for power by any means. So many factions, so much greed and so bizarre situations. They meet Barua (Tillottama Shome) as the local police authority and begin a chase that’s forcing them to move in circles. At least, this is what happens in the first four episodes I watched after the show started streaming on Thursday night.

This review is based on the initial three episodes of the new Netflix show titled Black Warrant, based on a book of the same name by journalist Sunetra Choudhary and former Tihar Jail superintendent Sunil Gupta. However, going by the detailing shown in these episodes, there are chances of the rating going even higher eventually. Confession in the beginning: I haven’t read the book, which has given me a fresh perspective that is mostly driven by the entertainment quotient of the show. If you’re not looking for the mismatch between the book and the show, then you’re mostly looking for the right tempo and pace. Seconds into the show and you meet the lead of the biographical drama, jailer Sunil Gupta, a docile-looking but gritty middleclass boy with empathy in eyes and a hesitant body language. Wait a minute, have I not seen this full of potential actor somewhere before?

The Indian spin-off of Prime Video’s American show Citadel, titled Honey Bunny, tracks the making of super-agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra). Though Priyanka is not in the series, it’s about her parents Honey (Samantha) and Bunny (Varun Dhawan) and they become Citadel agents. The little Nadia (Kashvi) is very much present throughout the series and shows early inclinations of being a tough girl. While Honey is a struggling actor, Bunny is a stuntman who lives a double life of an agent under Baba (Kay Kay Menon). The time period is somewhere around 1992 and the play areas are Mumbai, Belgrade, Nainital and Bucharest. As expected, Baba and his ace killer KD (Saqib Saleem) are after Honey’s life even after eight years in 2000, but as the sentiments would go, Bunny returns to be the wall between death and life.