Saibal Chatterjee

Slacker comedy meets espionage thriller in an awkward but passably entertaining union in Vibe, produced, written and directed by lead actor Kunal Kemmu. The fun elements in the film vary wildly but they do not veer too far off the path the screenplay marks out for them. And that, for what it is worth, is no mean achievement. High-spirited frivolity of the kind that Vibe peddles demands extreme caution. The danger of it falling through the cracks and sinking into brainless buffoonery is real and ever-present. To its credit, even as it navigates differing strains of mirth that occasionally appear to work at cross-purposes, the film retains its grip on a wacky sense of verbal humour. For the most part anyway.

A police drama that upends generic conventions, Daayra spins around a core composed of the tropes of a thriller blended with the dynamics of a procedural focussed squarely on the essentials. Director Meghna Gulzar, returning to the domain of crime, inquisition and punishment that Talvar explored, adopts an aptly workaday storytelling style enlivened by dazzling editing. Crime-busters in Mumbai movies are usually men (and sometimes women) who are fast-talking, quick-on-the-draw individuals. The two Daayra cops are a world apart. They are as committed to the uniform as any law enforcer one has seen in Hindi cinema. One believes in instant results, the other is slow and steady. The contrast underpins the debate at the heart of the tale.

Transplanted from Kochi to Mumbai, a well-received Priyadarshan-helmed Malayalam crime drama that Mohanlal spearheaded a decade ago morphs in the same director’s hands into a Bollywood thriller with the Kerala superstar in a surprise cameo. Textually similar, texturally different and tonally entirely its own beast, Haiwaan, starring Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan, struggles to shrug off the shadow of Mohanlal and Oppam (2016). Comparisons here are not as odious as they usually are. They are, in fact, essential in understanding the trip that Haiwaan is on in the company of two Bollywood actors whose personas shape the film.

Irrespective of one’s stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the least you expect from Fauda, the Netflix series co-created by and starring former IDF soldier Lior Raz, are dramatic flair, technical finesse and solid performances. Season 5 of the Israeli series delivers all these in ample measure. But no matter what it throws into its “Shin Bet agents fighting Hamas terror masterminds” construct, the show struggles to ward off a degree of been-there-done-that kind of fatigue. “To hell with this world,” says one female operative in Marseille, France, where she is close to busting a terror module. The lady has reason to be peeved. Three rogue agents have embarked on an unapproved personal revenge mission that threatens to scuttle her plans.

The extended parable of the pursuit and preservation of power in a lawless upcountry region that earned a substantial following as a web series is compressed smartly into a jaunty, action-packed three-hour-plus movie with new characters and detours thrown in. The movie has its share of surprise elements but plays out largely along predictable lines. Most of the men and women who peopled Mirzapur over its two seasons are back in Mirzapur: The Movie - a few of them from the dead - at the centre of events and backstories that did not make it to the series or were merely alluded to.

The heady roar of the legendary supersonic fighter jet that served the Indian Air Force (IAF) for 62 years is muffled by nostalgia-dripping voices, an emotionally redolent background score, and a mind seeking to absorb loads of information. The “kick” inherent in the MiG-21 story is, however, given full rein in this engaging Netflix documentary conceived and executed as a companion piece to the hit web series Operation Safed Sagar. “Kick” is the word that several retired and serving pilots interviewed on camera use in describing what they felt when they sat in the cockpit of the now-retired-from-active-service MiG-21 and revved up the engine for take-off. The documentary transmits much of that to the audience.

Rajkumar Santoshi, reuniting with Sunny Deol three decades after their hattrick of 1990s superhits (Ghayal, Damini, Ghatak), takes the core of Asghar Wajahat’s celebrated 1989 play Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya O Jamyai Nai and effects sweeping textual changes to expand the dramatic scope of the screen adaptation, Batwara 1947. Some of extensions hit home, a few don’t. The tweaks in the period drama bankrolled by Aamir Khan Productions are dictated by the need to heighten emotional impact and give the lead actor a lion’s share of the footage. On both counts, the writer-director gets it right. Well, almost.

Why do we dog out the dogs that roam our streets and neighbourhoods? That is the question that writer-director Amit Rai poses in Ohh My Dog, his third film. Don’t these four-legged creatures, he asks, have the right to exist in peace? By way of an answer, Rai crafts an entertaining film that centres on two adventures - yes, two separate adventures - that play out parallelly over a single day in two different cities, one in Assam, the other in Bihar. The unrelated stories involve a sharp-witted Dibrugarh schoolboy whose pet goes missing and a street-smart mutt in Patna whose human companion, a young construction worker, is kidnapped. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and courage and quick thinking are of the essence. The child summons up all his resolve and intelligence and the canine its innate animal instinct to push back against those that have caused them distress.