Saibal Chatterjee

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.

Let us begin with a simple question: how many sight gags does a vacuous slapstick comedy need in order to sustain itself over a runtime of two and a half hours, especially when each one of them takes next to no time to overstay its welcome? The answer is provided sans ambiguity by the four writers of the Indra Kumar-directed Dhamaal 4 (Paritosh Painter, Vedd Prakash, Bunty Rathore and Balvinder Singh Suri). There is absolutely no limit to the silliness that can be crammed into a concoction as unabashedly birdbrained as this. No matter how much the makers of the fourth instalment of the long-running Dhamaal franchise throw into its bottomless pit of mind-numbing inanities, nothing lands in one piece. If that were not enough, the film ends with the promise of another Dhamaal. One can only shudder at the thought!

Honey Trehan’s Satluj (Punjab ‘95 with another name but everything else intact) has finally emerged from censorship hell without losing any of its intrinsic fire. That is no mean triumph. It is a reason why the film, out on Zee5 after a four-year battle for CBFC clearance, must not be missed. But that, to be sure, is only of many reasons. Satluj is a powerful political film that pulls no punches. It is unwaveringly focused on what happens when the state and its police force trample upon the very laws and individual rights that they are charged with protecting. The result is an unsettling film that packs a massive wallop. Yes, Satluj isn’t easy to watch but it is the sort of film that, despite its length, does not let you look away. It demands absolute attention and a willing engagement with the burden of its arguments.

The hired killer in Baby Do Die Do is a woman. She is deaf and mute to boot. She can neither hear anything that anybody says nor spit out her rage in the form of words. She executes her chosen targets in utter silence with an umbrella that is actually a gun. Pretty much like the umbrella in a rain-soaked Mumbai, nothing is what it seems. The pivotal elements in Baby Do Die Do are intriguing all right but do they give the film an edge that serves its purpose? They do only sporadically. Huma Qureshi (who has also produced the film with her brother Saqib Saleem) fronts Baby Do Die Do with the ‘quiet’ confidence that the role calls for. She is unwaveringly consistent. The film is anything but.

An action-comedy that never finds its way out of the woods, Welcome to the Jungle jangles along mindlessly down a messy path. It delivers chaos, cacophony and confusion in bushels. Like it or lump it. The film gives an unwieldy cast the kind of freedom that only a muddled, overstuffed screenplay can. The actors stop at nothing, hamming it up like there is no tomorrow. While they have a ball, and then some, the Firoz Nadiadwala-produced film, directed by Ahmed Khan (who has toted up quite a few sequels and takes over the reins of this one from Anees Bazmee), lurches merrily from one massive wobble to another.

A Gen Z rom-com with a millennial soul and the heart of an overgrown child, Cocktail 2 is a hit-or-miss mix of tips about life, love and uncharted adventures in Sicily that do not fully dissolve into the breezy, pulpy potion that the film seeks to serve up. The pearls of wisdom that it bandies about stick out rather awkwardly as another menage e trois led by a young man in an open relationship navigates the ebbs and tides of the heart and the desires of two women who are polar opposites. Coming 14 years after Cocktail, which was about two equally dissimilar ladies making impulsive choices, right or wrong, and holding up a mirror to the wayward ways of an entitled, commitment-phobic philanderer, the follow-up scampers in a different direction and winds up (along with its three principal characters) in a place where confusion runs riot.

This movie would have us believe that its eponymous protagonist pulled India out of a major financial crisis and set the nation on the path to economic liberalisation in the early 1990s by making impossible calculations and moves. It gets both its math and its motive all wrong. Disappointing? That would be an understatement. Governor, propelled by an acting masterclass from Manoj Bajpayee that is sadly wasted on a vehicle whose wheels are terribly misaligned, is a disaster. The film spins a gossamer-thin yarn, and the kite that it seeks to send soaring in the air struggles to stay afloat.