Saibal Chatterjee

Nearly 25 years after uprooting a handpump in a fit of rage in Gadar and over three decades since upselling the power of his dhai kilo ka haath, Sunny Deol, now 67 years old, revels in ripping out (or apart) ceiling fans, banisters, columns, statues and other voluminous objects from their perches and sockets and wielding them as handy and deadly weapons. While the veteran actor still looks the part and struts around with the requisite panache in Jaat, the rough-and-ready tropes that once worked famously for him and his films no longer possess the sheen that can help deflect our attention from a patchy script riddled with holes the size of giant craters. Jaat is much ado about a couple of uneaten idlis and an upset man in quest of an apology until bigger issues - the discovery of thorium in coastal Andhra Pradesh, the displacement of villagers who have lived there for centuries, and the corruption of politicians and policemen all too willing to play into the hands of international conspirators.

How much solemn politics is too much solemn politics in an out-and-out action movie that aspires to be much more than just a vehicle for three of Kerala’s top male stars? No matter what L2: Empuraan, toplined by a superstar who has ruled the roost for decades and helmed by another who pulls out the stops both as director and actor, packs into its three hours by way of larger commentary, the gap between intent and result not only refuses to go away, but also fluctuates wildly. There is, of course, no known limit to what degree, and sort, of topical relevance a thriller must attain in order to break free of its genre confines and assume elevating social significance. L2: Empuraan, a Malayalam tentpole production whose Hindi dub is in theatres nationwide, is anything but frugal with its barbs at the abuse of power and the pitfalls of personality cults. The second part of a planned trilogy that began with the 2019 hit Lucifer, this Prithviraj Sukumaran-directed potboiler mixes up its visceral chops, ultra-violent spirals into excess and visual pizzazz with all-out attempts to show up forces that are out to destabilise Kerala in a fictional world that intermittently mirrors the real one in which those in authority lay down the rules to suit their immediate agendas.

Their incredible true story has been in the public domain for well over a decade and a half but the deeds of the moviemakers of Malegaon have never ceased to fascinate. Inherent in the tale is the drama of improbable dreams of nondescript individuals clashing with daunting societal and economic constraints and, in the bargain, engendering phenomenal acts of self-belief. Director Reema Kagti captures it all in Superboys of Malegaon, a matter-of-fact fictionalized retelling. Her film is a classic rollercoaster in which dizzying and sobering, flighty and probing, roll into and out of each other. Superboys of Malegaon, produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby, is about unremarkable lives made noteworthy by trajectories less ordinary. But, operating firmly within the realms of the real and the relatable, the film steers well clear of the cliches of the genre.

A taut and tense thriller, Crazxy, produced by and starring Sohum Shah, whose choices as an actor have never been conventional, upends genre norms to deliver a 93-minute adrenaline rush that until it ends up in a small puddle of avoidable mush is absolutely riveting fare. Coming to think of it, even the somewhat mawkish conclusion is not wholly out of place in a drama that blends the emotional with the visceral. Crazxy wastes nary a scene in its sustained bid to generate intrigue and suspense centred on the conversations and choices of the protagonist, a successful surgeon with a volatile past making his way through a day on which everything that can go wrong goes horribly wrong. The film rests on a virtuoso solo act that sees Sohum Shah in the guise of a Delhi doctor pulled into a heart-pounding race against time to save his kidnapped daughter, a girl he heartlessly abandoned due to no fault of hers.

Shabana Azmi is the pivot around which Dabba Cartel, a female-driven Netflix crime drama series, swivels. She is in her element. That is half the battle won. Winning the remaining half takes a bit of doing. Happily, it isn’t entirely beyond the team behind and before the camera. Azmi pulls her weight without missing a beat. She is ably supported by a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Jyotika, Nimisha Sajayan, Sai Tamhankar, Lillete Dubey, Shalini Pandey and Anjali Anand. The writing, too, contributes more than its mite to the show by putting a vigorous fresh spin on the genre. Yet, there is no escaping the feeling that the seven-episode Excel Entertainment-produced series, created by Shibani Akhtar, Gaurav Kapur, Vishnu Menon and Akanksha Seda, could have been a little tighter at the seams and a bit lighter at the edges. It falls just a touch short of being an unqualified success.

A sham, short-term romantic dalliance in an elite, no-uniform Delhi school assumes serious overtones and flips and flops its way through predictable ups and downs. That is the crux of Nadaaniyan, a passably lively but spectacularly shallow rom-com produced by Dharmatic Entertainment for Netflix. The strictly superficial buoyancy that the film seeks to exude is as affected as the idea that the plot revolves around. Directed by first-timer Shauna Gautam from a script by Riva Razdan Kapoor, Ishita Moitra and Jehan Handa, Nadaaniyan sputters to life only intermittently, banking on the youthful charm and energy of the young lead actors. The film juggles sundry ideas from Karan Johar’s early blockbusters (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, K3G, et al) and updates them, without much originality, for the consumption of Gen Z social media addicts who would rather die than go off the grid.

A significant addition to the small canon of Indian media industry dramas, Crime Beat, like Scoop before it, is based on a book written by a journalist who was in the thick of the action that forms the core of the series. Even its fictional elements largely flow from fact. The Zee5 series is marked by realism, an attribute that stems from its abjuration of overt generic flourishes. The dialogues co-written by the author of the novel (The Price You Pay, published in 2013)—scribe-turned academic Somnath Batabyal—contribute conversational authenticity to the show. Crime Beat investigates the Delhi underworld, the media’s attritional brushes with it and with men in uniform charged with keeping crime in check in the city. The lines that separate the three domains from each other as well as from party politics are frequently blurred, even erased.

A marriage annulled returns to haunt a man all set to move on in life in the lovey-dovey company of another woman. Love quickly flies out the window when the ex-wife, with a massive axe to grind, decides to do everything in her power to queer the pitch and picks up cudgels against the bride-to-be. Isn’t that the stuff that zany rom-coms are usually made of? Yes, but only in an ideal world. Mere Husband Ki Biwi, caught in a yawning gap between intent and execution, gropes in the dark for inspiration and fresh ideas and finds none worth a mention. The breakup has left a sorry trail of bitterness and the new hookup is riddled with challenges created by the man’s messy past. That is an obvious boilerplate for a cocktail of emotional bedlam, romantic recriminations, and much triangular to-ing and fro-ing. It’s all sufficiently flighty and frothy and yet painfully tedious. To biwi or not to biwi? That is the question the film runs concentric circles around and does not formulate a convincing answer.