Shubhra Gupta

I had nearly, and happily, forgotten most of the first Son Of Sardaar. Only when I saw Ajay Devgn in a nicely-tied turban looking lost in a ‘yeh kya ho raha hai’ manner, and the late Mukul Dev (this is his last film) and Vindu Singh roaming about aimlessly, that I had a flashback of the original. I wasn’t a fan of the first one. Part 2, with these three reprising their roles, accompanied by some new faces, strains to be a little better. But only just. Two elements have been added to the plot-what’s-that proceedings. One is a running India-Pakistan gag, in which a few characters are Pakistani, and they are not all ‘soorma-eyed’ terrorists (gasp). The other is a wonderful actor who should basically be given all the awards: a nearly-unrecognisable Deepak Dobriyal playing a trans person with brio, nearly runs away with the film. Or would have, if his character was given half a chance to do more than the all-over-the-place script allows him to.

The Ghaziabad-based Katarias have a sole earning member. Ajay (Rajesh Tailang) is a lawyer whose earnings, and patience, is stretched thin by the antics of his permanently bickering teenage children, Naina (Tanya Sharma) and her younger brother Bharat (Aditya Shukla). Ajay’s wife Sushma (Sheeba Chadha) handles the house, one eye on the never-ending work in the kitchen, and another on the sewing machine, which has been lying neglected for years. What if she opens a longed-for boutique? That would bring in much-needed extra cash. The kids join in, with a couple of madcap schemes. But nothing works. The squabbling siblings have to share a room, while the one that’s freed up, is rented out. The tenant (Keshav Sadhna) turns out to be a good-looking fellow, whom Naina starts batting her eyelids at. Turns out that he has troubles of his own, revealed in a most unconvincing manner.

A little group, sitting outside their tiny homes, is swapping stories. The tone is civil, but the matter at hand, clearly hypothetical, is deadly serious– about a group of starving humans turning into cannibals, and a victim who gets devoured. Someone says, ‘agar Dalit hota toh bach jaata, koi chhoota tak nahin’ (If it was a Dalit, no one would have touched him). This line hits hard. Or, it should have. But it stays a throwaway, and we don’t really feel the impact as much as we should have. That single dialogue encapsulates centuries of caste-discrimination and exploitation and the almost inhuman resilience that a group of Indian citizens have been forced to live with. But in Shazia Iqbal’s ‘Dhadak 2’, we hear it, and before we could absorb the enormous weight of it, it’s gone.

There are three people, bound by blood, at cross-purposes in Sarzameen. An Armyman whose love for his country knows no bounds. His son whose weakness is hard for the strict dad to handle. And his (the Armyman’s) wife, whose love is divided. Who will win? The father or the son? In either event, will the wife win, or the mother? Sarzameen is yet another addition to the line of recent films which wears its patriotism on its sleeve. This Karan Johar production tries to add an emotional wallop, giving us the enemy without and a conflict within, and that layer should have helped this film become more than the run-of-the-mill productions we’re being besieged with these days.

Krish (Ahaan Panday) is a hotheaded wannabe composer. Vaani (Aneet Padda) is an earnest wannabe journalist. We know this because Krish gets into a scuffle almost as soon as the film opens, and stomps off, leaving the chance of a lucrative gig behind. And Vaani (Aneet Padda) gets smirked at in her new workplace because she has no idea of how many Instagram followers she has as she has deleted her account. That these two very different characters will clash, meet, and come together is ordained, because this is a Mohit Suri film. That it will have soulful ballad-y music all over it is also expected, for the same reason.

I’m just done binge-watching seven episodes of Special Ops 2, each lasting about 50-57 minutes, and I’m here to tell you that this one is a banger. Most sequels flatten and disappoint. Special Ops came in 2020, when we were in the midst of the pandemic; five years later, where much has changed in the media landscape, and part twos are where creativity goes to die, I’m most pleasantly surprised that this sequel, again co-directed by Neeraj Pandey and Shivam Nair, and written by creator Pandey, Deepak Kingrani, Benazir Ali Fida, has exceeded my expectations. We have finally got ourselves a spy franchise that is globally ambitious in the way it goes about laying out its wares, dropping in and out of political hot-spots casually, bunging in enough lol moments: what’s the point of a spymeister who can’t just say, ‘hamare pass CIA waalon ke liye kuchch hai,’ and his faithful dogsbody coming up with just a teeny detail that has the Langley HQ in Virginia salivating.

The way you will respond to a film which goes down a much less beaten path in Bollywood — placing a young woman with autism at the centre of the narrative — will depend upon a couple of things. Your ability to suspend disbelief, and how much, or how little, you know about the condition, which Tanvi (Shubhangi Dutt) lives with. Only the most curmudgeonly will refuse to smile back at Tanvi when she decides on the impossible: join the Indian Army, and salute the flag at the stunningly beautiful, formidably out-of-reach Siachen outpost. It was her father’s (Karan Tacker) dream, and now that he isn’t in this world, she makes it her mission. Will her bemused grandfather, retired Army man Col Raina (Anupam Kher) help her, or hinder her?

What happens when a middle-aged Sanskrit teacher who has never had the pleasure of female company, forget about physical intimacy, is given a glimpse of heaven? At long last, something he never thought was possible, is within his grasp: a gorgeous younger woman is interested in him. Is it for real? Is there a catch? There’s promise in the premise. Relationship dramas are really where plots can dance around humans and their impulses, and actors can dig into nuance. The thing with Aap Jaisa Koi is that the surprise element is never given the kind of free reign that would lift the material.