Sukanya Verma

Whether or not a film is crying for a sequel is decided by its box office success or an actor’s desire to return in a role promising sure shot glory. Audiences rarely have a say in these matters. When Raid, Rajkumar Gupta’s moderately budgeted tribute to the income tax department’s unsung heroes came out in 2018, it offered a welcome change of pace from Ajay Devgn’s brooding, bashing heroes. Watching him peacefully pursue the path of justice in a tax-defaulting MP’s home along with a battery of officers, while the mood continually shifted between humour and hostility, rendered Raid an unshowy strength. A muted Devgn is back on the fore as the 1980s’ IT star Amay Patnaik in Raid 2 with bigger targets in mind. Though he is as nonviolent as ever, there’s little originality by way of script, which is a classic case of more of the same.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s gift to embody individuals committed to their ideology is frequent fodder for cinema. After playing the unwavering Dashrath Manjhi in Manjhi: The Mountain Man, illustrious author Saadat Hasan Manto in Manto, blunt politician and Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray in Thackeray and psychotic serial killer Raman Raghav in Raman Raghav 2.0, the actor plays a 1990s Goan hero in the eponymous Costao. Customs officer Costao Fernandes rose to fame for standing his ground against an influential smuggling kingpin when the latter dragged him to court for the murder of his younger brother.

The spice factor is sorely missing in director duo Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal’s bland, banal heist caper, which has nothing to do with Vijay Anand’s 1967 classic of the same name except a cursorily doffed hat. Already abundant Hindi hack jobs of the ilk have moviegoers well-versed in the art of big-screen robbery involving the same old tricks of nicking passwords and fingerprints, cracking codes and combinations, dodging high security and noisy alarms to feel any real excitement around Jewel Thief’s surprisingly low stakes burglary. It doesn’t help that the sought-after Africa Ka Kohinoor, known as the Red Sun, looks like a cheap Christmas ornament that our protagonists tell us is valued at Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) in the underworld market.

As is usually the case, the untold story in Kesari Chapter 2 is actually an inaccurate one wherein history is juggled and chronology is shuffled for the sake of drama. True identities and occurrences are evoked but tweaked beyond recognition to design a chapter in India’s pre-Independence era that sounds far more sensational when told through the prism of film-making. So a case of libel becomes a fight against genocide and a devil’s advocate transforms into an F-word blasting freedom fighter as fictionalised twists and turns are tossed until an over five-week long courtroom battle acquires the air of a spectacle that’s nationalist and cinematic in equal measure.

What’s destroying our body, messing our mind and annihilating our soul with its sweeping abundance and unshakeable addiction by just being a click or command away? Director Amit Golani’s Logout, penned by The Viral Fever collaborator Biswapati Sarkar, attempts to find out in a digital-day drama sprinkled with reality check, social relevance and technological caution. There’s an obvious Black Mirror quality about these investigations as its creator Charlie Booker regretfully noted in a Guardian column as far back as 2011, ‘It’s hard to think of a single human function that technology hasn’t somehow altered, apart perhaps from burping. That’s pretty much all we have left.’ Truly, every single day, machines take over man as possibilities are abused for short-sighted gains and cheap thrills.

From female foeticide to child marriage, Chhorii’s running theme of social evils meets spooky scares seeks to engage its viewer by startling and enlightening them in turns. But Director Vishal Furia’s limp and unscary sequel achieves neither in spite of his constant dedication to creepy imagery. Heavily relying on paranoia and paranormal alone, this hastily whipped-up follow-up, unlike the first one that slickly adapted Furia’s Marathi horror Lapachhapi, is staggeringly devoid of significance and storytelling. Offering nothing more than an empty allegory on patriarchal control, Chhorii 2’s bigger crime is how quickly it collapses under the weight of its drowsy momentum and laughable attempt at giving us the heebie-jeebies.

They’re red carpets laid out by formula-favouring filmmakers for ‘Bhai’ to strut around in slow motion and assert his stardom to indulgent fans again and again and again. But surely, even the most accommodating Bhai bhakts have a breaking point, especially when the red carpet resembles a tattered rug trod on by a hubris high superstar wearing sunglasses so shiny he cannot read the writing on the wall: STOP. There’s not any effort — not even a smidgen — to resurrect a superstar on the wane in Sikandar by A R Murugadoss. Instead, you get dialogues like ‘Insaaf nahi saaf karna hai.’ Four writer credits (Murugadoss, Rajat Aroraa, Hussain Dalal, Abbas Dalal) and this is what they came up with?

The Diplomat begins with a disclaimer so lengthy, someone at the press show quipped ‘interval’ at the end. Among many, many, MANY things, it makes a point to mention that the movie, which is based on the true story of Indian citizen Uzma Ahmed, is neither a biopic nor a documentary, neither condones nor endorses the views put forward and so on and so forth. In 2017, Uzma became national news when she sought the Indian high commission’s help to get her out of Pakistan. The media documented her tears, trauma and thank you on television as she sat between then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and then deputy high commissioner in Islamabad J P Singh recounting her story. There’s significant cinematic value to her harrowing experiences and Writer Ritesh Shah and Director Shivam Nair dig into it to recreate the drama, if not the danger.