Sukanya Verma

Vijay Salgaonkar’s mind hasn’t stopped ticking for over a decade now. Thinking two steps ahead of the law every living second, he expects the Damocles sword hanging above his head to drop any day and destroy the people he so intently protects. It’s a dysfunctional dynamic to function in but the Salgaonkars don’t mind so long as they survive the storm as a close-knit family. At what cost? The makers of Drishyam do not ask. Over the course of these 11 years, they’ve started to resemble apparitions going around in circles and conning the cops as a team. The ghost of Sameer Deshmukh’s unresolved mystery continues to loom large over the franchise, which arrives at its conclusion in the final instalment of the trilogy.

Don’t Be Shy is a misleading title. There’s no holding back the central character of writer-director Sreeti Mukerji’s college romp and her manipulative drama queen ways as she flits between lies and last-minute guilty conscience to suit her agenda. Like 90% protagonists of a young adult story, Shyamali ‘Shy’ Das (Aarushi Bajaj) has her life all figured out. And if you have watched even 20% of fluff the genre churns out, you have its tropes down pat even before its spunky college going heroine wakes from her precious, overachiever dream in a room full of pink, to-do slogans and a pet turtle called Bulby.

Questioning folklore is guaranteed to wreak havoc in stories built around legends and myths. Stepping inside a cursed forest on a full moon night despite repeated warnings from villagers turned Rahul Roy into a tiger, late night strolls during an annual four-day festival spelled sure-shot doom for the male residents of Chanderi in Stree when abducted by its titular bhootni. In the erroneously spelled The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest, Sidharth Malhotra as the sceptic Rishi scoffs at the forbidden forest mythology threatening folks with dire consequences should they dare step inside the woods after sunset and stir the peace of its esteemed Van Devi mata. Until he knows better.

A week after Daayra probed into India’s rampant rape crisis through the purview of a police procedural comes Hunkkaar: The Roar. In this six-part series created by the husband and wife duo of Karan Darius Kapadia and Nitya Mehra, a 17-year-old victim of sexual assault takes an influential godman to court in hopes of justice, only to encounter endless persecution and judgement at the hands of the law, society and media. You can find different takes on this theme across fare like Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, Sia, Ashram and Maharaj. Hunkkaar’s generic treatment of a widespread problem doesn’t provide any fresh insights but engages in fits and starts on the strength of the talent on board.

Lust Stories 3 was inevitable. When the first Lust Stories came out, it was a novel attempt to normalise sex and its byproducts as fundamental as any other human emotion in mainstream. Though not quite as refreshing as its predecessor, Lust Stories 2 made an attempt to understand the politics of passion. Packaged in an anthology format, its four filmmakers helming four segments pattern lend the projects a watchability that even inconsistency couldn’t diminish… until its overkill during pandemic. Much water has flowed under the bridge since. The Netflix franchise returns with a reignited libido and exciting new voices sharing their view of treating sex with fun, fizz and frivolity.

Meghna Gulzar studies the modus operandi of a pair of cops committed to justice in Daayra. While DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran) has no hesitation in playing judge, jury, and executioner, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) believes in the law following its own course. A clash of this nature is not entirely new but in Daayra, it forms the centrepiece of Gulzar’s storytelling where the worldview of two law enforcers is scrutinised in a straightforward, impartial manner. What lends Gulzar’s findings its complex appeal is, the more you mull on it, the more understandable their perspectives seem. At the centre of these ideological differences is the unchanging scenario of crime against women.

Last week Gandhari, this week Haiwaan, Bollywood needs to exploit a new handicap to traumatise moviegoers. Priyadarshan’s remake of his Mohanlal starrer Oppam revolves around a blind man. One fourth of Haiwaan is spent drilling this over and over again. Those who can see are hardly better off.Watching Haiwaan is such a tormenting exercise, I wonder whether everyone associated with this monstrosity made a secret pact to remain blindfolded at the time of script reading. Having skipped the Malayalam original, nothing could have prepared me for the stupidity in store. For a change, the tendency among Hindi remakes to become glossed-up avatars of their source material, swapping substance for style, is the least of its crimes.

The idea of The Revolutionaries came about with filmmaker Nikkhil Advani’s desire to bring a young generation’s underground movement to focus. Though committed to India’s fight for freedom, these headstrong men and women employed methods in complete contrast to Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist philosophy. Expressing disappointment at the latter’s criticism of their ways, it’s the armed side of India’s independence struggle, inspiring the likes of Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh in the future, that finds favour in the eight-part series. Series like Freedom at Midnight and Rocket Boys render Advani a perfect fit to adapt Sanjeev Sanyal’s Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom. The filmmaker proved himself to be solid at the long format, period drama gig but there are just too many things going on and going wrong to invest in the events leading to its goals of Ghadar. Set in the 1910s, The Revolutionaries picks its key figures in Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Shome), Sachindra Nath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), Bagha Jatin (Gurfateh Pirzad) and Pratibha Lahiri (Pratibha Ranta) as the plot skims to and fro between Benares, Dehradun, Delhi and Kolkata.