Tatsam Mukherjee

Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) has just lost his father, but according to his relatives, it’s not the most pressing absence in his life. Anand is a 30-year-old unmarried man, something which is utterly incomprehensible to the folks in his village in Maharashtra. So even as he gets ready to perform the last rites of his dead father, his relatives don’t forget to remind him about the ‘stigma’ of his marital status. An aunt even wonders out loud, if an unmarried man is fit to light the pyre of his own father. Anand and his mother have to wade through a sea of inquisitions about why he hasn’t settled down – only to come up with stories like – “A girl he was in love with, married someone else. So Anand is heartbroken, and doesn’t wish to get married now.”

“Where are we going?” six-year-old Charlie (Wyatt Solis) asks his father (John Magaro). Charlie, his elder sister Ella (Molly Belle Wright) are seated inside a car with their father within the first five minutes of the film. The kids have no idea where they’re headed. Cole Webley’s directorial debut is the kind of film where exposition comes at a premium. Information trickles down through stray scenes – the sheriff putting an eviction notice on their house right around the time they’re leaving tells us about the family’s dire financial situation. Ella tells Charlie she was taught to fly a kite by their mother before “she got sick” – explaining who the father talks to, grieving his partner, almost praying to her for forgiveness. When they’re at a store, and the father wishes to spoil his kids with a kite and a meal of their choice, the clerk informs him he has only $20 left on his food stamps.

The first time we meet Benji (Kieran Culkin), he’s aimlessly floating around in an airport. Seated in the waiting area with his ear pods plugged in, one can immediately spot the melancholy in his eyes. He appears to be curious about people – observing them closely. There’s a good chance that if someone around him was in need, Benji would be one of the first persons to help. But he’s also a wildcard, who wouldn’t respond to his cousin David’s (Jesse Eisenberg) voicemails, and that too on the day they’re supposed to travel to Poland together. Has he woken up? Has he left? Is he on time? Where is he? Does he remember they have a flight? No response.

After the second season of Paatal Lok (Amazon Prime Video), it’s safe to say that nobody else in India has mastered the police procedural like Sudip Sharma. Known for writing acclaimed films like Udta Punjab (2016) and Sonchiriya (2019) – Sharma became a household name after the first season of the show in 2020, much like his lead actor – Jaideep Ahlawat. Since then, Sharma has written Kohhra (2023), using the mould of a police investigation to uncover the oppressive culture of patriarchy typical to Punjab. In the second season of Paatal Lok, Sharma is still grappling with the larger rot in society using a trail of missing persons and murder probes.

For all intents and purposes, Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) is not a good fit for Tihar jail. He has a slim build and his oversized uniform hangs loosely on him. He’s grown a moustache to mask his lack of depth in an institution fuelled by testosterone; Gupta is too stuck in his ‘decent’ ways to even inadvertently cuss. He refers to his mother as ‘Mumma’ – a seemingly ordinary-but-revealing detail about his dynamic with her and how he’s been raised. He’s called ‘Baby’ by family members and neighbours – a detail almost trying too hard to sell his obvious displacement in Tihar.

Like it happens with the follow-up for any successful show, I entered the Squid Game 2 with a fair bit of trepidation. What worked in the first season was the shock value of the setting that posits the innocence of childhood games, sophisticated Western classical music with a kind of savagery few would be able to stomach. Where unsuspecting debt-ridden civilians are lured onto an island to play a series of games – for which they stand to win an obscene amount of money, or pay for it with their life. A cruel, but clinical simulation of our lives in a hyper-capitalist society, the appeal of Squid Game lay in how it studied human nature – especially the ones with limited means, who are driven to take desperate measures. How far would you go to survive/get paid? As the first season showed: to any length.

Nothing screams ‘crisis’ in Hindi cinema right now more than Salman Khan showing up in his second ‘star cameo’ of the year – hedging his bets between two cinematic universes; hoping at least one of them works. Something works. This is not a spoiler, given how the film’s PR and fan accounts are enthusiastically ‘leaking’ his entry scene on social media. Khan’s films proudly flaunted their ‘critic-proof’ status for a long time, but have looked increasingly silly in the last five years. Apart from YRF’s spy universe, Khan’s Chulbul Pandey has announced himself in the Rohit Shetty cop universe, and now alongside Varun Dhawan in the Baby John universe – where he’s called (what else, but) Agent Bhai Jaan. It looks like even Bollywood’s loosest canon is looking to diversify his portfolio, fervently praying to make windfall gains from one franchise. The devil-may-care swagger has been replaced with the caution of a star unsure of his place.

I couldn’t help but be left with the feeling that there’s an enjoyable disaster film somewhere within Rahul Dholakia’s Agni, which surely owes a debt to The Burning Train (1980). There is more than one echo of the Ravi Chopra-directorial, where the spectacle is foregrounded by professional rivalry – Danny Denzongpa and Vinod Khanna’s in the 1980 film; emulated by Pratik Gandhi and Divyenndu’s characters in Dholakia’s directorial. The innate Bollywood melodrama after an unexpected death, the high-voltage social commentary and righteous anger fuel both spectacles. Both Chopra and Dholakia’s film balance a strong ensemble, offering everyone their moment, and yet Dholakia’s film fails to stick its landing. It might have to do with what Hindi films have become in 2024 – too self-conscious, cautious, and reverential towards any uniform.