Uday Bhatia

There are times we look for complexity and depth in cinema, and times when a few simple pleasures will do. Small joys, like arcane assassin guild rituals. Or Keanu Reeves hitting every syllable in “consequences.” Or Ana de Armas with a flamethrower. After four films that remapped Hollywood action, the John Wick franchise has its first feature spinoff. Ballerina is the first film in this universe not directed by Chad Stahelski, with Len Wiseman of the Underworld films in charge. This is usually the point at which franchises thin out and make peace with the idea that they’ll be churning out variations until the public no longer cares. Sequels say you’re a franchise, spinoffs say you’re a business. It would be difficult to argue that Ballerina is an advance over the Wick films. It is, however, a perfectly serviceable, enjoyable action film, and evidence that the aesthetic Stahelski and Reeves have developed over four films is replicable, if not easy to better. De Armas plays Eve Macarro, whose father, an assassin in the Ruska Roma family, married into a rival group of assassins called the Cult. Within minutes of the film starting, armed Cultists lay siege to the house where he’s been hiding out for years, raising his daughter. Eve sees her father die, and vows revenge.

What a wonderful world it would be if Tamil and Telugu commercial directors could apply their considerable talents to telling concise, coherent stories. The bloat is out of control. I’m not just talking about the dozen retrofitted plots of Kalki 2898 AD or the maddening detours of Pushpa 2. Even smart, funny films like Jigarthanda DoubleX stretch their material unduly. I admit this isn’t a widely held opinion. Audiences today clearly like the mess. As luck would have it, the wrong director decided to simplify. Thug Life is Mani Ratnam at his most basic. This isn’t to say he’s made a terrible film—it’s just not the film you’d expect Ratnam, comfortably established as the preeminent popular director of the past 40 years, to make at 69. In his previous two films, Ponniyin Selvan: I and its sequel, he created a rich, teeming world and asked audiences to keep up. No one will have any problem following Thug Life, a remarkably linear tale for an industry that loves flashbacks and wrong-footing the viewer.

Even as Sanjay Mishra delivers a climactic speech at his customary 20 km/hr, a third of Delhi’s film journalists are slouching in the cinema aisles, physically present, spiritually done. I’m seated, but only just, eyeing the nearest exit, thinking of dinner options and career choices. We’ve been ground down by Bhool Chuk Maaf, a film about purgatory that feels like purgatory. Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) and Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi) are desperate to get married. Her father (Zakir Hussain), though, won’t allow them to until unemployed, directionless Ranjan finds a job, any job (very anti-national of the film to suggest there’s a job crisis driving young men to suicide). This sets up a dreary first 40 minutes, as Ranjan tries to bribe his way to a government job and Titli complains and scolds him (why isn’t she looking for a job?). Finally, a fixer named Bhagwan (Mishra) comes through, Ranjan is employed, and a date is set.

Though Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) asking people to place their trust in him has always been the implicit theme of the Mission: Impossible series, the first time it’s said in so many words is in the third film, to his wife. He says the same thing to his old friend and teammate Luther (Ving Rhames) in the sixth film. He uses the word five times in an effort to convince Grace (Hayley Atwell) in the seventh. And in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, by all accounts the last film in the series, he says: “I need you to trust me… one last time.” And because Tom Cruise hasn’t let us down yet, across seven films and 30 odd years, we do as he asks. We trust that the long exposition scenes will give way to the glorious frenetic activity these films are known for. We trust him through an inordinate number of goodbyes and till-we-meet-agains. We trust him even though the big set piece, a deep-sea dive in frozen waters, is claustrophobic and confusing. Most of all, we trust him to remember what made this a uniquely pleasurable series.

Ajay Devgn isn’t the worst star-actor in Hindi films today, but he’s the most boring. Nowadays he tends to play unflappable types who either take on powerful adversaries or have to get their families out of a jam. And he does so in such a dour, bland way that you have to wonder if he gets any joy out of acting anymore. There’s a moment at the end of Raid 2 when his character’s carefully laid plans have come off perfectly. But Devgn’s face says, I’m tired and vaguely annoyed. You’ll be tired and vaguely annoyed by the end of Raid 2, a film that badly needs an agile, alive performance at its centre. Devgn reprises the part of Indian Revenue Service officer Amay Patnaik from the first film (2018), which was also directed by Raj Kumar Gupta. I’d written then: “The qualities that (presumably) make Patnaik such an excellent officer are the same ones that make him a taxing movie lead.” This is still the case, as Patnaik goes from posting to posting scowling and sighing at everyone else’s incompetence and greed.

Narendra Dubey (Emraan Hashmi) is getting his daughter ready for school. She’s reluctant to go; the ‘gun waale bhaiyya’ on the bus is scary, she says. Who would you rather have on the bus, her father asks with a smile. Santa Claus, the girl immediately replies. Later, when Narendra, the BSF’s top man in Srinagar, is asked why he risks his life, he says he hopes to fulfil this wish of his daughter’s. Tejas Prabha Vijay Deoskar’s Ground Zero opens its eyes—but only a little. It recognises that a child heading out every day with an armed soldier is scarring. Fair enough. But that girl, young though she is, must have some idea that the gun is there for her protection. Similarly, there must be a child in her class who sees the same guns every day. Even if, in her short life, they haven’t been pointed at her, she must instinctively know that they might be one day. This child Ground Zero doesn’t want to contemplate.

What we do in memes doesn’t echo in movies. Studios want their releases to go viral so badly they’ll try and reverse engineer such moments. But more often, the things that work are simple and unpredictable—like 10 seconds of Jaideep Ahlawat dancing. Everyone was delighted to see Ahlawat do his best Travolta in OAFF-Savera’s catchy ‘Jaadu’ from Jewel Thief. Netflix quickly cut a Jaideep-focused promo. It’ll bring a few curious viewers to the film, where they’ll discover Ahlawat plays a character so boringly reprehensible that by the time the song comes around in the end credits, no one wants to see him dance. Placing Jaideep Ahlawat and Saif Ali Khan in opposition is a good idea in theory: low-vibe grumbler versus high-vibe trickster. Rehan (Khan) is an internationally renowned jewel thief who’s been laying low. He’s hunted down in Budapest by his younger brother, who begs him to help out their father, with whom Rehan had a falling out. A thuggish art dealer, Rajan (Ahlawat), is blackmailing the retired doctor to get Rehan to Alibaug and help him rob a priceless jewel called the Red Sun. And there’s a detective, Vikram (Kunal Kapoor), who’s been trying to catch Rehan for years.

Little details tend to annoy when the broader experience is choppy. During the first half hour of Kesari Chapter 2, every musical choice had me scribbling notes. The generic sad song that plays over the end of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. The nu-metal that accompanies one of Akshay Kumar’s dramatic entries. The angelic chorus that practically announces the fate of an earnest young revolutionary. Jallianwala Bagh has been solemnly depicted in several Hindi films, most starkly in Sardar Udham (2021). More than 1500 people were killed in the 1919 massacre after General Dyer ordered army troops to fire on a crowd of civilians trapped in a garden. Though the British tried to suppress the details, enough pressure was built that they constituted the Hunter Commission to look into the matter. The committee condemned Dyer’s actions, but the Viceroy’s Executive Council opted not to prosecute.