Uday Bhatia

There are four key pieces of information on the Coolie poster. Above the title: ‘Superstar Rajinikanth’. And below: ‘Written & directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj’, ‘An Anirudh musical’, ‘An Anbariv action’. In the end, the film ends up less than the sum of these imposing parts. It isn’t sterile, it has something of all their personalities, but no one brings their A-game. The film starts with its best idea: Soubin Shahir as the heavy. He plays Dayal, an enforcer at a Visakhapatnam dockyard, responsible for keeping workers afraid and details of his employer’s smuggling racket from leaking out. It’s inspired casting, transforming the mild-looking Malayalam actor into a loathsome sadist. Shahir jumps in headfirst, radiating mean little guy malevolence as he hacks, bludgeons and gurgles psychotically.

Metaphors in Hindi films come with brass bands and neon signs. War 2 opens, as Pushpa 2 (2024) did, in Japan. A yakuza family is sitting down to dinner when a raggedy wolf walks in, followed by an emissary with news of an approaching army. The army, it turns out, is ol’ green eyes, erstwhile RAW agent turned freelance assassin Kabir (Hrithik Roshan). He looks wilder than he did in War (2019), dispatching waves of armed killers with a grim smile until it’s just him and the hound left. It’s almost like he’s become… a lone wolf. After the Japan job, Kabir is hired by Kali, a shadowy crime cartel with a representative each from Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. They’re bent on some kind of world domination, though all their plans invariably centre on India. Kabir is key, the superspy patriot who now kills his own people, for a price. But writers Sridhar Raghavan and Abbas Tyrewala know that even if Kali believes Kabir has turned, the audience knows better. And so, soon after, it’s made clear that Kabir going rogue is part of a mission to destroy the cartel from within.

Saare Jahan Se Accha spends most of its time listing differences between India and Pakistan. But Netflix’s new spy series can’t help draw attention to a common heritage: language. Characters switch naturally between Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English, as so many did in undivided Punjab. The Punjabi in particular—spoken by Pakistani and Indian characters—is mellifluous, flowing off the tongues of the actors, not the same intonations you’d hear in a modern Hindi film. It reminded me of Song of Lahore (2015), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s musical documentary, with the Punjabi session players hitting the consonants in trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’ name: ‘Vin-ttun’.

It’s rare to see architecturally attuned Hindi films. Basu Chatterjee in the ‘70s had an eye for it. Last year, Atul Sabharwal’s Berlin used Brutalist buildings to suggest forbidding bureaucracy. I wouldn’t go as far as to say architecture informs Ankur Singla’s Ghich Pich, but the film is alive to it. Every now and then, a deliberate framing will dwarf the characters and call attention to the building in the back. It’s a welcome strategy. Why set your film in Chandigarh if you’re not going to use Le Corbusier’s creations? You can tell Singla grew up in the city. His vision of Chandigarh in 2001 feels unforced but specific, a series of quick, confident sketches rather than a laboured recreation. The central trio, fast friends and classmates in high school, are deftly drawn too. Anurag (Aryan Singh Rana) is a promising student, the one likeliest to make the jump to a metro like Delhi. Gurpreet (Kabir Nanda) is a sad sack who spends all his time thinking of ways to impress classmate Ashima. Gaurav (Shhivam Kakar) mostly gets in trouble at school, content with a future working in his doting father’s eyewear store.

Flush with pride from having joined law school, Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi), the first in his Dalit family to attend college, brings home a problem from class. He opens it up for neighbourhood discussion—a group of stranded people eat each other in a desperate bid for survival: what would the law say? The residents of Bhim Nagar are aghast. But one man examines it differently. “We’d be fine," he says. “They wouldn’t eat us.” A woman chimes in: “They definitely won’t eat adivasis.” Shazia Iqbal’s Dhadak 2, a Hindi remake of Pariyerum Perumal, takes a great deal from Mari Selvaraj’s superb 2018 Tamil film. I don’t remember this scene, though. It’s a throwaway joke, but a telling one. Unlike most Hindi films about caste, which either tiptoe around the issue or are boringly instructional, Dhadak 2 can imagine how people who’ve seen oppression their whole lives might turn it into gallows humour.

Kayoze Irani’s Sarzameen reminded me of another, very different Kajol film. I won’t say which, or why. What I will say is that if you’re hoping to land a wild plot twist, at least flesh out enough characters that the viewer can’t figure out the reveal through simple deduction. Something about eliminating the impossible… This is the second film in two months set in modern-day Kashmir and revolving around the armed forces serving there. Ground Zero, released days after the Pahalgam attack, is about a model BSF officer, devoted to his wife and young daughter. It’s the more interesting of the two films, building to the verge of critical self-assessment before retreating to the safer ground of patriotic duty. Sarzameen has a more fractious military family at its centre. Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is introduced with a dramatic victory, leading the capture of separatist Qaabil (K.C. Shankar), believed to be the shadowy string-puller ‘Mohsin’. But in the very next scene—in what will become a pattern—he’s handed a defeat at home, at a party hosted by his wife, Meher (Kajol). She has a surprise: their son, Harman, wants to say a few words about his father. But the boy can’t overcome his stutter, and is embarrassed into silence by the pointed murmuring of guests and his father’s clear discomfort.

Every generation deserves its Aashiqui, if only to show that audiences here will never tire of morose musicians neglecting their mental health and then singing about it. The crowd at my Friday morning screening mostly comprised college kids. Invariably, there was a good bit of wisecracking and talking back to the screen. But when it was time for the big concert number, many of them had their phones out and recording. Saiyaara, directed by Mohit Suri for Yash Raj Films, actually began life as a third Aashiqui that never worked out. It isn’t a Bhatt production, but it’s a Bhatt film in spirit. Which is to say, it’s gloomy, emotionally charged, self-flagellating, and full of hummable rock ballads that all sound the same. Pitching a song to a popstar, aspiring singer Krish (Ahaan Panday) sets to music a partially written poem by fledgling writer Vaani (Aneet Padda), whom he barely knows. They’re hired to work on it together (I winced when he snatches her notebook as she’s working—a move that would earn you the lifelong enmity of any real writer). Initially, they seem to reinforce each other’s sadness. He has an alcoholic father and a massive chip on his shoulder; she was dumped by her fiancée on their wedding day. But as the song takes shape, they start to trust, then encourage, each other. She opens up, he calms down, they grow closer.

I really don’t want to bring up Zack Snyder. His films cause me physical pain. But even I have to admit there’s a grim conviction somewhere in all that humourless, quasi-mythological imagery. His films, which include Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League for DC, stand for something, even if I can’t stand them. James Gunn’s Superman stands for nothing except a desire to please. It’s the aesthetic and philosophical opposite of the Snyder Superman films. Underlit greys and browns give way to pleasing whites and blues. There’s a scruffy dog. David Corenswet’s Clark smiles more in his first scene with Lois than Henry Cavill did in three films. There’s a persistent goofiness that I’m sure will drive Snyder acolytes crazy. It’s more watchable, and yet, almost weightless, lacking a sense of definition and purpose.