Uday Bhatia

The trial for Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has just begun when public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam (Rajkummar Rao) plays his first hand. He refers to the defense attorney, Abbas Kazmi (Sikandar Khen), as “terrorist lawyer”; when Kazmi objects, he says he meant “terrorist’s lawyer”. Later in the film, Kazmi brings this up with Nikam, tells him how it stings to be called that when you’re Muslim. Nikam says it wasn’t personal and that’s the last we see of Kazmi. Unwittingly or not, the lawyer’s strategy is echoed by the film. Nikam knows his wordplay will be censured but says it anyway, for the drama and the swarm of reporters. Prahaar, directed by Avinash Arun and written by Sumit Roy, is careful to explain that Kazmi is just doing his job, that he’s taking a huge risk as a Muslim lawyer accepting this case. But there in the trailer, attention-grabbing and meme-ready, is “terrorist lawyer”. It’s a little jab in the film, but it feels more significant out of context. For the many who’ll see the trailer but never get around to watching the film, it might be the one thing they remember about Prahaar.

There is, of course, the famous nightclub scene, with Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake shouting to make themselves heard above the music. But you could even look at the opening of The Social Network, a brilliant, barbed five-minute conversation between Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg and Rooney Mara as the girl about to break up with him, which sets into motion the events that’ll lead to the creation of Facebook. What’s key is how much Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue gains from the distortion director David Fincher creates around it, movement both within the scene and in the cutting, and a rude babble of background noise. Do this in a room with just two actors and it’d be half the scene.

In the run-up to Digger’s release, a stray theory caught on that Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film might be a stealth musical. It was a sizeable enough rumour that the studio actually issued a disclaimer that it wasn’t. I was reminded of this at the end of an elaborate sequence, the centrepiece of the film in many ways, in which oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is addressing a European Parliament of sorts. He starts off conciliatory and ends up combative, enraging his audience to the point that they stop yelling and start singing “blah blah blah blah blah”.

Subbu (Sananth) has just escaped the irate brother of the woman who was comforting him after a loss. Something compels him to seek out the hulking brute and explain that he has no romantic designs on his sister. This goes down badly, and soon Subbu, in an open field, is fighting for his life. His best friend, Karthi (Rishikanth), joins in, just about evening the odds. it’s a strange fight: stop-start, lots of long and overhead shots, action at the edges of the screen or outside it. Though the younger men keep launching into flying kicks, neither they nor their opponent really know how to fight, so the whole thing has a clumsiness that belies the increasing stakes. At one point, a dung beetle carefully rolling a ball is foregrounded, and the silly, deadly fight becomes a blur in the back.

A young woman and her parents are at a police station. They’re trying to file a complaint, but the officer they’re speaking to is distracted. Another cop comes by with a box of sweets, says they’re from Saburi, that Baapji makes them with his own hands. The family are offered these as well; the daughter is uncomfortable but is told it’s aashirvaad. She tells the officer again that she wants to report a crime done to her. Badsaluki, she says first, then corrects that to zabardasti. The perpetrator is Baapji. There’s a temple bell, a cry of ‘Baapji ki jai’, and we go into the opening credits.

Daayra opens with a city in celebration. It looks like a festival—the streets are teeming, sweets are distributed, fireworks set off. Eventually, the hero of the hour arrives: DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran), who led the team that shot and killed four men accused of rape. Officially, it was in self-defense, but no one, not the cops or the revelers, pretends it’s anything but an encounter killing. Meghna Gulzar’s film is loosely based on the 2019 Hyderabad rape case, in which the accused were killed in police custody and the cops widely praised afterwards. It offers the illusion of balance, but its heart is with the celebrating public. A week after the deaths, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) of the Special Investigative Team is tasked with looking into the case after human rights activists raise concerns. In contrast to Raman’s heroic introduction, we first meet Ajooni conducting a comic sting operation on an avocado-desiring inmate—a small clue to how the film sees their respective roles.

At the start of Haiwaan, Shyam (Saif Ali Khan) boards a ferry, teases a man who owes him money, sings and plays guitar. If it wasn’t for his dark glasses and cane, it would be hard to tell he’s blind—indeed, it’s a running conspiracy theory through Priyadarshan’s film that he’s only pretending he can’t see. Shyam has heightened senses of sound, touch, taste and smell, which provide him an uncanny mental picture of the world around him. But when his sister tearfully asks for his blessings, he responds after a few seconds and doesn’t realise that she’s left. He’s left patting the air around him while violins play sadly on the soundtrack.

‘Illey Illa’, the first song in Bethlehem Kudumba Unit, has a line that translates to “your novenas have finally come true”. The word was unfamiliar to me—I later found it’s a Catholic term for prayers offered for nine successive days, or weeks. It’s one little detail among dozens in the series of vignettes that make up the musical sequence: a busload of passengers held up by a short film shoot; a bowler running out a wandering non-striker, resulting in a brawl; father and son cooking pork curry; a young woman, friendless in a new town, watching her farewell video on her phone at bedtime; a grown man proudly clutching stuffed toys won from a claw machine.