Udita Jhunjhunwala

Inspector Zende, written and directed by Chinmay Mandlekar, announces itself as “a story inspired by true events that looks like a fairy tale”. It’s meant as parody, not fact, but even judged on those terms, the film struggles. International Indian-Vietnamese criminal Charles Sobhraj has previously been captured in filmed entertainment in Black Warrant, Main Aur Charles and The Serpent, while Madhukar Zende, who gained national fame after the famous arrest of Sobhraj in Goa, was also the subject of a 2023 documentary called Zende. Mandlekar’s Netflix film opens in Bombay, 1986, but the characters refer to the city as Mumbai, the first of many period inconsistencies since the city’s name didn’t officially change till 1995. The film reimagines Charles Sobhraj, the notorious 1970s conman and serial killer, as Carl Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh). In 1986, Sobhraj, or in this case Bhojraj, escaped from Tihar Jail after drugging duty officers and slipping out with four fellow inmates. Enter Inspector Zende (Manoj Bajpayee), the cop who once arrested the international criminal in 1971, and is now tasked with bringing him in again.

The Roses is director Jay Roach and screenwriter Tony McNamara’s reimagining of the 1989 film The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in an untamed marital war. In the 2025 version, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman take on the marital troubles of a modern couple in this black comedy that feels at once familiar and also entirely new. Ivy Rose (Colman) and Theo Rose (Cumberbatch), negotiate the challenges of professional and personal life as they move from unshakable love to complete hatred. The Roses’ love story starts just as impulsively as it ends—passionate, spontaneous, till death do them part. She’s a chef, he’s an architect. They move from the UK to California to explore and expand their creativity.

Richard Osman’s 2020 novel The Thursday Murder Club soon became a runaway bestseller and a book-club favourite. Its delightful premise follows four older residents living at Cooper Chase, an expansive English retirement home, who meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes—only to find themselves entangled in a real-life murder investigation. Osman’s novel balanced wit, warmth and intricate plotting to create a clever and endearing mystery, drawing readers into piecing together clues from a wide field of suspects. The film adaptation, written by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote and directed by Chris Columbus (on Netflix) embraces the same charming setup but inevitably takes a different route. The heart of the story—the idea of senior citizens becoming unlikely detectives—remains intact. The setup too remains playful and refreshing, as older characters take the spotlight in a genre usually dominated by hardened investigators, somewhat like Only Murders in the Building but with only senior sleuths, and set in an English retirement home rather than an American apartment block.

In Tehran, director Arun Gopalan adapts the high-stakes geopolitics of 2012 into a tense espionage drama. The film’s premise is rooted in a real incident: the February 2012 bomb attack near the Israeli Embassy in Delhi, part of a coordinated series of assaults on Israeli diplomats in Georgia, Thailand, and India. Based on a story written by Bindi Karia, with screenplay and dialogues by Karia and Ritesh Shah, the film uses that flashpoint as the launchpad for a fictional covert mission that spans continents and moral boundaries. At the heart of the narrative is ACP Rajiv Kumar, known as RK (John Abraham), a Delhi police officer described as obsessive by nature and a loose cannon. At the start of the film, RK is focussed on bringing down the Makwana gang, which has threatened his family. But after the bombing of the Israeli diplomat’s car, RK is assigned to investigate the attack. The deadly car-bombing sequence—executed with emotional, dramatic and cinematic intensity—sets off RK’s vendetta. As the mission stretches from Delhi to Georgia, the UK, Abu Dhabi, and finally to Tehran, it becomes clear that this is not just a spy game—it’s about the messy entanglements of global politics, energy deals, and fractured alliances.

The Telugu show Arabia Kadali takes viewers on a sweeping maritime journey through the lives of fishermen caught in the net of geopolitics. The Prime Video series from Krish Jagarlamudi and Chintakindi Srinivas Rao spans eight episodes and covers over a year. Directed by VV Surya Kumar, Arabia Kadali explores what happens when men from rival villages are forced to depend on each other after being captured in foreign waters and incarcerated in a hostile environment. The story centres on Badiri (Satyadev) and the struggles of other local fishermen like him. The coastal villages of Andhra Pradesh are in crisis. The once-bountiful Bay of Bengal has been overfished and polluted. There’s no jetty or proper boats. The fishermen migrate to Gujarat for long weeks at sea as hired hands on company fishing boats. The lure of the Arabian Sea’s richness draws them further westward. What begins as a desperate mission for livelihood turns into a nightmare when the fishermen inadvertently cross into Pakistani waters and are arrested on the charge of being Indian spies.

Thirteen years after Son of Sardaar hit cinemas with its brand of crowd-pleasing comedy, its sequel arrives with less humour and even less purpose. Vijay Kumar Arora takes the helm of Son of Sardaar 2, repackaging the chaotic energy of the original into a modern comedy about mistaken identities, cross-border friction, and manufactured family values. Son of Sardaar 2 is not a direct narrative continuation of the original but borrows the premise of an impromptu fake family assembled for a wedding from the 2017 Turkish film Aile Arasında (Between Family). In this version, a Pakistani family enlists the help of a kind-hearted, gullible Indian Sikh man to help the youngest member marry her Sikh boyfriend. Ajay Devgn plays Jassi, a gentle Sikh protagonist whose journey from Punjab to the UK—after finally receiving his long-awaited spouse visa—doesn’t yield the results he expected. Cuckolded by his wife Dimple (Neeru Bajwa), an aimless Jassi finds himself caught in the middle of India-Pakistan cultural chaos.

Writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby premiered the Fantastic Four in a comic book in 1961, and the quartet soon came to be known as Marvel’s ‘first family’. They lived together as a family, tackling both interpersonal issues and intergalactic threats. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a reboot with a brand-new cast that places this family of superheroes firmly within the MCU’s multiverse sprawl. Set on Earth-828, First Steps recalls how four space travellers were transformed into beings with superpowers. It begins with a fateful space mission led by Dr. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), accompanied by astronauts Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), his sister Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby), and Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). When their ship passes through a cosmic storm, the event changes them forever. Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, is a no-nonsense genius with an elastic body. Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman, can create force fields and turn invisible. Johnny Storm becomes the Human Torch, able to burst into flames and fly. Ben Grimm is physically transformed into The Thing, a super-strong, rock-skinned pilot and fighter—with sad eyes. Their trusted assistant is a robot named HERBIE.

The second season of Special Ops returns to JioHotstar five years after creator Neeraj Pandey first introduced Research and Analysis Wing agent Himmat Singh (Kay Kay Menon). In 2021, Pandey presented Himmat’s origin story in Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story. Special Ops 2.0 – a true sequel – picks up the story of the senior operative and his hand-picked team of spies as they find themselves caught up in a complex issue that threatens national security. Directed by Pandey and Shivam Nair, Special Ops 2.0 moves away from traditional field operations towards the unseen battleground of cyberwarfare. The new season turns its focus to digital threats, artificial intelligence conspiracies, financial fraud and the murky web of political-corporate collusion. Episode one is a sprawling one-hour introduction that sets up the kidnapping of Bhargava (Arif Zakaria), a tech entrepreneur tied to a classified government project. At the same time, a RAW officer (Tota Roy Chowdhury) who was monitoring Bhargava’s movements at a summit in Budapest is attacked in Delhi. While this premise has potential, Bhargava never leverages his supposed genius to contribute meaningfully to the narrative, remaining strangely passive for someone with the nation’s future in his hands.