Tag: india

Alpha

  By

★★★★
“Sisters, doing it for themselves…”

Bollywood has done action heroines in the past: Mardaani and its sequel are solid, and Raazi is as good a spy thriller as anything out of the West. But the higher up the budgetary chain you go, the more likely the women are to be shuffled off to the side, as romantic interests and/or sidekicks. This perhaps a little surprising, because one of the earliest stars of Indian cinema was Fearless Nadia, an Australian stuntwoman/actress who became an unexpected star in thirties Bollywood. However, if the perception in the West is that audience won’t go to see women kicking butt, it’s even more so in India. This is the first modern Bollywood action film with both a female lead and a large budget. 

The latter, admittedly is relative. The estimated $10-15 million cost for Alpha is barely a blip in the Hollywood scheme of things. However, it’s important to realize how cheap cinema going is in India. The average ticket price in 2025 converts to about $1.70, though prices do vary substantially, depending on location, etc. But with the average ticket price in the US approaching ten times as much, it’s fair to equate Alpha to a $100 million dollar movie from Hollywood. Certainly, it looks very slick, with production qualities across the board it’s hard to complain about. Alpha forms part of a franchise called the YRJ Spy Universe. This action series, which started in 2012 with Ek Tha Tiger, operates along the lines of the MCU, sharing characters across its seven films so far.

Some of them have done very well: Pathaan, the fourth film, still ranks among the ten biggest-grossing Indian movies of all time. However, since that peak, the returns have diminished, even as the budgets have continued to increase. That may explain a) the decision by the makers to try something different in Alpha, and b) the sharply reduced resources here. This cost only about one-third of the preceding entry, War 2. However, unlike the MCU, you don’t need to have seen twelve movies and eight TV series to understand it. There is an extended cameo by Major Kabir Dhaliwal, from War and its sequel, which would likely be appreciated mostly by fans of the franchise. But otherwise, Alpha stands on its own without any difficulties. 

The film begins in 1999, with the establishment of the Alpha project, intended to create an army of super soldiers. The sole success is accidental, after the experimental serum is administered to a pregnant woman by her husband, military officer Vikrant Kaul (Kapoor), in a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to save her life. The new-born daughter survives, being spirited away by Colonel Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Deol) and raised to become a weapon for India. However, as an adult, Sita (Bhatt) goes rogue, leaving her foster parent behind, and seeking to eliminate all those involved in the Alpha project. That includes her biological father, now head of Indian intelligence, and the fraternal twin she never knew, Durga (Sharvari). 

While there are a number of twists over the course of the 140 minutes – almost terse by Bollywood standards, a good half-hour shorter than War 2 – I’d not say there are many surprises. There is the obligatory rampant patriotism, though this takes surprisingly long to show up, coming about as a result of one twist in particular. Probably the biggest shock is the complete lack of romance. It feels like even the toughest Bollywood action film inevitably shoehorns in romance, largely as an excuse for those obligatory musical numbers. Here? Nothing. The closest we get to love is one married couple, and they don’t make it to the quarter-hour mark. Instead, it’s entirely about family relationships: father-daughter, foster father-daughter and between sisters. I found that refreshing. 

The SF elements also give a justification for the more “I’m so sure” responses to the action. The Alpha serum is basically the YRJ equivalent of a bite from a radioactive spider, and explains why the sisters can go toe-to-toe with opponents twice their size. This is in contrast to the previous entries, which were at least relatively grounded, in the Indo-Pakistan cold war. I’m uncertain how Durga is able to take on Sita, the latter having the advantage of decades of combat training. However, the results remain as good as any female vs. female battle to come out of Hollywood this year, so I’m not complaining.

As noted, the overall path is much as you’d expect. You know that Sita and Durga are going to end up on the same side, fighting against one or other of the father figures. This largely happens after they are attacked in Vikrant’s extremely rural safe house, and they have to go on the march across some rather impressive Kashmir scenery. Lovely though it is, this sequence does becomes a little too blandly obvious an excuse for an extended musical montage. It was likely the only point at which I found myself looking at my watch. Otherwise, the time flew past. I appreciated the effort made to give everyone here, even the eventual villain/ess (I’ll never tell!) of the piece, a decent bit of motivation and back story. Add in some solid action, plus an obvious Nikita nod, and I can’t think of many films I’ve enjoyed more this year.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a success. While some of the reviews are… Let’s just say, I was left wondering if we’d seen the same film, I can’t argue about the fact that it fell short of making its budget back. In Bollywood, as in Hollywood, adding to the series of commercial disappointments in our genre at the box-office for 2026. It’ll be interesting to see where the YRJ Spy Universe goes from here, and also whether this roll of the die on a full-on girls with guns film will prove to be one and done. I hope it isn’t, because there’s obvious ability here, and the volumes of style and spectacle brought to the end product here, is something I’d love to see again. 

Dir: Shiv Rawail
Star: Alia Bhatt, Sharvari, Bobby Deol, Anil Kapoor
[This is an expanded version of a review originally written for Film Blitz]

Code Name: Tiranga

  By

★★★
“Moderately spicy.”

This Indian movie flopped at the local box-office, and comes limping onto Netflix with an IMDb rating of just 3.2. Reviews there are largely scathing, calling it “unrealistic.” Oh, sure: but people bursting into song for elaborate musical numbers – that totally happens in Mumbai. To be clear, I love the likes of RRR. But realism, or anything in that solar system, is pretty low down on the list of reasons I watch Bollywood films. This is… well, serviceable, is what I’d call it. It is too long for the material, at 137 minutes, but again – length goes with the territory, it’s more a question whether the film is capable of filling it adequately. Here, not so much, at least in the second half.

The heroine is Durga Devi Singh (Chopra), an Indian spy whom we first meet honey-trapping Dr. Mirza Ali (Sandhu) in Afghanistan, in order to set a trap for terrorist leader, Khalid Omar (Kelkar). The trap fails, but Durga feels bad at having betrayed Mirza, for whom she has genuine feelings. A subsequent mission sees her sent to kill a captured operative, to prevent him from spilling secrets to the Pakistani intelligence agency. She ends up rescuing him instead, but is hurt in the process, which brings her back into the company of the good doctor. During the rescue attempt, Omar’s wife is also killed, a death for which the terrorist blames Durga, and is now prepared to go to any lengths for revenge on her.

As spy stuff goes, it’s all fairly generic, with other threads such as the presence of a mole inside the Indian spy service. There is not much novel or exciting here, but it is carried out with an adequate degree of skill, and really only one particularly gratuitous song, when Mirza goes all karaoke at a wedding for what seems like half an hour. The camerawork is nicely scope, with a lot of exotic locations, and while Chopra won’t be winning any awards for her action, she functions decently. It’s just pleasing to see a genuine Bollywood action heroine in this genre: things like the YRF Spy Universe are typically so macho, they’re in danger of choking on their own mustaches.

The first half definitely works better, with the plot consistently moving forward. The movie feels, from an action point, that it peaks too early, and then lumbers its way through the final hour, before the inevitable face-off between Durga and Khalid, which goes about as you would expect. Things then continue to run on, as the mole’s identity is revealed, and the story rehashed in flashback to that end. I may have been hunting for snacks in the cupboard by this point. There’s a truly weird sequence where the film inexplicably goes into first-person shooter mode for an extended period, which had me trying to figure out if it was entirely CGI. They likely should not have bothered, yet it’s a rare blatant misstep, in a film which seems to pride itself on aggressively mediocre competence.

Dir: Ribhu Dasgupta
Star: Parineeti Chopra, Harrdy Sandhu, Sharad Kelkar, Rajit Kapur

Mardaani 2

  By

★★★
“Naan but the brave.”

This sequel to Mardaani sees Rani Mukerji return in the role of hard-edged police superintendent Shivani Shivaji Roy. She’s now on the hunt for a serial killer, who is brutally murdering and raping victims in her jurisdiction, the city of Kota in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. The killer is Sunny (Jethwa), a 21-year-old psychopath, whose father murdered his mother, and who also works as an assassin for rising politician Govind Mishra (Ketkar). When Sunny sees SP Roy on television, making disparaging remarks about the killer, and vowing to catch him, he decides to target her. This is in addition to his work for Mishra, though after that relationship goes sour, Mishra’s family becomes yet another target of Sunny’s unhinged wrath. 

The director of this was the writer on the previous movie, and it’s slightly less effective overall, mostly due to a tendency to descend into polemic on occasion. For example, it opens and closes with the kind of trite, “Well, actually” nuggets of information you’d expect to find on Twitter. There’s also a television interview late on, which seems to serve no purpose, except to allow Roy to go off on a rant about how downtrodden women are in Indian society. I mean, she’s not wrong. It’s just that a moral lecture is not why I’m here. I am here for the heroine slamming her car-door on a suspect’s head. Fortunately, the film is able to deliver this as well.

The two performances at the centre of this are spot-on, and do a fine job of keeping your attention, when the storyline occasionally falters. Sunny is barking mad, with enough issues for an entire conference of forensic psychologists, and the details of his crimes, even if just described, are grim. Yet he is undeniably smart, though fatally flawed by his ego. He breaks the fourth wall on a number of occasions, directly addressing the audience to explain himself. It’s highly creepy. Meanwhile, SP Roy is every bit as driven on her side, willing to bend protocol into a pretzel in pursuit of justice. She just doesn’t care about anything else: she may be married, but her husband is entirely irrelevant to proceedings. 

There’s a ticking clock too. After a possible witness is killed by Sunny, she is reassigned, and only has 48 hours to close the case, over the holiday of Diwali. That’s the Hindu festival of lights, and offers a glowing backdrop against which the climax of the movie can unfold. When it dies, there’s a good sense of catharsis in the way things unfold. It’s not only Roy who gets to punish the evil in the world, doing so in a way which is as much about making a statement as anything else. Despite occasional missteps, this is a decent sequel, and if you’re worried about it being Bollywood, there are no musical numbers to derail proceedings. Mardaani 3 is in production, and I’m looking forward to it.

Dir: Gopi Puthran
Star: Rani Mukerji, Vishal Jethwa, Prasanna Ketkar, Shruti Bapna

Apaatkaal

  By

★★½
“Death Wish, Bollywood style.”

For the first hour and forty minutes, you may well be wondering why this is here. You will need to be patient: it gets there… eventually. However, to start with, it’s the story of the battle between crime boss Nikka Shaitan (Grover) and dogged cop Inspector Sidhu (Kumar). After members of the former’s gang are caught attempting a bullion robbery, Sidhu seeks to leverage them to reach their boss. But Shaitan uses all the power – both legal and illegal – at his disposal, to avoid justice. Initially, a state of martial law (the title translates as “emergency”) gives the cops the edge, but after that is declared over, the balance shifts, culminating in Shaitan’s gang invading Sidhu’s wedding and gunning everybody down.

Shaitan again avoids justice, getting a corrupt politician to give him an alibi, leading to his acquittal. This is where we finally achieve GWG relevance, for the Inspector’s bride, Shikha (Sabah), vows to take revenge on every single person responsible for the death of her husband. She delivers, taking them out in a variety of ways, from shooting repeatedly in the head after removing their tongue, through burning alive, to hacking apart with a sword. It’s certainly enthusiastic, though the execution isn’t nearly as much fun as it should be. It demands a lot more blood. Naturally, Shikha uses the gang’s tactics to escape legal punishment, the film ending in a large caption asking the audience, “Do you agree with this?”

Well, since you ask… It’s a typical early nineties Indian pot-boiler, with all that implies. So, it’s overlong at 144 minutes, stuffed with terrible songs (and I like some Bollywood music – Singh is Kinng is one of only two soundtracks I actually listen to outside the film), and painfully simplistic, rarely approaching any level of delicacy. By most standards, this is not a “good” movie. But I did find it interesting. As depicted here, Indian cops do not give a damn about civil rights; how much of that’s due to the declared state of emergency is unclear (there was such a two-year period in India, but earlier, from 1975-77). On the other hand, the courts are depicted as incompetent and/or corrupt, basically useless at dispensing justice.

The sudden blossoming of Shika in the final act is also surprising. It’s rare for a film to end up with its hero or heroine being one who is barely even a supporting role during the first two-thirds. However, Rao manages to pull the switch off, albeit mainly through killing everyone else who you liked to that point. Shikha, assisted by her friend Razia, as well as another survivor of the massacre, then goes to work after the legal system has failed her, in a way which makes Charles Bronson look like subtle understatement. This is a clarion call to the vigilante inside the audience, about as subtle as a brick, and all the more fun for that. I’d edit this down to eighty minutes and call it a vast improvement.

Dir: V. Subba Rao
Star: Sabah, Gulshan Grover, Kiran Kumar, Aatish Devgan

Mehndi

  By

★★½
“This path she has chosen will burn her to ash.”

When judging film for inclusion here, I always want to take into account location and era. The bar is generally lower for older films, those from a time when action was largely male territory. And other cultures also have different opinions on gender norms, so what can seem very mild sauce here, can be pushing the envelope for women’s roles somewhere else. This would be a good example of the latter. In 1998, the year this came out, Hollywood was releasing the likes of Mulan, The X-Files and Wild Things. Bollywood… was not, and it’s important to remember this as we look at a heroine Lifetime might decline as too much of a doormat.

She is Pooja (Mukerji), who has just been married off into the Chaudhary family, and specifically to Niranjan (Khan). The problem is, they are much more interested in her dowry, and when this isn’t as big as they want, the abuse from her in-laws starts. It doesn’t help that her husband is no good, but Pooja remains loyal, even when after he is accused of murder. A mysterious man shows up, promising evidence to free Niranjan… if Pooja will spend one night with him. She does, though nothing sexual happens, and her husband is indeed acquitted. However, the Chaudharys now consider her “soiled”, toss her out and seek a divorce. 

Worse is to follow as, in court, her father pulls a gun and is shot down by another member of the Chaudhary clan [courtroom security in nineties India must have been really slack – later, an attorney stabs a defendant dead!] Finally, even Pooja has had enough, and vows to destroy every one of her in-laws. Though this being Bollywood, that includes a musical number, apparently titled The Evil In-Laws, where she turns the whole village against them with lyrics like, “The evil in-laws! They’ll make your life a living hell. The evil in-laws! They commit great sins.” It’s partly why the whole thing runs 160 minutes, and would be palpably improved at half the length. Bollywood is much better now at integrating the songs, and the occasional attempts at comedy are both utterly misplaced and thoroughly unfunny.

Why Pooja puts up with so much is explained by a line during the marriage ceremony: “My husband is my god.” But it’s a concept which seems utterly alien to a contemporary Western audience – and even to some in India now. The line is revisited later, Pooja now refuting it by saying, “No. My husband is a sinner and a demon.” Pity it took so long for her to realize what’s apparent to the audience almost from the start. There is some power in these later scenes, with Mukerni able to put over the character’s rage, and I liked the way the mysterious man returns to help her. It remains a shame that she appears to be considerably more interested in taking revenge for her father, than on her own account.

Dir: Hamid Ali Khan
Star: Rani Mukerji, Faraaz Khan, Pramod Moutho, Himani Shivpuri

She season two

  By

★★★½
“Joining our story in progress…”

“Where’s season one?” you may be wondering. It’s a fair question: I thought I had reviewed it here, but there’s absolutely no sign of it on the site. Perhaps that one didn’t meet the necessary action quota? It is true that the first time the heroine shoots someone is the opening episode of the second part, and it thoroughly messes her up. Anyway, we’re here now. Said heroine is Indian policewoman Bhumika Pardeshi (Pohankar), who has been part of an operation to try and nail major narcotics dealer Nayak (Kumar). This involves her going undercover as a prostitute, in order to get into his circle and act as an informant there – obviously, this is a highly hazardous position for her. There’s a whole domestic situation to handle as well.

The first series was mostly about her relationship with one of Nayak’s lieutenants. In the second, she returns to the streets, with Nayak himself as the target. This alone also exposes Bhumika to danger, though she proves more than capable of taking care of herself against violent pimps. Indeed, this proves significant in the second half, after Nayak has supposedly been killed in a police operation. The truth is, he’s still operating, with Bhumika now his second-in-command, using the hookers to move drugs for him. Has she genuinely fallen for the crime boss? Or is this simply Bhumika embedding herself deeper, so his entire network can eventually be brought down?

This question is one which is at the core of the second series. How undercover is she, and how much is the experience going to change her as a result? By the end, the answer to the second part is clear. “A great deal”, to the point where Bhumika may not be able to resume her former life, either as a cop, or as a family woman. There’s a speech where she explains her feelings to Nayak, and how he gives her both love and respect, something she’d never received from a man before. It is thoroughly convincing, and gels with Bhumika not perhaps being “conventionally beautiful,” though she more than makes up for that in an intense and fiery charisma.

I suspect it probably counts as fairly raunchy by Bollywood standards, though this element would likely be PG-13 rated in the West. But it still doesn’t pull its punches, in its depiction of a society that is an enigmatic mix of old and new attitudes, both embracing and resisting change. I think I preferred this slightly more the first season, although without a grade to check, I can’t be certain! It feels like there is less emphasis on the domestic elements – the walking cliche who was Bhumika’s abusive and estranged husband, is barely there if at all. There’s definite scope for a third series, potentially pitting Bhumika directly against her commanding officer, Jason Fernandez (Kini). But before that, do I now need to go back and re-view season one? Stay tuned…

Creator: Imtiaz Ali
Star: Aaditi Pohankar, Kishore Kumar G, Vishwas Kini, Resh Limba

Zulm Ka Badla

  By

★★★
“The family that slays together…”

In recent years, the gap in cinema between Bollywood and Hollywood has closed dramatically. The likes of Indian blockbusters such as RRR (technically Tollywood rather than Bollywood) can stand, in terms of technical competence, beside their American equivalents. It’s mostly due to a dramatic improvement from Asia, because it wasn’t always the case, as we see when we go back to the mid-eighties for this slice of vengeance served cold. It looks pretty rough if you compare it to what Hollywood was making at the time, and in many ways feels like it’s about twenty years older than it is. I still found it more watchable than I expected, but then, I’m somewhat used to the style of Indian cinema. Newcomers might find this a bumpy ride.

It begin with an attack on military official Colonel Rajesh, in which he and his wife are killed by JK (Kapoor) and his men. Their son is missing, presumed dead, leaving young daughter Geeta (Raj) the only survivor. She is adopted by Rajesh’s friend, Inspector Verma, and grows up in his house, eventually marrying the cop’s son, Anil (Rakesh), who has followed his father into the police force. Geeta has learned to take care of herself, as we see when she handily disposes of some ruffians on the beach. But it’s only when she accidentally sees a photograph given to her husband, that her long-repressed memories of the attack surface, and an insatiable thirst for revenge is born.

On the action level, let’s be honest, this is a bit crap, with Geeta doing little more than semi-competent kicking, but being made to look like she is flying through the air, in a way a cheap seventies chop-socky movie would reject as poorly executed. [It seems Geeta is actually pregnant at this point too!] However, this is made up for by some quite intense drama, not least that her brother survived, albeit with amnesia and is now one of JK’s lieutenants. He feels a bond to Geeta, though can’t quite figure out why. There are the inevitable musical numbers, too; most are at least semi-integrated into the plot, Geeta using her seductive skills to get close to her targets. Though might I suggest that, when a woman sings a song at you whose lyrics include the lines. “Now I’ve decided either to kill you or die myself,” that caution might be the best approach.

There are some moments which definitely stretch disbelief. After Geeta is forced on the run, she disguises herself as a nun, and it appears that slapping a wimple on your head and wearing glasses is an impenetrable disguise, which neither her foster father nor husband can penetrate. However, at least they don’t try and pass the thoroughly attractive Raj off as a man (I’m talking to certain Hong Kong films here!). Her brother helps, by breaking the final target out of prison, so they can unite and take revenge together. Which is nice. Naturally, they’re not allowed to get away with it in eighties Bollywood movies, making for a rather bittersweet ending. If it’s all more than a little shaky around the edges, its heart is both large and in the right place.

Dir: Chand and K. Prasad
Star: Anita Raj, Danny Denzongpa, Rakesh Roshan, Shakti Kapoor

Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl

  By

★★½
“In plane sight.”

This is the story of Gunjan Saxena (Kapoor), one of the first women to be admitted into the Indian Air Force as a pilot. Near the beginning is a rather effective scene in which she’s taken up to the cockpit of the jet on which she is flying with her father (Tripathi). The look of wonder on the young girl’s face as she sees the flight deck does a better job of putting over the sheer joy of flying than all the many montages that will be crammed in over the next 110 minutes. It’s a “Miyazaki moment”, if you are familiar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki, which often features sequences that capture the same joy.

She wants initially to be a commercial pilot, against the wishes in particular of her older brother Anshuman  (Bedi) and her mother. But her father is encouraging and sympathetic, even when her career diverts Gunjan into the Air Force, part of the first batch of female recruits. The rest of the film is notable most for its well-crafted and polished predictability. She has to overcome barriers, both physical (she’s too short to become a helicopter pilot – fortunately, she has long arms. No, really: that’s literally the get out) and those of a military culture which is not yet prepared to treat women as equals. Inevitably, there’s a commanding officer who takes the recruit under his wing, and Gunjan overcomes her own self-doubt, with the help of her father’s encouragement.

She is sent into battle as part of the Kargil war in 1999 (more of a spat, really, lasting a couple of months on the border between India and Pakistan), but public concern over her possible fate as a POW forces her removal from the front lines. It all ends up looping back to the scene at the beginning where, equally inevitably, an emergency gives her the chance to redeem herself, on a mercy mission to rescue injured colleagues who are under enemy fire. Apparently, disobeying orders in the Indian military gets you feted for your initiative, which would seem to be something more likely to happen in movies about the military, than the actual armed forces. 

There have been significant complaints about this being an unfair depiction, with the Air Force writing to the Indian censors objecting to the way it was portrayed. That may explain the lengthy pre-film disclaimer, including this odd paragraph:

The producers, directors, artists or others associated with this film are all law-abiding citizens and have not created this film to incite any disorder or lawlessness.

Saxena herself said she never experienced discrimination at the organization level, only from individuals. Obviously, I can’t speak to that, and my concerns are more about the very obvious and cliched nature of the script. There is a good point to be made, about the importance of chasing your dreams, in the face of adversity, and Kapoor’s depiction is winning and likable enough. I certainly can’t complain about the technical aspects, especially in the flying sequences, which are also well constructed. It’s just that the “woman overcomes the adversity of being a woman” story is a cinematic dead horse, and this has little or nothing new to add to it.

Dir: Sharan Sharma
Star: Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Manav Vij, Angad Bedi

Dangal

  By

★★★½
“Wrestling with the truth.”

Mahavir Singh Phogat (Khan) is a former Indian national wrestling champion, who dearly wants to pass his skills on to a son, and make him an even more renowned sportsman. Fate, however, has different plans and deals him nothing but daughters as his children. After two of them, Geeta (Shaikh) and Babita (Malhotra) beat up a local kid who was taunting them, Mahavir takes it upon himself to coach the girls in wrestling – despite the doubts of many, including his wife and, not least, the daughters. Geeta, in particular, proves to have the talent necessary to become, first a local and then a national champion. However, success at international level proves elusive, and her father butts heads with national coach, Pramod Kadam (Kulkarni), over training methods. Geeta has to decide who to believe, as she faces her greatest challenge ever, representing the hopes of her nation at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, held in Delhi, in front of a partisan home crowd.

This is basically Sports Movie 1.0.1, with tons of training montages (a way of getting in those musical numbers required by Bollywood), and Geeta overcoming obstacle after obstacle on her way to winning the gold medal in dramatic, last-second fashion. That’s not really a spoiler, since this is based on a true story, Geeta having been the first Indian women to win a wrestling medal in international competition. However, that’s about the extent of the truth here. Rather than having to mount comeback wins in all her bouts, as depicted here, she actually outscored her opponents over the course of the contest by a 15-1 margin. When the facts and the drama are incompatible, the former must be disposed of, clearly. I’m also not quite so sure her father actually was locked in a closet by the Indian wrestling board during her gold medal bout…

Still, it’s impressive that this own the biggest worldwide box-office of any Indian movie ever, mostly due to it becoming an unexpected breakout hit in China. I can see why though, since it’s the kind of plucky underdog story which has almost universal appeal, and despite qualms about its accuracy (to put it mildly), director Tiwari does it justice. While you can certainly argue this is a well-worn path, it’s done with enough energy to make it seem fresh, and the performances are all very solid [additional credit to Zaira Wasim and Suhani Bhatnagar, who play the younger versions of Geeta and Babita. Shaikh, in particular, really seems to get to grips (hohoho!) with the wrestling sequences, where she is shot in a way that’s clean, rather than hyper-edited.

The results prove reliably dramatic and do as good a job of selling events as they unfold – in addition to amateur wrestling as a spectator sport. If it’s as exciting as here, I’m in [this is, clearly, not to be confused with professional wrestling]. At a whopping 161 minutes in length, there may well have been room to trim some of the extraneous details, or even some of the bouts; we probably don’t need to see every minute of every round of every match in her journey towards the podium. However, I was never bored, and the moments that resonate across cultures more than make up for any slack.

Dir: Nitesh Tiwari
Star: Fatima Sana Shaikh, Aamir Khan, Sanya Malhotra, Girish Kulkarni 

Mrs. Serial Killer

  By

★★★
“The anti-Dexter.”

This is the kind of film which I’d say was enjoyable, rather than being good. Indeed, if you want an illustration of the difference between the two, this movie is a good example. Sona Mukherjee (Fernandez) is the wife of respected doctor, Mrityunjoy Mukherjee (Bajpayee). But their life is upended when the bodies of six, formerly pregnant, unmarried women are found on their property. Sona believes her husband was framed – possibly by police inspector and former boyfriend Imran Shahid, (Raina). She takes the advice of a dubious lawyer, who suggests that if the serial killer was shown to be still active, that would prove her husband’s innocence. So Sona kidnaps another expectant young woman, Anushka Tiwari (Khan) to provide a seventh victim. Only… well, Sona is a bit crap as a serial killer, and Anushka is a feisty little thing with a black-belt in taekwondo, pregnancy be damned.

I’m tagging this as horror and comedy, on the basis that it shouldn’t be taken seriously in the slightest. I’m fairly sure this approach is quite intentional, though with Bollywood, it’s rarely possible to be entirely certain. But there are just so many ludicrous elements, not least the central premise, that it definitely works best as a parody of lurid potboilers. For example, Indian police have apparently never heard of DNA testing, and feel that one body is pretty much as good as another. It’s also possible to trigger an immediate, devastating asthma attack, by crushing up flowers in your hands, and then blowing them in your target’s face. I thought that kind of thing only ever worked in a professional wrestling ring.

That all said, I still enjoyed it, not least for the way everyone takes it Very Seriously. It’s at its best when Sona and Anushka are facing off, the “killer” initially trying to convince her victim she has been captured by a man – an aspect as poorly considered as the rest of her plan. The contrast between the two make for amusing confrontations, such as Anushka spitting back, mockingly, “Trying to scare me with your psycho stare? I can do better. Here!” I was disappointed that they ended up taking a back-seat during the final act [for if her husband was not responsible for the six corpses… who was?] It’s still no less lurid, combining operatic music and disco lighting, in a basement festooned with a plethora of IV drips, for no reason beyond it looking cool.

It all ends in a final twist which makes about as much sense as the rest of it i.e. not very much. I won’t spoil it, but will tell you, it does not provide what I actually wanted to see, which was Sona and Anushka teaming up to go all Natural Born Killers on the real perpetrators. That would have been too much to hope for. Yet I can’t deny I was still amused enough, and wished Lifetime TVM were more like their South Asian counterparts.

Dir: Shirish Kunder
Star: Jacqueline Fernandez, Manoj Bajpayee, Mohit Raina, Zayn Marie Khan