3.5 Stars (out of 4)
Watch Baby Do Die Do on Netflix
Director Nachiket Samant’s assassin story Baby Do Die Do has as much style as it does substance. This first film from the new production house Saleem Siblings — run by brother and sister Saqib Saleem and Huma Qureshi — is an impressive debut.
The film opens with a perfect noir voiceover line: “Our story starts the night I was murdered.” Over black-and-white footage, a teenage girl narrates the events of a tragic night twenty years ago. Twin sisters Didi and Baby Karmarkar — Karmarkar translates to “Do Die Do” — sneak into a shuttered high-rise hotel. Baby cannot hear or speak, so Didi watches over her as they explore empty rooms bigger than their family’s entire apartment. The girls interrupt a man in the process of killing another man. Only Baby leaves the hotel alive.
In the present day, Mumbai looks dystopian. Giant electronic billboards atop skyscrapers bathe the city in an artificial glow as they advertise various luxury builders. Meanwhile, the new towers that displace people living in the slums exist in various stages of completion, with corruption and rules violations stopping some before they reach their shiny, gleaming potential.
Baby (played by Qureshi) fits into this new world as an assassin for hire. Her handler and mentor Papa (Chunky Pandey) — who has promised to help her find her sister’s killer — fields requests from some of those builders advertising on the billboards to eliminate business rivals or people who’ve insulted them.
Gangster-turned-developer Zafar Katkar (Sikander Kher) is one of Papa’s clients. Zafar wants a rival builder named Murjhani (Himanshu Malik) killed for insulting Zafar’s younger brother Lucky (Arun Kushwah), who has dwarfism. Papa’s impatient son Manu (Marudhar Shekhawat) wants to handle the hit himself, but he’s nowhere near as skilled as Baby.
Meanwhile, Baby has a suitor. Her neighbor Siddhu (Rachit Singh) has a crush on her, though he doesn’t really know anything about her. Even though Baby can read lips, Siddhu learns sign language so that they can have real conversations. On a whim, she agrees to marry him. Maybe there’s more to life than murder for hire.
Singh is a revelation as Siddhu. Most of Singh’s industry credits are for directing acting workshops for other productions, but he’s brilliant as love-struck Siddhu. He’s as earnest and hopeful as Baby is jaded. They make a sweet pair once Baby starts to finally let down her guard.
Qureshi makes Baby compelling despite how little the character shares about her emotions. We can appreciate her professional skills, but her relationships with people like Papa and Siddhu telegraph that there’s more to her than even she wants to let on. The film is full of wonderful interactions between characters. Directing such scenes is one of Samant’s strongest suits.
What’s probably most memorable about Baby Do Die Do is Samant’s gift for showing Mumbai through a particular lens and making the city almost a character in itself. This version of Mumbai aspires to greatness without acknowledging the price paid by those who will benefit the least from such ambition. It’s equal parts garish and grimy, though the story spends most of its time in the less glitzy parts of the city. Many of those places are unfinished — architectural reflections of Baby, who can’t become who she’s meant to be until she finds her sister’s killer.
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