Tag Archives: Ashutosh Rana

Movie Review: War 2 (2025)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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It was always going to be hard for a sequel to reach the heights attained by War in 2019, but War 2 crashes hard.

Years after the original, India’s best soldier — well, one of India’s best, given that the War films are part of the Yash Raj Films Spy Universe of movies — Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) has left India’s R&AW spy agency and works as a mercenary. Kabir’s swoony intro in the original film is the stuff of legend, so how does he make his first appearance in the sequel?

By staring down a clunky-looking CGI wolf.

The scene somehow gets worse as Kabir faces off against a bunch of ninjas in a Japanese castle. Unlike Khalid’s (Tiger Shroff) tightly choreographed, dynamic opening fight scene in War, Kabir dodges swords in slow motion. He punches and chops dozens of helpless dopes with rapid edits between shots. There’s no sense of flow to the fight since we rarely see Kabir execute more than two moves in sequence.

Kabir’s assassination of a Japanese mob boss catches the eye of a syndicate known as Kali. Made up of wealthy representatives from India and its neighboring countries, the group wants to end democracy and take over the region — and they want Kabir to help them.

Of course this was all part of Kabir’s plan to infiltrate them, coordinated by his mentor from the original film Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana). What they didn’t expect was that Kali would force Kabir to kill Luthra to prove his loyalty. Kabir does, just days after Luthra’s daughter Kavya (Kiara Advani) is awarded a medal from the Air Force for bravery as a combat pilot.

Colonel Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor) takes over Luthra’s post as the head of R&AW. He grudgingly lets Kavya in on the hunt for Kabir, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve — a rogue soldier named Vikram (NTR Jr) who’s Kabir’s equal in skill and tenacity.

The Indian spies track Kabir to Spain, where he’s meeting his adopted teenage daughter Ruhi (Arista Mehta). The girl exists purely to call back to the first film and set up an action sequence. In grand Bollywood tradition, she is never mentioned again.

The Spain action sequence is inspired very, very heavily by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Instead of Tom Cruise and Haley Atwell in a Fiat careening through the streets of Rome chased by Pom Klementieff in an armored vehicle, we get Kabir and Ruhi in a Mini Cooper pursued through Salamanca by Vikram in a Humvee. The duo’s little car bounces down a bunch of stairs and eventually winds up on top of a speeding train about to crash — another sequence from the same Mission: Impossible movie.

There are plenty more plot parallels with the first War movie to come, with twists, betrayals, and secret relationships from the past. Kabir has his requisite dance sequences with both Vikram and Kavya (undeniably the best parts of the film). The whole thing ends with a fight in an ice cave, just like the original War did.

War 2 collapses under the immense pressure on it to be new and fresh while also being the same as War. The absence of Siddharth Anand — who directed War and co-wrote both the screenplay and the story — from War 2 makes it clear just how responsible he was for the first film’s success. Aditya Chopra is again credited for creating the sequel’s story, Shridhar Raghavan returns as screenwriter, and Abbas Tyrewala is once more responsible for the writing the dialogues. The continuity they bring is evident, but there’s no life in the sequel.

The new kid in town is Ayan Mukerji in the director’s seat. He earned his spot by directing the big-budget supernatural action spectacle Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva, but that was a passion project of his own creation. Here he connects all the dots, but the film lacks sparks — except for those created when Vikram inexplicably competes in a Formula 1 auto race in a powerboat.

All of the actors are fine, but that’s it. They’re all better than this.

War 2 is just too silly for its own good. No one person is solely responsible for its failure. Rather, it’s the product of a bunch of talented people turning in subpar work on a project too expensive and high-profile to warrant anything less than their best.

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Movie Review: Loveyapa (2025)

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0.5 Star (out of 4)

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Rarely has a romantic comedy been so devoid of romance or comedy. Loveyapa is grim viewing.

The official remake of the 2022 Tamil film Love Today dumps viewers into the relationship of 24-year-olds Baani (Khushi Kapoor, daughter of Sridevi) and Gucci (Junaid Khan, son of Aamir Khan). Kapoor actually is 24, but Khan is 31 and looks it. His older physical appearance makes them a visual mismatch, and it makes the immature antics his character engages in look even more indefensible than they already are.

After 35 minutes of boring stuff — mostly them hiding their relationship from their nosy parents and preparing for the wedding of Gucci’s sister Kiran (Tanvika Parlikar) to shy dentist Anupam (Kiku Sharda) — the movie finally reaches its first plot point. Baani’s strict father Atul (Ashutosh Rana, who must have owed someone a favor) insists that the couple swap phones for 24 hours before he’ll give them permission to continue dating.

Baani doesn’t find anything suspicious in Gucci’s phone because he cleared it of incriminating material before turning it over. However, when Gucci looks at Baani’s phone, he learns that, by virtue of being a pretty woman on social media, Baani is bombarded with pleas for attention from all manner of men (which she politely deflects). However, her messages show that she lied to Gucci in order to meet one of her exes platonically, knowing that Gucci would be mad. He is.

Instead of talking about this with Baani or just breaking up with her, Gucci slut-shames Baani to her father. Gucci is hurt, so he hurts her back — mature behavior for a 31-year-old, er, 24-year-old. But Baani’s dad is no chump. He restores the deleted material from Gucci’s phone and says they’ll need three more days to go through it all.

Baani finds that Gucci messages his exes too, along with lots of other random women. He requests photos of them under the guise of casting for a movie that doesn’t exist. (The fake movie’s title — “Lovelorn Tribal Woman” — is the only funny part of the film). He still has an active Tinder account.

Worse, Gucci is the account holder for a social media handle that he and dozens of other men from his college use to prank each other and harass people, including occasional blackmail and extortion. Someone’s been using the account to sexually harass Baani, in fact.

Gucci’s response to this revelation? “Baani, boys do this.” Boyhood now extends to age 31, er, 24, I guess.

In reality, this is where Baani would dump Gucci’s skeevy ass. They’ve both been miserable since the phone swap experiment started. She has proof that he’s a creep, and he doesn’t trust her anymore anyway. What is there to salvage?

But this is an extremely conventional Bollywood romcom. The “happy” ending is determined from the outset, regardless of what happens in the film. None of the big social problems introduced are interrogated in any meaningful way. The female lead suffers, and the male lead decides the outcome. Roll credits.

To be fair to the actors, there’s no one who could have made Loveyapa into a good movie. Yet it is fair to question their contributions to its awfulness. Kapoor has starred in three movies in her young career, and her performances have been fine. She’s not without potential, but she hasn’t done anything to stand out from her peers yet. When you come from a famous family, you can coast on being cute for a while — but not forever.

Khan’s experience as a stage actor isn’t translating to movies yet. There was an awkwardness to the way he moved in his debut Maharaj, and it’s present here, too. If not for his famous father, I suspect he’d have started in supporting roles or unconventional character parts. Nothing about him screams “Bollywood leading man” yet. Maybe he’ll achieve that some day, but his next career move needs careful consideration.

Again, Kapoor and Khan aren’t solely to blame for Loveyapa. It’s regressive and sexist and devoid of humor. Watching it is a dispiriting waste of time.

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Series Review: Aranyak (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Aranyak is Netflix India’s answer to Twin Peaks. With a compelling story and right-sized episodes, the supernatural (or is it?) murder mystery is made to be binged.

Aranyak takes place in the perpetually overcast fictional mountain town of Sironah, surrounded by a dense forest. Police officer Angad Malik (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) arrives to take over duties from Kasturi Dogra (Raveena Tandon), who’s taking a leave of absence from the force to deal with family issues.

On the day Angad arrives, a French tourist named Julie (Breshna Khan) reports her teenage daughter Aimee (Anna Ador) missing. Angad and Kasturi bicker over who should lead the case until Aimee’s body is found hanged in a tree. The cops agree to work together, putting Kasturi’s leave on hold.

Aimee’s death hits Sironah hard because of its similarities to a series of murders 19 years earlier that left over a dozen young women dead and the residents of the town emotionally scarred — none more so than Kasturi’s father-in-law Mahadev (Ashutosh Rana). He led the investigation into the murders but was unable to find the killer known as the “leopard man.”

The leopard man is a figure of local myth: a murderous beast and also the steward of a crop of “mystery mushrooms” that cure disease, but at a grievous cost to those who consume them. Whether the killer from 19 years ago was a man or a monster remains up for debate in Sironah.

One curious fact about the new crime is that all the rich and politically-connected residents in town seem to know that something bad happened to Aimee before the police do. Local politician Jagdamba (Meghna Malik) and sketchy rich guy Kuber Manhas (Zakir Hussain) try to leverage that information to their advantage.

There are many more characters and possible suspects. The story — written by Rohan Sippy and Charudutt Acharya — does a nice job of keeping all of them somehow connected to the crimes of the present or past. Each of the series’ eight episodes runs about 40 minutes, giving enough time to flesh out characters and their motivations without getting bogged down in backstory.

The runtime gives enough space to deal with the themes that Aranyak shares with Twin Peaks: collective trauma, whether evil exists as an independent entity or whether it’s simply individual moral corruption, and how “good” people reckon with this evil in their midst.

One of the more interesting characters is the politician Jagdamba. Her position is in jeopardy because her young adult son Kanti (Tejaswi Dev Chaudhary) was previously convicted of rape. She wants to protect him, but she also believes that he committed the current crime and fears that he might do it again. She’s concerned not just because he’s a political liability, but because she doesn’t want him to hurt anyone else — yet she’s not sure how to stop him. She loves her son, but he might be irredeemable.

This subplot fits with the show’s focus on the dangers faced by women, be it rape, murder, roofies, or cyberstalking. The stakes are raised for Kasturi because she has a daughter, Nutan (Tanseesha Joshi), who is the same age as Aimee. One of the commonalities between Aimee’s death and the murders from 19 years ago is that the police weren’t able to prevent any of them, only respond to them after the fact.

Aranyak has a few glaring flaws. Kasturi does stupid things that put people in danger, and she’s never heard of the jugular vein. Action scenes in the final episode defy the laws of space-time. The finale’s closing shot is sincerely crazy. The whole reason I watched the show was because Shah Shahid of the Split Screen Podcast warned me that the show’s final seconds were nuts, and he was right.

That said, the story build-up to that point is solid enough to make time invested in Aranyak worthwhile. Consistently good performances help, too, with special acknowledgement of Joshi as Nutan and Wishveash Sharkholi as Bunty, her boyfriend. Though the story feels complete as is, I’m very curious to see where Season 2 would go, based on the finale’s closing seconds.

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Movie Review: War (2019)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Pitting two of Bollywood’s biggest action stars against one another lives up to the hype in War, a tremendously fun, globetrotting thrill ride.

Indian super-spy Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) has gone rogue. A task force including his former pupil, Khalid (Tiger Shroff), must track Kabir down and figure out what happened. Their boss, Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana), assigns another agent to lead the task force because Khalid is “too close” to Kabir. Khalid’s colleague Aditi (Anupriya Goenka) covertly funnels him information, because she wants to find Kabir as badly as he does.

Kabir’s team was the best of the best, hot on the trail of international criminal Rizwan Ilyasi (Sanjeev Vasta) when Khalid joined them as a promising new recruit. The onboarding process was rocky, since Kabir worried that Khalid might harbor some resentment for Kabir having killed his agent-turned-terrorist father (in self defense!). But Khalid proved both loyal and capable, winning Kabir’s trust — only for Kabir to turn on the government he swore to protect.

Khalid’s desire to join Kabir’s team stems both from a need to show the world that he is not his father’s son and from his infatuation with Kabir. Roshan as Kabir gets one of cinema’s most loving introductions, stepping out of a helicopter with the wind blowing his hair, striding muscularly, like a being made of pure testosterone. Khalid gawks at him on behalf of all of us.

Not to be overlooked is Khalid’s own introduction, via one of Bollywood’s best-ever fight scenes. The fight choreography and Ben Jasper’s camera work as Khalid tosses drug dealers around an apartment are spectacular. Shroff’s athletic prowess is just as impressive.

War is among the most expensive Indian films ever made, and it looks it. Chase scenes — whether on foot or via car or motorcycle — in foreign locales are as exciting to watch as they are stunning to look at. The scale is big, the stakes are high, and writer-director Siddharth Anand pushes the envelope even further than his previous action spectacular, Bang Bang, which also looked great but was disappointing. The lessons learned from that film translated into a thriller that can stand up alongside anything Hollywood has to offer, with well-integrated CGI, practical effects, and complicated stunt work.

Another improvement is in the quality of acting Anand gets from his performers. Roshan was miscast in the action-comedy Bang Bang, but he plays Kabir perfectly as steely but not unfeeling. Shroff has always been his best when playing underdogs, and he uses that here to show how Khalid’s over-eagerness makes him reckless. Goenka’s role is utilitarian — she’s always there with the right information at the right time — but she gives Aditi a spark.

Vaani Kapoor has a small but impactful role as Naina, a dancer Kabir befriends while tracking Ilyasi on a solo mission in Italy. Naina pegs Kabir’s martyr streak as dangerous. Kabir says his team is his family, but Aditi has a fiance and Khalid has his mother — Kabir’s the only one with no one else to come home to. It helps to remind Kabir that real people are involved, something the movie notes when Colonel Luthra acknowledges some Portuguese soldiers killed in a mission gone wrong. The characters don’t just rampage through cities without consequence.

Sure, some loose ends are left hanging at film’s end, and the ridiculous climax includes what is essentially a really-effective Audi commercial. But no one can ever accuse War‘s cast or crew of phoning it in. Anand wanted world-class stunts and powerful action sequences, and he got them. Roshan and Shroff look jacked, and their fights and dance scenes are impressive. Kapoor stands out in her acrobatic showcase dance number as well. War is just tremendous fun and a great example of a movie that warrants viewing on the biggest screen possible.

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Movie Review: Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai (2017)

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Zero Stars (out of 4)

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Trying to explain what Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai is about is a futile task. Not even the writer of the movie, Amreetaa Roy, was up to the task of succinctly describing her own film. Here’s the summary she submitted to IMDb:

The film presents the naïve vulnerability of human life, the sincere saga of love and pain, and the glimpse of human emotions in raw form. So much of human nature is captured within the frames of the film, yet it takes you to the various land giving a realistic view of existence – the story traversing from a small town of Rajasthan, moving to the city of dreams – Mumbai and then goes on to the city that never sleeps – New York, ride us through interesting characters, each one with a diverse and unique character adding slice of life. Written by Amreetaa Roy

That rambling mess of a plot summary captures all the problems with Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai (JIKNH, henceforth). It has no identity or focus because it tries to be about every issue and every emotion all at once.

Our onscreen guide through JIKNH is Alia (Manjari Fadnis), who experiences — directly or indirectly — virtually every kind of gender discrimination a woman can face. That extends to the closing credits of JIKNH, in which her name appears third in the cast list despite her playing the film’s main character.

In spite of a deprived childhood in Rajasthan in which Alia’s material and emotional needs ranked a distant fifth behind those of her two younger brothers and her parents, she excels as a student, developing an affinity for writing. As a college student, her no-nonsense attitude attracts the attention of an older, villainous rich guy, Vikram (Ashutosh Rana).

To this point, Alia’s story is one of resilience and self-sufficiency in spite of her family’s utter indifference toward her. Every indication points toward her graduating and building a successful life for herself, possibly with younger, not-so-villainous rich guy, Alex (Himansh Kohli). So it makes no sense when she quickly cedes to her drunken father’s request and accepts Vikram’s marriage proposal, especially since she knows Vikram to be a violent lech with multiple mistresses.

Predictably, marriage to Vikram is a nightmare. Alia escapes with the help of her tough-as-nails maid, Laxmi (Supriya Pathak), after Vikram demands that pregnant Alia abort the female fetus she’s carrying (checking off another item on the list of Gender Issues the movie feels compelled to address).

As Alia starts a new life in Mumbai, JIKNH‘s Social Issues checklist branches out from gender-based problems like spousal abuse and the diminished earning power of rural women to topics like elder care, the education of orphans, and vaccination. Eventually, Alia winds up in a Middle Eastern war zone, directing the medical care of wounded civilians in her capacity as a journalist. Alia is out to save everyone from everything.

While in Mumbai, Alia gives birth to Vikram’s unwanted daughter, Natasha, whose existence is only worth mentioning in passing since the girl disappears for long stretches of the film. Her presence might interrupt the budding romance between Alia and a third rich guy: American philanthropist Aditya (Arbaaz Khan). They share a lunch date presided over by an offensively stereotypical horny gay waiter whose sexuality is treated as a joke.

That joke isn’t nearly as funny as the fact that Alia’s and Aditya’s love theme is an instrumental version of “The First Noel.”

International audiences will want to give JIKNH a pass not only because it’s an unwatchable disaster with no continuity or sense of direction, but because the English subtitles frequently disappear, including during the closing lines of the film.

The last quarter of the movie takes place in America, and JIKNH does a particularly awful job of depicting the States, even by Bollywood’s low standards. The white actors are unbearable, and there are some serious geography problems. According to director Keshav Panneriy — who also edited the film and is married to the movie’s writer — the island of Manhattan is nestled within a mountain range, and its nearest airport is in Maryland.

The American portion of JIKNH does yield some of the movie’s most sophisticated dialogue. Confronting a man who harasses her and her friend on the street, Alia retorts in English: “Yes, we have a nice ass, and we are proud of it. You are just an ugly ass who makes the whole neighborhood stink!”

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  • Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai at Wikipedia
  • Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai at IMDb

Movie Review: Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014)

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Humpty_Sharma_Ki_Dulhania_Poster3 Stars (out of 4)

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First Student of the Year, then Main Tera Hero, and now Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (“Humpty Sharma’s Bride“). Three films into his career, and Varun Dhawan has positioned himself as Bollywood’s hero of the future.

Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (HSKD, henceforth) is made in the mold of classic romcoms, most explicitly Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. [Though references to DDLJ are sprinkled throughout, one need not have seen that movie in order to appreciate HSKD.] This requires Dhawan to carry the film with his dancing, crying, and goofing around, and he’s more than up to the task.

Dhawan plays Humpty Sharma, a good-natured college student prone to slacking off. He’s destined to take over the campus bookstore from his tolerant father (Kenny Desai), so why push himself in school? Humpty’s constant companions are Shonty (Gaurav Pandey) and Poplu (Sahil Vaid).

The trio are busted by Kavya (Alia Bhatt) when they try to extort passing grades from their history professor, her uncle. When Kavya agrees to fix their grades behind her uncle’s back in exchange for a bribe, the guys recognize a kindred spirit and friendship blossoms.

Humpty and Kavya fall in love, even though she’s engaged to an American guy she’s never met. Humpty must convince Kavya’s father (Ashutosh Rana) to let him marry Kavya instead of her betrothed, Angad (Siddharth Shukla), a nearly impossible task given that Angad is perfect.

Angad’s perfection sets up some especially funny scenes. Despite his loyalty to Humpty, heterosexual Poplu finds himself becoming enamored of Angad’s winsome demeanor, delicious cooking, and chiseled abs. Big thumbs up to the casting department for hiring Shukla, who looks like Superman.

Angad is also great for driving home the film’s theme that most people aren’t perfect, but that doesn’t preclude us from being loving partners or from striving to be better versions of ourselves.

In an effort to differentiate Angad from Humpty, debutant writer-director Shashank Khaitan finds the right balance in making Humpty flawed but likeable. None of his weaknesses are deal breakers, and values like love and loyalty govern all of his decisions.

Kavya is likewise written with a moral code. Her sense of justice is what first appeals to Humpty, making up for her short fuse and selective materialism.

Bhatt — whose had an even stronger start to her career than Dhawan after debuting alongside him in Student of the Year — is very good again, especially in quieter interactions between Kavya and Humpty. It’s a shame that her character’s dynamism is sublimated in the second half. Humpty must try to save their relationship mostly by himself, whereas he and Kavya had been partners to that point.

Dhawan is the total package: good looks, dance moves, and nuanced acting skills. He comfortably transitions between comedy and sexually charged romance.

Strong performances by Pandey and Vaid augment Dhawan’s performance and reinforce Humpty’s status as a good guy. The supportive and empathetic women of Kavya’s family make the story feel complete.

The story’s weakest point is that some of the supporting characters are denied satisfying conclusions, or any conclusion at all. Khaitan so effectively populated this universe that the movie becomes about more than Humpty’s and Kavya’s will-they-or-won’t-they romance.

But for light romantic comedy, HSKD hits the spot. It has some inventive dance numbers and strong turns by a pair of Bollywood’s brightest up-and-comers. It’s definitely worth a watch.

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