Tag Archives: Bollywood

Movie Review: Homebound (2025)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

This is a review of the uncensored version of Homebound. Here is my article on Which Scenes Were Censored in Homebound.

Watch the censored version of Homebound on Netflix

Two best friends find their future opportunities limited by discrimination, poverty, and systemic shortcomings in the touching drama Homebound. India’s selection committee picked a worthy submission to the 98th Oscars.

The film opens in North India around 2017-18. Best friends Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) want to become police officers, a feat that first requires battling their way through a crowded train platform before they can even reach the admissions testing site. The crowd they navigate consists of hundreds of other young men and women vying for the same posts — a fraction of the 2.5 million applicants from across the country for just 3,500 job openings.

Shoaib is Muslim, and Chandan is from one of the Scheduled Castes. They’re sick of being looked down on by higher caste Hindus and figure that being cops armed with batons will put an end to the disrespect they’re accustomed to.

A year goes by with no word on the exam results, leaving the guys in limbo. They’ve invested so much in this dream that taking any other job seems like giving up. But there’s a hole in the roof of Chandan’s family home, and Shoaib’s dad needs knee surgery so he can get back to work in the fields. The guys can’t wait on their dream forever.

Writer-director Neeraj Ghaywan is so effective at communicating how immediate the needs of the poor are. With no financial cushion, problems quickly become emergencies. Even when the government creates opportunities intended to level the playing field — such as reserving university spots for those from castes historically denied admission — taking advantage of them requires planning and sacrifice from family members who don’t have much left to give.

One of those family members is Chandan’s older sister Vaishali (Harshika Parmar). Chandan opts to go to college to be with a woman he met at the police exam, Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor). When Chandan later drops out, Vaishali points out that he’s squandering opportunities their traditional parents would never let her have. He’s flitting between uncertain futures while she’s stuck working as a bathroom attendant at an elementary school. He needs to settle on a way to contribute to the family and stick with it.

The story takes a major turn when the guys get jobs in a garment factory over 1,000 kilometers away from home. They earn steady money that gives their families stability. Then COVID-19 hits. The government institutes same-day lockdowns that last for weeks, shuttering businesses. As money runs out, migrant workers like Shoaib and Chandan are forced to make their way home, sometimes on foot.

It was journalist Basharat Peer’s reporting on such cases for the New York Times that inspired Ghaywan to write Homebound. In fleshing out backstories for his main characters, Ghaywan draws together the various threads that create the net that traps people like Shoaib and Chandan in poverty. Sudha represents someone able to take advantage of the government’s efforts to remediate caste discrimination, but the mistreatment experienced by the guys show just how easy it is for bigots to undercut those efforts.

The cast of Homebound is wonderful. Khatter’s spent the last few years proving why he’s probably the best actor of his generation, but Jethwa makes a compelling case for why he should be included in the discussion. The friendship between Shoaib and Chandan feels so real, through all of its ups and downs.

Kapoor uses her supporting role to show just how impactful she can be when not playing a lead. Parmar likewise stands out even though she’s only in a few scenes. Vaishali is pragmatic, but her advice is also clearly motivated by her own emotional baggage. Both sets of the boys’ parents are played beautifully played as well.

Ghaywan’s sophomore effort after 2015’s terrific film Masaan was a decade in the making but worth the wait. Homebound is insightful and thought-provoking, painting a vivid picture of the challenges faced by those living in poverty in contemporary India.

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Movie Review: Saiyaara (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Saiyaara on Netflix

Cinema needs the occasional overwrought, youthful, romantic melodrama, and director Mohit Suri has made it his mission to supply them. Saiyaara nicely exemplifies the sub-genre thanks to earnest performances by its talented leading couple.

We’re introduced to the deep-feeling poet Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda) as she’s stood up at her courthouse wedding by a jerk named Mahesh. She’s so devastated that she passes out. She spends six months convalescing at the home of her supportive, progressive parents — Mom is played by Geeta Agarwal and Dad by Rajesh Kumar — before reentering society.

Mahesh’s betrayal zapped Vaani’s ability to write, and she hopes she can get it back by doing celebrity interviews for an entertainment website. On the way to her job interview for the site Buzzlist, she sees a handsome bad boy on a motorcycle. Later, the same guy hands over the journal she left outside the office — Vaani has a habit of forgetting things — before beating up one of the site’s writers for an insufficiently flattering article about his band.

The angry young man is Krish (Ahaan Panday), lead singer of the rock group Josh. Krish has temper issues stemming from his mother’s death when he was a kid, followed by his father’s turn to alcoholism, which resulted in Krish becoming his caretaker. Krish wants the world to give him all the love and adoration he missed out on as a child, and he wants it now.

Having peeked at Vaani’s journal before returning it, Krish realizes she’s got talent. He uses some of her lyrics in a song and proposes a partnership. Vaani isn’t sure she’s up to the task, but spending time having fun with Krish restores her creative abilities.

Naturally, the two fall in love. Thanks to their songwriting partnership, the band becomes a sensation, putting fame finally within Krish’s reach. Their bliss is short-lived, however, as Vaani experiences health problems that change the terms of their relationship and impact Krish’s career path.

Not to diminish the severity of Vaani’s condition, but it’s presented in a very film-friendly way, making it more of a plot point than an in-depth look at a specific condition. It’s meant to raise the stakes during a period in the characters’ lives when their emotions are already experienced at maximum volume.

The emotional intensity in the story almost makes Saiyaara feel more like a movie about teenagers than one about people in their mid-twenties. Their fervor feels like an outwardly expressed version of what the characters in Twilight were supposedly holding back via Kristen Stewart’s and Robert Pattinson’s, um, restrained performances. But Bollywood doesn’t make movies about teenagers, so instead we have college graduates yelling, “I love you, Krish Kapoor” at the top of their lungs.

That said, the passionate performances work because Padda and Panday play their parts with complete sincerity. There’s no trace of ironic detachment, and it helps to build a world where where passion can move mountains. There’s an idea in the film that one could write a song so heartfelt that it could bring a lover back no matter how far the distance between them. It’s similar to themes in some Japanese role playing video games (JRPGs) of the power of human will to alter the very nature of the universe and time itself. I really enjoyed that aspect of Saiyaara.

The undeniable takeaway from the film is the star potential of both Padda and Panday. They seem much more experienced than their collective three IMDb acting credits (all Padda’s) would indicate. She performs with a charming combination of vulnerability and strength, and he brings depth to a character that could have been one-note. They have electric chemistry together, and the film is quite sexy as a result.

As in Mohit Suri’s 2013 film about a troubled rockstar’s romance — Aashiqui 2 — music plays a central role in Saiyaara. Again, power ballads carry the soundtrack, but I like the way they work in Saiyaara better. The yearning in the title track (sung by Faheem Abdullah) fits the notion of being able to reach a loved one across time and space. The soundtrack propels the story forward and keeps it from ever losing momentum.

Saiyaara isn’t the most unique movie — it can’t be, as it’s inspired by the 2004 Korean film A Moment to Remember. But it scratches a certain itch for stories about undying devotion and all-consuming passion. What a bonus if we get two new Bollywood stars out of it.

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Movie Review: Songs of Paradise (2025)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Songs of Paradise on Amazon Prime

Writer-director Danish Renzu’s love-letter to Kashmiri music history is vibrant and sweet. A charming cast recreates a world on the cusp of progress. Songs of Paradise is a delight.

Though not a biographical film, Renzu’s story is heavily inspired by the life of Raj Begum, Kashmir’s first female radio singer who died in 2016. Her achievements won her not just fame but also one of the Indian government’s highest civilian honors: the Padma Shree.

In Songs of Paradise, the character inspired by Raj Begum goes by the stage name Noor Begum (Soni Razdan). A framing device finds Noor in the modern day narrating her life to graduate student Rumi (Taaruk Raina), who’s writing a thesis on the history of popular music in Kashmir (and serving as an onscreen avatar for Renzu himself).

Before she started singing professionally in 1954, Noor Begum was simply Zeba Akhtar (Saba Azad). She grew up in Srinagar with her open-minded father (played by Bashir Lone) and conservative mother, Hameeda (Sheeba Chaddha).

Zeba earns money cleaning house for a music teacher, Master Ji (Shishir Sharma). Master Ji has no idea Zeba can sing, until he overhears her performing for a group of women at a family function. Recognizing her potential, Master Ji offers to train Zeba for free. He’s so impressed with her ability that he signs her up for the local radio station’s annual singing contest — something no other woman has done before.

“Freedom and progress were in the air,” the film notes. But not everyone is ready for change — not even Zeba herself. She hides her music lessons from her traditional mother under the guise of extra work hours. While Zeba enjoys her studies, she has no ambitions for them to lead to anything else. But she competes in the contest and wins decisively.

Her victory comes with a new job, performing songs live on the radio with the in-house band. Zeba’s presence causes upheaval in the male-dominated space, but soon everyone realizes the boost her heavenly voice gives the whole station. In trying to make the situation more equitable for her, Zeba champions change that makes things fairer for everyone, such as demanding grumpy station owner Mr. Kaul (Armaan Khera) read the names of every participating musician after every broadcast.

Zeba is interesting because she’s not trying to blaze a trail. Master Ji and her father want her to succeed because they care for her, and the station’s staff lyricist Azaad (Zain Khan Durrani) wants Kashmir to catch up with Bombay’s thriving film-music industry. But there’s a toll paid by trailblazers and those around them, and Zeba seems to know this. That’s the main reason she adopts the stage name Noor Begum. Yes, she’s afraid of what will happen if her mother finds out, but she’s also protective of her parents. Srinagar isn’t a huge town, and gossip travels fast.

Through her stern performance as Hameeda, Sheeba Chaddha makes sure we understand exactly why Zeba is scared of her mom. Hameeda levels a stare at Zeba that’s so withering that the film should come with a warning to protect delicate houseplants. Yet, when Noor Begum’s real identity is discovered, all of Zeba’s mother’s fears about social consequences come true.

Thankfully, Zeba and her family are saved by her greatest champion: Azaad, the station’s in-house lyricist. The two marry, and their romance is both tender and thrilling. They embody the style of the era and make a dashing couple. With Azaad’s support, Noor Begum capitalizes on the opportunities that arise as her soulful voice spreads beyond the borders of Kashmir.

One of Renzu’s points in making Songs of Paradise is to remind us how fragile history is. In an era before digital backups, physical copies of recordings were all that existed. Lose them, and you lose the performance, the song, the film. The credits of Songs of Paradise note that many of the songs used in the movie are recreations, likely due to there being no surviving physical recordings. The music in the film is a lovely augment to a charming story of progress and promise.

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Movie Review: Inspector Zende (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Inspector Zende on Netflix

1970s serial killer Charles Sobhraj is a popular entertainment subject for a reason. He used his charisma to recruit followers to help him steal money and murder tourists across Southeast Asia to fund his lavish lifestyle. He earned the colorful nickname “The Bikini Killer” due the attire several of his victims were wearing when they were discovered deceased.

Inspector Zende turns the lens away from the flashy criminal and onto the police officer who caught him — not once, but twice. Perfectly-cast lead actors make the most of an amusing comedy that loses steam as it goes along.

Inspector Madhukar Zende is played by Manoj Bajpayee. The character is based on a real person — who makes a cameo at the end of the film — and uses his real name. To make it clear that this is a fictional story and not strictly biographical, debutant Hindi writer-director Chinmay Mandlekar changes the villain’s name from Charles Sobhraj to “The Swimsuit Killer” Carl Bojhraj (played by Jim Sarbh).

Zende first apprehended Bojhraj in India back in 1971, when the criminal specialized in fraud and property crimes. After escaping from various international prisons over the years, Bohjraj breaks out of Tihar Jail in Delhi in 1986 after drugging the dessert he served to prisoners and guards to celebrate his birthday (it wasn’t even his actual birthday).

Immediately, Zende knows that he has to be the one to capture Bojhraj. He knows how Bojhraj thinks and where he’s likely to be. But a lot has changed in the 15 years since he first caught the villain. Zende is older, and he has responsibilities he didn’t back then, namely a wife Viju (Girija Oak) and a couple of kids. Viju — whom he affectionately calls “The Commissioner at Home” — wonders why someone else can’t catch the escaped killer.

The sweet, flirty relationship between Zende and Viju is a real highlight of the film. According to an interview Bajpayee did with the real Madhukar Zende for Netflix India’s YouTube channel, this part of the story is absolutely true. Zende’s family is more important than his sense of professional pride.

But Zende holds himself to high moral standards that are worth quoting directly: “One who does not commit injustices on others is a noble man. One who does not let others do injustice to himself is a good man. One who stops injustice from happening to others is a true man.” (Credit to Natasha Acharya for the great English subtitles.) Zende can’t be a “true man” if he leaves this task to others, potentially allowing innocent people to get hurt in the process.

Acknowledging this older, less agile Zende enables the film to take on a more lighthearted, humorous tone. What Zende lacks in speed he makes up for in guile. Not that his hand-picked crew of fellow cops are in prime shape either, be it his humorless second-in-command Jacob (Harish Dudhade) or his bumbling assistant Patil (Bhalchandra Kadam). The inspectors need more smarts than strength as they follow Bojhraj’s tracks across Mumbai and eventually to the international tourist hotspot Goa.

For movie fans like me who are happy to watch Bajpayee and Sarbh in just about anything, Inspector Zende delivers. Bajpayee finds the right mix of earnestness and playfulness for a movie that is supposed to be fun, despite its grim inspiration.

Sarbh’s performance adds to that sense of humor while still making Bhojraj dangerous. The killer’s foreign origins and taste for luxury means that Sarbh plays the role with a French accent and wearing a wig that evokes Prince on the cover of his self-titled 1979 album. It’s an amusing persona, but appropriate for the character.

The trap Mandlekar falls into with his first feature directorial is making a comedy that overstays its welcome. Some of the film’s best physical comedy is saved for a climax that arrives ten to fifteen minutes after the movie should have ended, and the bit doesn’t land as well as it should as a result.

Still, there’s more than enough going for Inspector Zende to warrant a watch. And writing an Indian police officer character who sees himself as a protector of the innocent rather than a one-man judge, jury, and executioner is a refreshing change of pace. We need more of this.

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Movie Review: Tehran (2025)

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Watch Tehran on Netflix
Watch Tehran on Zee5

Note: I’m forgoing giving Tehran a star-rating as it feels too reductive for a problematic subject.

Tehran is a movie whose potential release window closed years ago. It was filmed in October 2022, a year before norms around addressing Israel’s relationship with the Middle East’s Islamic countries changed. On top of that, the inexperienced storytelling team behind Tehran lacks the finesse to pull it off. This messy film should’ve stayed on the shelf.

The story opens by stating that it is based on real-life assassination attempts on Israeli diplomats in 2012 that took place in three countries: India, Thailand, and Georgia. Maps of the countries are shown on-screen, including a map of the state of Georgia within the United States of America — not the country Georgia, where the attack actually occurred.

John Abraham plays Rajeev “RK” Kumar, a cop in Delhi’s Special Branch — a unit with incredibly wide operational latitude, if the film is to be believed. He’s pulled from his ethics-bending investigation of organized crime onto a Delhi car-bombing case that killed a young flower seller. RK feels especially bad for the dead girl because he has a daughter the same age (as if that’s the only reason a man could care about the welfare of girls). Once that emotional connection is established, RK hardly thinks of his daughter again.

Indian authorities assume Pakistan was behind the attack, but RK notices that the targeted car carried an Israeli Embassy employee. He finds a connection between two other attacks on Israeli diplomats — in Thailand and the non-US Georgia — as well as evidence that they were planned in India. The attackers are all Iranian citizens.

This is a big problem for India’s government, who are days away from signing a deal with Iran to import cheap oil. There are other considerations regarding India’s relationship with Israel, and innumerable diplomats and politicians from all three countries are so hastily introduced that it causes confusion. Yet the oil deal is paramount. Accusing Iran of attempted assassination would surely scuttle the deal, so the higher ups want this case wrapped up quietly.

That won’t fly with RK, who wants justice for the dead little girl who may as well be his daughter (whom he never sees). But instead of just going after the perpetrator of the Delhi attack — an irritating villain named Afshar (Hadi Khanjanpour), whom we know is extra bad because he takes drugs and has gay sex — RK and his team travel overseas to take out the men behind the Thailand and Georgia attacks.

RK’s subordinates Vijay (Dinkar Sharma) and Divya (Manushi Chhillar in a minuscule role) poison the other two assassins in public places on foreign soil, killing both men. Is the commission of war crimes standard training for Delhi police? When RK and company head to Iran to finish off Afshar, RK’s boss tells him not to bother coming back to India. The threat of never seeing his extremely-important-to-him daughter again doesn’t deter our single-minded hero.

A note at the end of the film that states that RK acted “to stop thousands of Indians from becoming collateral damage,” a figure pulled out of nowhere. It’s used to justify the narrative blank check issued to RK to do whatever he feels necessary, regardless of whether he winds up causing collateral damage of his own.

RK’s own actions and choice of killing methods are part of the messy moral universe crafted by Arun Gopalan, based on a story and screenplay by Bindni Karia, neither of whom have many credits to their names. Ritesh Shah and Ashish Prakash Verma also worked on the screenplay, though their robust resumes don’t seem to have helped much. The creative crew is desperate not to be seen as taking sides in the Israel-Iran conflict, while also obviously taking sides.

Considering that the impetus for RK’s actions is the death of a little girl, a scene in which an Israeli assassin shoots an Iranian scientist in front of his young daughter is only shown in passing. Yet a scene in which Iranian assassin Afshar tortures a rabbi — whom we are told was kidnapped when he went to buy his daughter’s favorite bread — is lingered upon. It’s brought up again when an Israeli agent asks RK to get revenge for the rabbi’s death, to which RK says, “You kill theirs. They kill yours. No one is clean here. I’m not here to judge.”

The torture sequence is particularly troubling because Afshar is trying to get the rabbi to record a message demanding that Israel leave Palestine. “Free Palestine” is painted in huge letters on the wall behind him. This is used to establish Afshar as the villain, conflating his advocacy for Palestinian independence with terrorism. The movie does this with another character who has a “Free Palestine” poster, to whom RK says, “It looks like you hold a lot of hate for Israel.”

This movie was filmed a year before Israel responded to a Hamas attack with an ongoing genocidal war on Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Just a couple of months before this movie’s release, Israel bombed nuclear sites within Iran. Had Tehran released as originally scheduled in 2023, perhaps it could have sold its “not taking sides” stance more effectively. It doesn’t get that same kind of grace releasing on August 14, 2025.

On top of all the messy political stuff, Tehran is just not a great movie. There’s nothing special about the acting, stunts, or locations, especially since the makers thought that Scotland could believably stand-in for Iran. This isn’t a project worth sullying reputations for. Just write it off on the corporate tax forms and pretend it never happened.

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Movie Review: Sitaare Zameen Par (2025)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Sitaare Zameen Par is available for rent on YouTube

Aamir Khan’s sports comedy Sitaare Zameen Par (“Stars on Earth“) fits as a spiritual successor to his 2007 educational drama Taare Zameen Par. Both films aim to teach their audience about disabilities, and both do so in a heavy-handed way that focuses too much on Khan’s character.

This time, Khan plays Gulshan Arora, an assistant coach for Delhi’s professional men’s basketball team. Head coach Paswan Ji (Deepraj Rana) doesn’t like Gulshan’s know-it-all attitude and teases him for being short. More accurately, Paswan Ji says that if Gulshan is such a basketball expert, why doesn’t he jump and touch the 10-foot-high rim. People nearby laugh, as if this isn’t a) a stupid way to judge basketball knowledge, b) a feat even some pro players can’t accomplish, and c) definitely something most 60-year-olds (like Khan) can’t do.

Gulshan punches the head coach and gets fired. Then he gets drunk and hits a police car while driving home. A judge gives Gulshan a choice: go to prison, or coach a team of special needs adults. He chooses the latter.

For his community service, Gulshan is tasked with training about a dozen players at a recreation center for adults with intellectual disabilities and neurodevelopmental conditions like Down syndrome and autism. Community center director Kartar Paaji (Gurpal Singh) tells Gulshan to act like he’s coaching a bunch of 8-year-olds.

I am not the intended audience for this film, nor is anybody residing in the United States or anywhere with an established special education system. Sitaare Zameen Par is aimed at people with very minimal understanding of disabilities. As a result, the tone and terms used to address the players is overly paternalistic. They’re talked about as children despite some being men in their 30s with jobs and girlfriends. Some of this tone is meant to demonstrate Gulshan’s own lack of understanding, but the screenplay takes it too far.

This paternalism is further demonstrated by a subplot involving Gulshan’s estranged wife, Suneeta (Genelia D’Souza in an entertaining performance). She wants kids, and Gulshan doesn’t, lest he turn out like his own absent father. Coaching the team helps allay Gulshan’s worries about parenthood, but the fact remains: he’s coaching adults, not children.

It’s not as if Sitaare Zameen Par lacks the time for nuance. Its 158-minute runtime is about 58 minutes too long as is, given how much it belabors the points it’s trying to make. Gulshan’s character development is so slow that, even in the climactic basketball game, he is surprised by how his players react to the outcome. We’ve spent two-and-a-half hours learning about these men and their feelings. What was Gulshan doing that whole time?

To be fair, it is hugely significant that the players are performed by actors with intellectual disabilities rather than neurotypical actors feigning disabilities. The players really are the best part of the film, and their charming characters are all well-acted.

That’s why the narrative focus on Gulshan’s sluggish personal growth is so underwhelming. It doesn’t help that, besides being ableist at the beginning, he’s also racist. When complaining that he can’t refer to the disabled players as “mad/crazy,” he laments that society tells him, “Don’t call a blackie ‘blackie.’ Don’t call a chinky ‘chinky.'” His subplot with his wife is silly, too, because he treats her horribly. Why are we supposed to want them to work out their issues? Suneeta deserves better.

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Renting Aamir Khan’s Latest Movie on YouTube

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Aamir Khan forged a new path for the digital release of Sitaare Zameen Par. He declined licensing offers from major subscription streaming services in favor of renting the film directly to consumers via YouTube. This allowed fans around the world to access the movie at a price cheaper than the cost of a monthly subscription.

I rented Sitaare Zameen Par on YouTube (review to come). I found the process pretty easy, though it somewhat depends on your intended playback method. Here’s what I did:

In the United States, Sitaare Zameen Par costs $6.99 to rent. I saved the film in my YouTube “Watch Later” playlist, so I accessed it from there. However, the easiest place to find it is at the Aamir Khan Talkies YouTube account in their Janta Ka Theatre playlist. Sitaare Zameen Par is in there along with other movies for rent. Here’s the current list with their US rental prices (note that Aamir charges more for movies where he’s the star LOL):

Dangal — $5.99
Lagaan — $5.99
Taare Zameen Par — $5.99
Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na — $3.99
Secret Superstar — $3.99

Out of curiosity, I checked how the prices compared to a few other Hindi movies available for rent on YouTube. Chak De India rents for $1.99, and Shabaash Mithu rents for $3.99 (in high definition, like the Aamir Khan films).

For playback, I opted to watch Sitaare Zameen Par via the YouTube app on my Apple TV. However, the film can’t be rented through the Apple TV app directly. I had to rent it via the YouTube app on my phone first before I could play it on the Apple TV.

Overall, the picture and sound quality are good, comparable to other subscription streaming services. Turning the subtitles on and off is annoying in the Apple TV app. It kept accidentally fast-forwarding the movie when I tried to reach the “closed caption” menu.

I used my phone to cast the film from YouTube to my Chromecast and found it much easier to access the audio and subtitle menus, as you have to pause the movie before interacting with other menus. Since you have to use your phone to rent the movie anyway, I’d probably just cast from my phone to the Chromecast and skip the Apple TV for future YouTube rentals.

I’m not sure if this new rental format will be an industry game changer, but I hope it gives filmmakers an alternative avenue to digital accessibility. The major streamers are being more cautious about licensing content, and smaller films struggle to find an online home as a result. At the right price point, this could help these movies widen their reach after their theatrical runs end (or allow them to bypass theaters altogether).

Movie Review: Sarzameen (2025)

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0.5 Star (out of 4)

Watch Sarzameen on Hulu

Sarzameen marks the absurd nadir of Hindi terrorism dramas. Bollywood producers: please, give us a break.

In many ways, Sarzameen is no different from other recent terrorism movies. A shadowy organization intent on taking innocent lives forces a lone, hyper-competent soldier to choose between love and duty to his country. But the team behind Sarzameen — first-time feature director Kayoze Irani (actor Boman Irani’s son) and debutant screenwriters Soumil Shukla and Arun Singh — uses every genre trope in a way that exhibits zero understanding of how the audience will react. It’s like if you punched someone and expected them to thank you for it.

The super soldier in Sarzameen is Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran). He’s the kind of guy who can take out dozens of heavily armed terrorists with just a pistol. Vijay’s wife Meher (Kajol) adores him, and his young teenage son Harman (Ronav Parihar) looks up to him.

Thing is, Vijay loathes his son. Timid Harman stutters when he speaks and gets beaten up for not being athletic, to Vijay’s mortal embarrassment.

Vijay gets a chance to show just how much he detests Harman when the boy is kidnapped. The group holding him wants to exchange the boy for two imprisoned terrorists, brothers Qaabil (K. C. Shankar) and Aabil (Rohed Khan). Vijay is convinced that Qaabil is an alias for the mastermind “Mohsin,” but someone claiming to be the real Mohsin offers to turn themselves in following the prisoner swap. Vijay is skeptical, but desperate Meher asks him, “What if you’re wrong?”

At the swap — which involves releasing the brothers into a shallow streambed while Harman is left elsewhere, out of sight — Vijay has flashbacks to his swearing-in ceremony as a young soldier. Overwhelmed by fears that he’s acting unpatriotically, Vijay starts shooting at the brothers as they walk away. Vijay kills Aabil, but Qaabil escapes. The Colonel returns home to Meher with a sad look on his face, having doomed their only child to death.

During every scene with Harman, Vijay behaves like a complete jerk. Vijay lets his son be killed not because of “patriotism” — which the film uses as a nebulous catch-all concept — but because of ego, cementing him as an all-time cinema a-hole. How Irani, Shukla, and Singh don’t see Vijay’s actions as irredeemable is the story’s biggest mystery. Vijay can’t come back from this — or it would take storytellers much more experienced than this trio to redeem him.

Yet, eight years later, Vijay gets his second chance. A young man rescued with other hostages says his name is Harman Vijay Singh (Ibrahim Ali Khan). Turns out Harman wasn’t killed, merely tortured for years while living with the terrorists. Of course Vijay doesn’t believe this is his son. This “Harman” does one-armed pushups and doesn’t stutter, so he must be a fake. Meher — who inexplicably stayed with Vijay after he supposedly got their son killed — can tell this is her son, and DNA proves it. Harman lives.

The acting in Sarzameen is generally not terrible. Khan seems bewildered as Harman, but that’s actually appropriate. Kajol is fine. Sukumaran doesn’t do anything to soften Vijay’s rough edges, but I’m not sure he could have salvaged things.

All of Sarzameen‘s problems stem from a story that cannot work as written. Genre clichés are thrown together in the service of too many plot twists. But there’s no substance behind any of it, no consideration given to character motivations. It’s a film about “patriotism,” but what do the filmmakers think patriotism means?

The filmmakers deliberately refuse to define the terrorists’ objectives, lest they accidentally portray them sympathetically. But, by making Vijay the world’s worst dad, they make the terrorist outfit look good by comparison. Qaabil is a supportive and nurturing leader, understanding the value of providing directionless young men with a place to belong. Contrast that with Vijay’s disappointment that Harman wasn’t born wielding a machine gun, not to mention Vijay’s commanding officer’s (Boman Irani in cameo) penchant for needlessly dangerous publicity stunts that put civilians at risk. Which outfit comes off looking better?

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Movie Review: The Bhootnii (2025)

1 Reply

2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch The Bhootnii on ZEE5

The horror-comedy The Bhootnii (“The Ghostess“) is neither scary nor funny. It’s not entertaining enough to spark delight nor offensive enough to spark outrage. It exists.

Writer-director Sidhaant Sachdev’s story takes place on the campus of fictional St. Vincent’s College in Delhi as a convenient means of sequestering the characters to just a few locations. There’s a school legend that involves praying to the campus’s “Virgin Tree.” I’m not sure if the praying humans are the virgins or the tree is a virgin, or how one would even determine that.

Every year, students hold a festival on Valentine’s Day in hopes that prayers to the Virgin Tree will grant them true love. The tradition continues despite a terrible fire that destroyed the festival in 2003, but several suspicious deaths in the years since have birthed rumors that a ghost haunts the festival.

The night before Valentine’s Day in 2025, the woman that Shantanu (Sunny Singh) is smitten with ditches him for another man. Desperate and drunk, Shantanu begs the tree for true love. The next day, his bubbly friend Ananya (Palak Tiwari) returns from a 6-month study abroad program. Shantanu and his superstitious roommates Nasir (Aasif Khan) and Sahil (Nikunj Lotia) are suspicious of Ananya’s return, but their worries are misplaced. Ananya is not a ghost.

But Mohabbat (Mouni Roy) is — and she’s got her sights on Shantanu. She’s a spirit attached to the tree Shantanu drunkenly prayed to, and she’s here to fulfill his wish. Her name even means “love.”

Shantanu quickly falls for the beautiful ghost that only he can see. But Mohabbat isn’t taking chances, and she afflicts anyone who might interfere with her plans with seizures. The outbreak prompts the dean of the college to call in a former student for help: parapsychologist Krishna (Sanjay Dutt), who goes by the nickname “Baba,” because he earned two B.A. degrees.

To be clear, Baba isn’t an exorcist. He’s a man of science, and he’s found a way to use science to help him punch ghosts. 65-year-old Dutt’s action sequences are aided by some barely disguised harness work that is inadvertently funny, but the fight scenes are otherwise forgettable.

That’s the thing about The Bhootnii — there isn’t much memorable about it. Stuff happens in a mostly logical order, characters act more or less as expected. The funny bits fall flat, the dance sequences are forgettable. The acting is merely serviceable.

Mouni Roy is the exception. She showed her skill at playing a compelling villain in Brahmāstra, and she is even more effective at giving Mohabbat real depth. It would be a shame to see Roy pigeonholed into playing negative characters, but she’s better at it than most.

Still, Roy’s presence in the film is part of The Bhootnii‘s most distracting issue: casting. [This part of my review may count as a spoiler, so stop now if you’re planning to watch the film.]

Among the “present day” cast, only one actor — 24-year-old Tiwari, who looks much younger than her fellow performers — is anywhere close in age to an actual living-in-a-campus-dorm, full-time college student. Singh is 39, and Khan and Lotia are in their mid-30s as well. Mohabbat was a student when she died, but Roy is also 39. Baba attended the college in 2003, at which time Dutt would have been 43. If you’re not going to cast actors anywhere close to college-age, then don’t set the story on a campus.

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Movie Review: Kesari Chapter 2 (2025)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Kesari Chapter 2 on Hulu

Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh is a film with an agenda. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but it’s hard to ignore how deliberately it pushes its audience to feel a certain way.

This movie was belatedly titled as a spiritual successor to 2019’s Kesari to capitalize on name recognition. The only things the films have in common are Akshay Kumar in the lead role and a shared cadre of producers: Karan Johar, Hiroo Yash Johar, Apoorva Mehta, and Aruna Bhatia.

Kesari Chapter 2 opens with a moving recreation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Thousands of Indians at a rally in Amritsar are cornered and fired upon by British troops, under the direction of General Reginald Dyer (Simon Paisley Day). More than 1,500 people of all ages are killed, either from bullet wounds, crush injuries, or drowning in a well where they leapt to escape the shooting.

We see the mass murder from the perspective of a teenage boy, Pargat Singh (Krish Rao), who loses his mother and younger sister that day. Given the technological limitations of the time, the ruling British government is able to suppress the truth and frame the massacre as a response to an armed uprising.

As the government assembles a commission to investigate the incident, Pargat stands outside the gates, holding up paintings depicting what really happened. He’s ignored by all of the commissioners save one: Justice Chettoor Sankaran Nair (Kumar). Nair’s legal work on behalf of the British has earned him a knighthood and invitations to swanky parties, but his participation on the committee reminds him that the Brits see him as a useful tool, not an equal.

When Pargat dies, the young man’s cause is taken up by rookie lawyer Dilreet Gill (Ananya Panday). Her criticism of Nair for going along with commission’s sham findings — as well as his own remorse over the boy’s death — lead him to join her in filling suit against General Dyer on the charges of genocide.

The events thus far, some of the characters, and the court arguments that follow are amalgamations of various historical incidents and figures. Kesari Chapter 2 isn’t presenting a history lesson but stoking the fires of moral outrage. That’s any movie’s right to do, but it feels fair in this case. There’s general agreement today as to what happened at Jallianwala Bagh, and the British government and monarchy have never formally apologized for the massacre.

Kesari Chapter 2 is actually pretty good at what it’s trying to accomplish. The Brits are racist schemers, and their victims are sympathetic and plentiful. It’s fun to watch Nair get the better of his adversaries in court, including the crown’s mercenary attorney Neville McKinley (R. Madhavan). Indian legal dramas can be confusing for those not versed in the court system, but great English subtitles by Jahan Singh Bakshi and Anantika Mehra make it easy to follow.

Still, the movie occasionally breaks the narrative spell, reminding the audience that it’s trying to make us feel specific emotions. Nair’s expletive-filled outburst in court is directed as much at the audience as at the judge to whom he’s speaking. It would have been nice had writer-director Karan Singh Tyagi let viewers come by their feelings organically.

But that would have required more comprehensive world-building, which Kesari Chapter 2 lacks. Nair is the center of the universe, and all the other characters feel thinly drawn. Panday’s Dillreet gets a few good moments, but Regina Cassandra as Nair’s wife Parvathy hardly needs to be in the movie. Thankfully, Kumar does a solid job carrying the film solo.

The spell is also broken by some odd music choices by composer Shashwat Sachdev. One recurring theme is obviously based on Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna”. Random electric guitar riffs feel strange in 1919 India. And when Nair makes a penis joke at Dyer’s expense, I swear it’s punctuated by something meant to mimic rapper Lil Jon’s signature “Yeah!”.

If nothing else, Kesari Chapter 2 is a movie without pretense. It’s not great, but it is effective.

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