Tag Archives: Bollywood

Movie Review: The Mehta Boys (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Boman Irani makes his directorial debut with the heartfelt family drama The Mehta Boys. The story doesn’t quite support the moral conclusion the film reaches, but it’s still a meaningful movie.

Irani — who co-wrote the film with Birdman co-writer Alexander Dinelaris — stars as Shiv Mehta. At 71 years old and newly widowed, he faces the prospect of leaving his childhood home and moving in with his daughter Anu (Puja Sarup) in Tampa, Florida. Shiv’s not an easygoing guy during the best of circumstances, but these are a lot of big changes all at once.

Flight issues in Mumbai force Anu to fly home alone and for Shiv to spend a couple of days bunking with his estranged son, Amay (Avinash Tiwary). Amay’s dilapidated apartment has a great view but plenty of leaks. Shiv can’t understand why Amay left home just to live in a rundown place, and he’s not shy of voicing that opinion.

Shiv’s unrelenting criticism has left Amay bereft of confidence, which affects him personally and professionally. He’s an architect at a prestigious firm, but he’s too timid to share his own opinions and designs. Even Amay’s boss is starting to wonder why they pay him.

This unplanned co-habitation brings out the worst in Amay and Shiv. Dad acts like a know-it-all, while son treats his father like he’s senile. Amay’s kind girlfriend Zara (Shreya Chaudhry) sees the dysfunctional dynamic first-hand and is not impressed.

The Mehta Boys does a lovely job depicting just how complicated the relationships between parents and their adult children can be, clouded as they are by entrenched habits and festering resentment. No one in the film is on their best behavior. While the characters are not exactly sympathetic, they are very relatable, and Irani and Tiwary capture that in their performances.

There’s a tendency in a lot of stories about this relationship dynamic that frame negative parenting tactics as inherently borne of love, and The Mehta Boys takes that approach as well. Based on what is shown in the film, I’m not sure that’s a fair conclusion to draw from Shiv’s constant doubting of Amay’s competence and judgment. It looks more like ego and pride on Shiv’s part, mixed with his own insecurities. His “never apologize” ethos doesn’t leave much room for caring about other’s feelings.

It’s okay to admit that sometimes parents raise their kids by instincts learned in their own dysfunctional homes, or taught by parents living under very different financial circumstances. Add to that the inflexibility of thought that sometimes comes with age, and you wind up with hurtful behaviors done habitually, without any real thought behind them at all.

In those circumstances, maybe the lesson Amay needs to learn is that his Shiv’s distrust is not based on an accurate assessment of Amay’s abilities. He’s put in the work to become a good architect at a firm that acknowledges his skills. If his dad doesn’t get that, that’s on him.

I’m forgiving of the hopeful conclusion Irani and Dinelaris reach in The Mehta Boys if only because we all want to believe it’s true, especially audiences looking for something uplifting. Irani is a good filmmaker, so here’s hoping he’s got more stories in him.

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Movie Review: I Want to Talk (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Director Shoojit Sircar’s drama I Want to Talk features a career-defining performance by Abhishek Bachchan, but the screenplay by Ritesh Shah feels incomplete.

The film is based on Arjun Sen’s autobiographical book Raising a Father, though it comes with the standard opening note that it isn’t a strict retelling. Bachchan plays Arjun, a ruthless marketing executive living in southern California. He’s in the middle of a divorce from his wife Indrani, with whom he shares an elementary-school-aged daughter named Reya (Pearle Dey).

A coughing fit during a business presentation sends Arjun to the hospital, where it’s determined that he has laryngeal cancer. He leaves in a fog of denial, but a follow-up visit finds cancer cells in his colon as well. Multiple surgeries leave him unable to work, costing him his job, right as his divorce settlement costs him his house. He keeps his Cadillac but downsizes to rental home that has seen better days.

Throughout his medical trials, Arjun tries to shield Reya from the seriousness of his condition while maintaining a busy custody schedule of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other weekend. This is where the screenplay struggles. According to the movie, Arjun is able to manage all of his appointments and recovery time without ever talking to his ex-wife about Reya. We only ever see Indrani once during a meeting with their lawyers. From a purely logistical standpoint this would be impossible, and that goes double for trying to explain to a kid who isn’t even ten why daddy can’t lift her up after surgery or why he’s so sleepy all the time.

With Arjun’s ex-wife being a void in the narrative, he’s forced to find support in other places. That includes his grumpy handyman Johny, played by Johny Lever in a role that shows he’s a more talented actor than we get to see in the over-the-top comic roles he typically plays. There’s also Arjun’s dismissive surgeon Dr. Deb (Jayant Kripalani), who comes to tolerate Arjun’s pestering.

Best of all is Dr. Deb’s nurse, Nancy (Kristin Goddard). She sympathetic but won’t let Arjun off the hook when he gets down on himself. Goddard delivers a short monologue that is equal parts heartfelt and hilarious. It’s a highlight of the film.

Another highlight is the evocative score by George Joseph & Koyna. It’s sparingly used but effective. Sircar relies a lot on ambient sounds and visuals of the stark, mountainous landscape near California’s Lake Hemet to set the scene.

Although the world of I Want to Talk is atmospheric, it doesn’t feel full enough. The plot jumps forward several years, and a lot of information about how Arjun manages his life is lost in the transition. We see little of the growth in Arjun’s relationships with those closest to him; they are suddenly friends instead of adversaries. Even important characters feel like they blink out of existence until Arjun needs their help.

The exception is Reya, who is played as a teenager by capable debutant Ahliya Bamroo. Sircar gives Reya enough scenes to establish her as her own person within Arjun’s story. She’s a kid finding herself while navigating a tricky relationship with her father, one further complicated by by his medical problems. But again, her continuing ignorance about his condition after more than a dozen surgeries beggars belief.

All that said, this is Abhishek Bachchan’s movie, and he carries the weight of it gracefully. It’s a performance that is challenging not just emotionally but physically. His movements are slow and pained, evoking memories of another character burdened by frailty in a Shoojit Sircar movie: Abhishek’s father Amitabh Bachchan in Piku. Sircar shows great compassion for people with physical challenges in the way he directs his actors, and both Bachchans interpreted their characters beautifully.

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Movie Review: Hisaab Barabar (2025)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Rarely do you find a feature film where one of the complaints is: “I wish there was more math.” Hisaab Barabar (“Settle Accounts“) has some arithmetic highlights in an otherwise corny social issue drama.

R. Madhavan stars as Radhe Mohan Sharma, an upstanding railway ticket collector. He stopped studying accounting when his father died, and then took over Dad’s job to support the family. He gets some small satisfaction teaching basic math to the vendors on the train platform.

While checking his statement from Do Bank, Radhe notices his account is short 27.5 rupees (about $0.30). The amount isn’t significant, but he demands a correction from the bank on principle. As he explains in one of his impromptu platform tutorials, 27.5 multiplied by millions is substantial.

Radhe becomes suspicious when a passenger leaves his Do Bank statement on the train, and a similarly minuscule amount is missing. One of his coworker’s accounts is also short. Radhe realizes he may have uncovered a huge conspiracy.

The highlight of the movie, oddly enough, is a scene in a mall food court where Radhe explains to his co-workers how banks calculate interest based on an account’s current balance and why the shortfall matters. He writes his equations on a window with (hopefully!) erasable marker. It’s really interesting, and the film does a fine job making the accounting understandable.

The audience already knows Radhe is right, because the movie’s opening scene confirms it. At a tacky party with horrible dancing, Do Bank owner Micky Mehta (Neil Nitin Mukesh) openly discusses amassing a fortune from his customers one stray rupee at a time with a corrupt government official named Dayal (Manu Rishi). Mehta keeps his piles of pilfered bills in a warehouse freezer, hidden from regulatory oversight.

After Radhe files a formal complaint with the police department, writer-director Ashwni Dhir over-complicates the story. Mehta uses his connections to muddle the investigation and harass Radhe and his young son Manu (Shaunak Duggal). The police officer assigned to investigate the complaint happens to be Radhe’s new girlfriend Poonam (Kirti Kulhari), whom he apparently didn’t know was a cop. For some reason, Poonam doesn’t recuse herself from the case, even when she’s pressured to charge Radhe himself with some kind of crime. Could she be holding a fifteen-year-old grudge because she and Radhe were paired by a matchmaker, but he rejected her because her math grades weren’t good enough (another thing Radhe has no idea about)?

The tone of Hisaab Barabar vacillates between goofy and sinister. A slapstick brawl between bank employees exists alongside Poonam’s superior officer warning her to do what he says, lest something nasty happen to her when she takes the train alone at night.

Ultimately, the balance tilts toward goofiness, but I don’t think that was intentional. It’s all due to Neil Nitin Mukesh giving the most absurd performance of his career as the scheming bank owner. He sings the Do Bank jingle before having his goons nab Manu, and he dances awkwardly with his housekeepers in his mansion. Every line is over-emoted. Mehta’s style and mannerisms are like an out-of-touch boomer’s idea of cool, but Mukesh is only 43.

Mukesh isn’t the only one off his game. Madhavan’s performance as Radhe is mostly flat, but he has this weird half-collapsing, half-retching reaction to a surprising death that is so bizarre as to be laugh-out-loud funny. Kulhari is mostly normal as Poonam, but her character doesn’t make much sense.

Hisaab Barabar‘s point about not letting seemingly small amounts of corruption slide is nuanced and important, but the drama around it just doesn’t add up.

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Movie Review: Jigra (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Filmmaker Vasan Bala’s Jigra (“Courage“) shows the lengths to which a protective older sister will go to save her younger brother. Alia Bhatt once again commands the screen, turning in a complex, emotional performance in this tense prison-break drama.

Bhatt plays Satya, big sister to promising software engineer Ankur (Vedang Raina). When they were still in elementary school, the kids witnessed their father’s suicide. Satya has shielded Ankur from harm ever since. They were raised by a wealthy, distant relative, Mr. Mehtani (Akashdeep Sabir), whose son Kabir (Aditya Nanda) is best friends with Ankur.

While Ankur believes they are one big family, Satya knows the truth. She manages the Mehtani’s household staff, only changing out of her uniform for public events where the appearance of familial unity matters. The Mehtani’s expect reimbursement for her care, and soon they’ll expect the same from Ankur.

Ankur and Kabir ask Mr. Mehtani to help them find an investor for software Ankur built. This project is an ideal opportunity for Kabir to straighten his life out following multiple drug arrests. Mehtani sends the guys to meet a colleague in the fictional island nation of Hanshi Dao, off the coast of Malaysia.

The guys secure the funding and celebrate. Kabir gets caught with drugs, and both are arrested. Drug possession is a capital offense in Hanshi Dao — a fact the Mehtani family lawyer Jaswant (Harssh A. Singh) knows but the guys don’t. Jaswant tricks Ankur into taking the fall for Kabir. When Ankur is sentenced to death, Satya burns bridges with the Mehtanis and heads to Hanshi Dao to free her brother.

Without the expectation of repayment and the double-edged sword of family ties, Satya is finally able to find allies who share a mutual interest. Ex-gangster Bhatia (Manoj Pahwa) wants to get his son Tony (Yuvraj Vijjan) off of death row. Muthu (Rahul Ravindran) quit the Hanshi Dao police force after he accidentally sent an innocent man — Chandan (Dheer Hira) — to prison. With no legal recourse left, the three unlikely allies use their skills and connections to formulate an audacious escape plan.

Though Satya is the main character, the story gives us a glimpse into Ankur’s life in jail, too. His betrayal by the Mehtanis and his painful adjustment to life under sadistic warden Hansraj Landa (Vivek Gomber) shake him out of his prolonged adolescence. He finally becomes a man, one with only a few months to live.

With a big star like Bhatt on board, Bala — who co-wrote Jigra with Debashish Irengbam — takes a slightly more conventional filmmaking approach than with his previous features Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota and Monica, O My Darling. This mostly comes in the form of flashbacks to Satya and Ankur as little kids, meant to reinforce the depth of the siblings’ bond (akin to how many mainstream Hindi films about romantic couples insist on flashing back to how the couple first fell in love). The flashbacks aren’t necessary and slow down the pace of the film. Satya’s love for Ankur is active — we can already feel it in everything she does.

One of Bala’s superpowers is staging his heroines in fight scenes. Too often, “strong” female characters in films have some sort of elite training or physical prowess — qualities that allow them to fight like men, essentially. Bala’s leading ladies — Satya in Jigra, Supri in Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, and Monica in Monica, O My Darling — aren’t like that. They are scrappy, ordinary women who prevail over their male adversaries through sheer determination (though Supri’s black belt helps). Satya’s unpolished fight scenes are all the more riveting because of what they say about her personality. She won’t let anything get in her way.

Through her depth of talent, Bhatt conveys so many of the emotions roiling within Satya even when her expression is stone-faced. It’s a remarkable performance in a career full of remarkable performances.

Pahwa and Ravindran play perfectly off of Bhatt. Because of their performances and the stakes for their characters, Satya’s relationships with Bhatia and Muthu are probably the most emotionally impactful in the film. Few actors portray heartbreak as well as Manoj Pahwa.

In only his second feature role, Raina acquits himself very well as Ankur. He undergoes more of a character transformation than Satya does, while still needing her as much as he ever did. Raina also does a nice job singing the film’s title track.

Vasan Bala’s filmography is among the best among working directors, and Alia Bhatt is Hindi cinema’s top actress for a reason. Put them together, and you get something very special.

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Movie Review: Fighter (2024)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Fighter is just what you’d imagine when you think of a Bollywood version of Top Gun. The predictable action flick about a reckless jet pilot is mostly fine until an aggressively patriotic climax that veers into jingoism.

Hrithik Roshan stars as Shamsher “Patty” Pathania, ace pilot among the Indian Air Force’s “Air Dragons” squadron. Fighter director Siddharth Anand also directed Roshan in the action flick War, the highlight of which was Roshan’s character’s epic entry scene. Anand tries to give Roshan a similar introduction in Fighter, but it feels derivative.

The Air Dragons team includes fellow jet pilots Taj (Karan Singh Grover) and Bash (Akshay Oberoi), and also helicopter pilots like Minal “Minni” Rathore (Deepika Padukone). All of the other male pilots are married or have facial hair, so obviously Minni and Patty will fall in love.

Commanding Officer Rakesh “Rocky” Jaisingh (Anil Kapoor) thinks Patty takes dangerous risks, but the force needs all the help they can get to combat a rising wave of terrorism in Kashmir (the film is set in 2018, before Article 370 was revoked). The squad’s training is interrupted when a terror blast takes out several buses full of Indian soldiers on their way to the region.

If you’ve seen either of the Top Gun movies, you can more or less guess where Fighter is going. The Air Dragons retaliate for the explosion, and Taj and Bash are shot down by Pakistan’s ace pilot: “Red Nose.” (They just had to give him a stupid call sign.) Rocky blames Patty, demoting him and shipping him off to be a flight instructor. But when a recovery mission goes sideways, Patty returns to (hopefully) save the day.

The story is serviceable enough. The actors generally give decent performances, despite Anand’s preference for heavy-handed sentimentality. Padukone and Roshan are at their best in a scene where Patty packs following his demotion, leaving not just the Air Dragons behind but Minni as well.

But Fighter is a movie that says one thing and does another. Characters speak broadly about the Indian public and the military fraternity at large, but every plot point is directly connected to Patty or Minni by either romantic or familial connections. Note that Patty only plots revenge against Pakistan for his dead fiancée — another helicopter pilot (he has a type) — not for any of the other Indian soldiers killed in action that he doesn’t know personally.

Patty states repeatedly that the Indian military has nothing against Pakistan as a country, only against terrorists working within its borders. But the movie immediately follows Patty’s speech with a scene of terrorist mastermind Azhar (Rishabh Sawhney) marching into the offices of the Pakistani military and giving orders. Multiple times, the Pakistani government is depicted to be collaborating with, or controlled by, terrorists.

Fighter‘s militant brand of patriotism takes an extreme turn in the climax (which is full of ambitious but silly stunts and corny closeups). Patty claims that India is the rightful owner of all of Kashmir, and he promises that soon Pakistan will be known as “India-Occupied Pakistan.” Ending what should have been a feel-good movie with what amounts to a declaration of war needlessly pushes this triumphant moment into a dark place.

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Movie Review: Agni (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Agni has novelty on its side, as Hindi films about firefighters are rare. The film’s action scenes are exciting, but the family drama interspersed throughout drags.

Set in 2017, Agni follows the crew of a Mumbai firehouse, led by their chief, Vitthal (Pratik Gandhi). A series of high-rise fires cause massive damage and the death of a firefighter. It’s not long before the station’s investigator Avni (Saiyami Kher) finds a connection between accelerants found at multiple scenes. It looks like the city has an arsonist on the loose, and a skilled one at that.

Meanwhile, the police are looking for the perpetrator of a daring daytime assassination of a politician. The investigation is led by Vitthal’s brother-in-law Samit (Divyenndu), one of Mumbai’s top cops. Samit and his officers beat and threaten to kill suspects until they get a lead connecting them to some of the burned buildings. If the police and firefighters work together, they can solve the case in no time, right?

Not so fast. In the film, the police look down on firefighters, who get a much smaller share of public accolades and government funding compared to the cops. This feeling of disrespect is heightened for Vitthal, whose pre-teen son Amya (Kabir Shah) idolizes his uncle Samit.

As someone who lives outside India, I feel at a disadvantage because I’m not sure if public disrespect for firefighters is real and if there’s a rivalry with the police or they are just conceits of the movie. If they are, then the story may have had an underlying levels of context easily understood by locals. If it’s not, filmmaker Rahul Dholakia’s script — co-written with Vijay Maurya — needed to elaborate on how this disrespect manifests. The film is light on specifics.

Most of the inter-agency disrespect in the story comes from mean-spirited jokes directed at Vitthal at a housewarming party in Sumit’s new luxury apartment. That party scene is awkward, as is a family dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The rivalry between Sumit and Vitthal isn’t interesting, and it takes away from the real source of Vitthal’s hurt: the fact that Amya has grown up and no longer sees his dad as the coolest guy on the planet. The father-son angle has much more emotional appeal but doesn’t get enough screentime.

Even more time is wasted on scenes inside Sumit’s police station, where he and his cronies beat confessions out of people. If the story is about firefighters, focus on the firefighters.

Agni is at its best when Vitthal’s crew is actively battling blazes. The action scenes are well-executed and exciting, with lots of real flames. Any CGI is integrated so well as not to draw attention to itself, and the editing makes it seem as though the characters are in real danger.

Gandhi does a fine job as the character holding all the narrative threads together. He’s at his best in scenes with other firefighters like Avni, his friend Jazz (Udit Arora), and fellow station chief Mahadev (Jitendra Joshi). Sai Tamhankar gives an understated performance as Vitthal’s wife Ruku. I wish she’d played a bigger role.

Despite some slow parts in the first half, Agni‘s story pace picks up as it nears its conclusion. Dholakia’s screenplay sprinkles enough action scenes throughout to reward one’s continued attention.

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Movie Review: Vijay 69 (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Vijay 69 is a compact slice-of-life flick that’s funny and touching. The new Netflix Original movie created by Yash Raj Entertainment — the OTT arm of Yash Raj Films — fits perfectly on a streaming service.

Anupam Kher stars as the titular 69-year-old Vijay. A neighbor sees him jump into the ocean for a late night swim and assumes it’s a suicide attempt. Curmudgeonly Vijay turns up at church the next morning in the middle of his own funeral.

Even more upsetting to Vijay than being declared dead after only a few hours of fruitless searching is the eulogy his best friend Fali (Chunky Panday) wrote for him. The speech mentions that Vijay was good at rummy and once won a garba dance contest, but that’s about it.

Vijay is incensed that the eulogy didn’t mention the bronze medal he won in a national swimming competition, but that happened decades ago. When he sits down to write his own list of achievements, he can’t think of anything else. Though he has good friends, a caring daughter and grandson, and memories of his beloved wife Anna, he realizes he’s been running out the clock since she died from cancer fifteen years ago.

Inspiration for how to beef up his eulogy comes when an 18-year-old boy in his apartment colony starts training to become the youngest Indian to complete a triathlon. A quick internet search reveals that Vijay would beat the current record holder for oldest Indian triathlete by two years if he competed. Even though no one believes he can do it, Vijay vows to finish the triathlon.

The conflict in Vijay 69 is absurd in a good way. Vijay becomes rivals with the teenage athlete Aditya (Mihir Ahuja, who played Jughead in The Archies). Vijay trains under the eccentric Coach Kumar (Vrajesh Hirjee), who has local kids pelt Vijay with water balloons to make him run faster. As the old man swims laps, Coach shouts, “You’re a sea snake! You’re a sea otter! You’re an underwater mountain goat!”

Writer-director Akshay Roy (Meri Pyaari Bindu) clearly had fun with the dialogue in Vijay 69, making Vijay’s foul mouth a continual source of laughs. One can only imagine the challenge subtitler Neena Kiss faced trying to come up with English equivalents for Vijay’s colorful language.

Kher does a nice job humanizing Vijay, making him more than just a grumpy Gus. He’s vulnerable and openly shows gratitude for his friends. The unexpected alliance he eventually forms with Aditya is quite sweet.

Panday stops just short of making Fali into a caricature, allowing the affection his character feels for Vijay to shine through. Hirjee is delightful in a role I wished was bigger.

Vijay 69 suffers most when it tries to be a more conventional sports movie. Filmmaker Roy doesn’t trust the drama inherent in sport to carry the story, and instead relies on too many shots of characters struggling to increase dramatic tension. After the umpteenth closeup of Vijay looking like he’s going to have a heart attack while riding a bike, the emotional effectiveness wanes.

That said, the film’s sub-two-hour runtime keeps it from overstaying its welcome, even if it does become heavy-handed at the end. Vijay 69 is a nice story that’s small enough in scale to suit at-home viewing but worthy of one’s undivided attention.

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Movie Review: All We Imagine as Light (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Mumbai — a crowded city where it’s easy to be lonely. A place to live that never quite feels like home. That’s the experience of three women in the engaging international feature All We Imagine as Light.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is head nurse at a hospital in Mumbai. She grew up elsewhere speaking Malayalam but has learned Hindi to thrive in the city.* She’s married, but her husband works in a factory in Germany. He hasn’t called in over a year.

Since she’s effectively single and rent is expensive, Prabha lives with Anu (Divya Prabhu), a junior nurse who’s also a transplant to the city. Anu has something of a reputation, since other hospital workers have seen her meeting up with a young man: her Muslim boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).

Prabha’s own beau — kindly Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad) — knows she is married, but he waits for her after work to give her treats or share his poetry. The relationship is chaste, but it fills a void in Prabha’s life.

The arrival of a mysterious package shakes up Prabha’s routine and forces her to look at her life as it truly is. There’s no note in the package or a return address, only a fancy rice cooker — made in Germany.

Director Payal Kapadia lets these scenes in the city unfold at an unhurried pace, giving the audience time to understand the rhythms of the characters’ lives. It’s an enjoyable way to be carried along in a drama where the problems are important, but not necessarily urgent. It took a long time for Prabha’s life to become the way it is, after all.

She and Anu get an outside perspective when Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam, Laapataa Ladies) —  a widow who works at the hospital — asks for their help moving back to her village. Parvaty has lived in the same Mumbai apartment for two decades, but lacking the proper paperwork, re-developers are evicting her. It’s like she was never there at all.

Only in stepping outside the bounds of the city can any of the women see the way it constrains the very opportunities it promises to make possible: opportunities for love, belonging and happiness.

Outside of the city, the story loses a bit of momentum. Some of that is intentional, as it represents a new physical and mental space for the characters to inhabit, but it didn’t quite work for me. Kapadia has such a clear vision of life in the city that I was sad to let that go.

Kusruti, Prabhu, and Kadam are great individually, but especially together. Their performances are easy and natural, and that extends to their rapport. They are the heart of a movie that is very enjoyable to watch.

*One thing I’d love to see the film do before its US theatrical release is to code the English subtitles in different colors depending on which language is being spoken. The characters speak a mix of Hindi, Malayalam, and Marathi, and it would enhance the understanding of their relationships if it was easier for non-Indian-language speakers to tell who was speaking in what language with whom.

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Movie Review: Sector 36 (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Sector 36 on Netflix

One of Netflix’s most challenging Original Hindi films makes insightful social commentary in a fictional retelling of a real-life tragedy.

Sector 36 is based on the 2006 Noida serial murders and takes place in approximately the same area at the same time. Over the course of a couple of years, more than twenty children go missing from a slum in Sector 36 populated by poor families who’ve migrated from other parts of India to find work near Delhi. Inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal) — the police officer in charge of the area — tells each parent the same thing: the kid will turn up, just hang your “Missing” poster on the board with all of the other posters. That’s as far as his investigations ever go.

The audience already knows what’s happening to the missing children. They’re being abducted, raped, and murdered by Prem (Vikrant Massey), caretaker of a large home next to the slum owned by businessman Balwar Singh Bassi (Akash Khurana). Prem disposes of parts of the bodies in the sewers outside the house, so he isn’t going out of his way to conceal his crimes. Since the police won’t investigate, he can do what he wants.

That changes when Prem mistakenly tries to abduct Ram Charan’s daughter Vedu (Ihana Kaur) during a festival. Prem is masked, so Ram Charan doesn’t see his face after he drops Vedu and runs off. However, the close encounter is enough for the inspector to follow up on some of the tips provided by other parents of missing children, one of whom was last seen entering Bassi’s house.

It’s quite the indictment of Ram Charan’s lack of empathy that he isn’t compelled to act until his own daughter is endangered, but he’s undeterred once he begins. Yet he quickly realizes that his own prior laziness is not the only obstacle standing in the way of justice for the missing kids. His interview with Bassi is cut short when the businessman calls his old school friend, Jawahar Rastogi (Darshan Jariwala) — Ram Charan’s boss. Rastogi tells the inspector to back off and suspends him when he doesn’t.

At the same time that Ram Charan is warned against investigating further, the child of a rich industrialist is abducted and held for ransom. Every resource at the police department’s disposal is thrown at retrieving the child and catching his kidnappers. Ram Charan sees where the department’s priorities lie, and they aren’t with the citizens of Sector 36.

Systems theorist Stafford Beer coined the phrase: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Sector 36 is a perfect example of that phenomenon. The purpose of the police force that Ram Charan works for is not to protect the innocent, or solve crimes in an effort to give them justice. It’s to protect the rich and keep the poor vulnerable–basically, to ensure nothing threatens the current power structure.

I’m not qualified to speak to caste elements that may factor into Sector 36‘s story, but the film does a wonderful job illustrating how those at the top of the class hierarchy foment discord among those beneath them in order to maintain their own positions. Ram Charan feels superior to those living in the slum he oversees and lords his authority over the officers working under him. Rastogi knows that any of those lower officers would jump at the chance to take Ram Charan’s place. Because Prem works in a comfortable house for a boss with connections, he feels superior to those migrant workers living in the slum, even though he came from a small village himself.

Yet even as powerful men like Bassi and Rastogi purport to look out for those who report to them, they really only look out for one another. They use the system to maintain their protected positions. Ram Charan, Prem, the other cops, and the migrant workers all have more in common with one another than Bassi or Rastogi — but you could never convince any of them that that’s true.

Director Aditya Nimbalkar and screenwriter Bodhayan Roychaudhury convey all this through compelling character interactions and clever pacing. There’s a real level of finesse from a first-time feature director and first-time screenwriter. It’s a little less surprising when you realize that Nimbalkar previously worked as an associate director for Vishal Bhardwaj, whose productions are basically a farm system for future directorial talent.

The main thing working against Sector 36 early on — besides a subject matter that will be too intense for some — is that it’s disgusting. The camera cuts between shots of a human body being chopped and a shots of a butcher chopping meat. It feels like a cheap shock tactic.

That said, it’s worth enduring the gore for career performances by Massey and Dobriyal. This will likely be the most vile character Massey ever plays, and he makes Prem as intriguing as he is loathsome. Dobriyal shines as a character who is flawed and complicated and up against a system that makes it hard for him to be his best self. His performance is outstanding.

Sector 36 is not an easy film to watch, not just because of the crimes that inspired it but because of what it reveals about the system that allowed them to happen in the first place (and that still exists). As grim as the movie is, the only way to imagine a better world is to really examine what’s wrong with the one we have now.

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Movie Review: Munjya (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Munjya on Hulu

Munjya is a nice-looking horror comedy that struggles with its central theme.

The story begins in 1952 in a village in Konkan. A young boy named Gotya (Ayush Ulagadde) is furious that the teenage girl he has a crush on is marrying someone else. He poisons the bride Munni’s fiancé and is publicly whipped by his parents for his destructive obsession. At night, Gotya takes his younger sister Gita (Khushi Hajare) to a sacred tree, intending to sacrifice her to a demon in exchange for Munni’s hand. But Gotya fatally injures himself, binding his spirit to the tree and becoming an evil spirit known as Munjya.

Generations later, timid hairdresser Bittu (Abhay Verma) suffers from frightening visions and hears Munjya’s voice. His mother Pammi (Mona Singh) and paternal grandmother Gita (Suhas Joshi) — the little sister from the intro — shielded him from the family’s sordid history and the role it played in his father’s death. Bittu learns the truth when the family returns to his father’s ancestral village, and he sets out to find the voice that calls to him.

Munjya — who is now a creepy blend of boy and tree — seizes the opportunity to escape, binding himself to Bittu. Death follows, and Munjya vows to kill everyone Bittu cares about in his quest to marry Munni. While Munni herself is now an old woman, her granddaughter Bela (Sharvari) — who happens to be Bittu’s childhood friend and unrequited crush — is her spitting image. Munjya decides he wants Bela instead.

The parallel’s between Munjya’s one-sided love and Bittu’s crush are obvious, but they don’t overlap enough to meaningfully support a theme. Bittu is never in any moral danger of his own preoccupation turning into a violent obsession, and Munjya is so single-minded that he never twists Bittu’s feelings to his own ends. There’s a late mention about mutual consent in relationships, but the idea is otherwise underdeveloped.

Instead, the story — directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written by Niren Bhatt — treats Bittu’s cowardice as the flaw he must overcome. Yet Bittu is more shy than cowardly. Sure, he’d rather not upset his overbearing mother, and he hasn’t told Bela how he feels, but he’s otherwise pretty brave. He’s planning to study cosmetology in America by himself, and he seeks out Munjya all on his own.

If he’s afraid of Munjya, it’s with good reason. Munjya’s persistence and his capacity for violence are legitimately scary. While there aren’t many jump scares, imagining what it would be like to live harboring a killer demon is frightening enough.

Though billed as a horror comedy, the first 45 minutes are straight horror. Things lighten up a bit when Bittu enlists the help of his filmmaker friend Spielberg (Taranjot Singh), but by that point things are so grim that the balance feels off. The chaotic comic action sequence when the heroes confront Munjya is more tedious than humorous. There are a few very funny jokes, however, including the fraudulent faith-healer Padri’s (Sathyaraj) dubious story about the original vision for Indiana Jones.

An unfortunate side effect of Munjya‘s lackluster story is that none of the acting performances stand out. Everyone is adequate.

Given that the character Munjya is entirely computer generated, one of the big questions is: how does he look? Pretty terrific, actually. He’s substantial enough that his interactions with the characters and the environment feel believable. Munjya sets a new standard for the level of effects quality fans should expect from Hindi films going forward.

Overall, Munjya is a very good-looking movie. The seaside setting and gloomy forests are lovely in their own right. Nighttime shots are perfectly lit to set the mood without obscuring the action. The movie has all the style but needs more substance.

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