Tag Archives: Hindi

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)

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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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Movie Review: Ground Zero (2025)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Ground Zero on Amazon Prime

As with any movie inspired by true events, it’s hard to know how faithfully Ground Zero depicts Officer Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey’s pursuit of the terrorist known as Ghazi Baba. But if you handed the premise to anyone who’s skimmed a screenwriting book or two and considers themselves sufficiently ready for the big time, this is the movie they’d write. Ground Zero is as standard a terrorism thriller as it gets.

The story opens in Srinagar in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir. In August 2001, a Muslim terrorist persuades three teenage boys to take guns and kill one of the many heavily armed Indian soldiers stationed around town. A poster of Osama Bin Laden hangs on the wall, though the 9/11 attacks won’t happen for another month.

Two Indian soldiers — one Hindu, one Sikh — stand in the market talking about how excited they are for Eid. The movie wants you to know they are DEFINITELY NOT Islamophobic. A kindly Muslim vendor gives the automatic-weapon-toting Hindu soldier a chocolate in thanks for his hard work. The soldier donates to the local Eid fund in return. Moments later, one of the young men from the opening scene shoots and kills the soldier, disappearing into the crowded streets.

The murder is the work of the “Pistol Gang,” who’ve killed 70 soldiers in the span of a year. The head of the local Border Security Force (BSF) office says: “I want my best man here.” Cut to Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey (Emraan Hashmi) rescuing a shepherd boy while in the middle of a shootout with suspected terrorists.

Dubey returns to Srinagar and cracks part of the code that the terrorists use to coordinate their activities. But he mistakes the instructions for an attack on the government office in Srinagar, when the terrorists’ real target was the Indian Parliament in Delhi.

Federal agents arrive in Srinagar on the trail of one of the perpetrators of the Parliament attack, spouting cliched lines like, “We tracked him. We have to go now!” Dubey suggests not arresting, but following the suspect, in case there’s a link between the Delhi attack and the Pistol Gang. But the feds want to get their guy and beat a confession out of him. When Dubey protests, his commanding officer admonishes him with, “It’s an order.” This is first-draft dialogue, at best.

Hashmi is a charming actor and makes Dubey interesting. He’s especially good when Dubey is with his feisty wife Jaya (Sai Tamhankar) and their three kids. The family sequences are so enjoyable that it’s weird when Dubey acts recklessly enough to prompt his subordinates to exclaim, “It’s suicide!”

Dubey’s rashness dovetails with another Bollywood screenplay formula Ground Zero borrows heavily from: the rogue cop. Government bureaucracy and chains of command keep this one gifted officer from following his instincts and solving the case, as in so many Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan cop dramas before.

The difference with Dubey is that his superpower isn’t superhuman strength or indestructibility. It’s empathy. He wants to find Ghazi Baba with a minimum of bloodshed and intimidation because he knows that life in Srinagar isn’t easy for its residents. He tells a subordinate: “When a belly is empty, the brain can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.”

Dubey’s disciplined strategies and acknowledgement of local poverty give Ground Zero cover for evading the question of what role the soldiers’ presence plays in exacerbating tensions. There’s a scene where Dubey’s young daughter confesses to being afraid of the gun-toting soldier that accompanies her and the other BSF offspring to school, almost as if to suggest that only children fail to appreciate that the heavily armed soldiers are there for their benefit.

This is very much a film of its time for as broad an audience as possible, where good and bad are clearly delineated. There’s even a shot when the terrorists driving to Parliament hear a song with the lyrics “Vande Mataram” on the radio and immediately turn it off, just in case you doubted their badness.

To be clear, this movie is based on real events that resulted in many deaths, and the perpetrators were caught thanks to skill and heroism of the Border Security Force (Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey in particular). But Ground Zero tells the story in the most boilerplate, predictable manner. At the midpoint of the film, I made a list of six things I thought would happen in the second half (not knowing anything about the true story). I was right about five of them. Ground Zero feels like studio Excel Entertainment’s attempt to cash in on a trend. That doesn’t diminish the efforts of the real people involved in the story or tarnish anyone’s memory. I’d argue that they deserve a better movie.

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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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Movie Review: The Diplomat (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch The Diplomat on Netflix

The Diplomat offers a compelling cinematic perspective on India’s relationship with Pakistan, offering an alternative to the usual military conflicts and spy dramas. Though less action-packed than those two sub-genres typically are, the bureaucratic processes in The Diplomat generate just as much tension.

The film — based on a true story — opens in a remote, mountainous region of Pakistan in 2017. Two rustic-looking men and one burka-clad woman drive from a compound to the Indian embassy in Islamabad. As they wait for the office to open, the men tell the woman, “You know what to do.” When the men go out for a smoke, the woman sprints to a receptionist. She begs for help, claiming to be an Indian woman tricked into marriage and held against her will.

Letting her in isn’t an easy a decision. Is she telling the truth? Is she a terrorist? The Indian embassy staff is split on what to do, so they leave the call to Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh (John Abraham). The woman’s name is Uzma (Sadia Khateeb), and she holds to her story of abuse and deception even under J.P.’s fierce interrogation. When her passport details check out, she’s given sanctuary inside the embassy.

Anywhere else in the world, the story ends with Uzma on a plane back to India. However, The Diplomat lays out all the conflicting agendas surrounding what J.P. considers to be a humanitarian case, not a political one. Indian External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj (Revathy) wants J.P. to handle things discreetly. Pakistan’s diplomatic wing seems content with that as well, but their spy branch — led by Director General Malik Sahab (Ashwath Bhatt) — sees the opportunity to stoke public hostility toward India.

With Sahab’s encouragement, Uzma’s husband Tahir (Jagjeet Sandhu) — one of the men from the beginning of the film — files a case that she’s being illegally detained inside the embassy. That leaves the Indian consulate with no choice but to resolve the matter in Pakistani court, where Uzma will have to face her abuser.

Director Shivam Nair and writer Ritesh Shah do a good job handling this aspect of the story. Flashbacks to Uzma’s imprisonment by Tahir don’t explicitly show her rape. Rather, Nair has cinematographer Dimo Popov push in for an extreme closeup on Uzma’s eye during the abuse. Witnessing her fear from such an intimate distance is disturbing.

Both minister Sushma and embassy employee Seerat (Vidhatri Bandi) explain to J.P. that he may not be the best equipped to understand the fear Uzma feels following her sexual assault. Rather than treat J.P. as a superhero who can fix every problem single-handedly, the story has him defer to the women’s judgment about how to help Uzma proceed.

It’s easy to forget that J.P. is supposed to be an ordinary man, given that he’s played by John Abraham (who also produced the film). With Abraham’s hulking frame and action-heavy filmography, one almost expects J.P. to solve more of his problems with violence. That said, Abraham does a nice job breaking type and playing a character so, well, diplomatic.

Khateeb also does fine work in a challenging role, as does the rest of the cast. Though the film shows the dangers the embassy employees face in keeping Uzma safe, it would’ve been nice to hear more from the peripheral characters about their feelings. For example, Seerat seems nonchalant about acting as Uzma’s body double despite the death threats from Tahir’s people. Maybe an embassy worker’s job description involves less paperwork and more general badassery than I realized.

The Diplomat is noteworthy for how it depicts the Pakistani government’s relationship with terrorism as complicated, as opposed to a film like 2024’s Fighter, which characterized the government as being subservient to terrorists. While Sahab’s spy branch sees terror outfits like Tahir’s as useful tools — albeit unpredictable ones — there are like-minded people J.P. can work with in Pakistan’s diplomatic wing. He has a local lawyer (played by Kumud Mishra) he can rely on, and the court system is portrayed as legitimate. There are a few off-handed remarks about Pakistan being chaotic, but the film resists blanket condemnation. In doing so, it emphasizes the importance of India’s diplomatic efforts and the respect deserved by the people tasked with carrying them out.

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Movie Review: Costao (2025)

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1 Star (out of 4)

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Producer Sejal Shah makes an uneasy transition to the director’s chair with her feature debut Costao. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a principled customs officer in a biographical drama that takes a lot for granted.

Set in the 1990s in Goa, the story follows Costao Fernandes (Siddiqui). He takes his responsibilities as a customs agent seriously, risking his own well-being to investigate tips on illegal smuggling operations.

Goa’s most notorious smuggler is a businessman and aspiring politician named D’Mello (Kishore Kumar G). Costao’s informer (played by Ravi Shankar Jaiswal) lets the officer know that D’Mello is planning to bring in a massive amount of gold without paying duties on it.

A last-minute tip finds Costao staking out the smuggling operation alone and unarmed, with no hope for backup in the pre-cell-phone era. He chases D’Mello’s younger brother Peter (Hussain Dalal) and stops him near a small village. Peter pulls a knife and stabs Costao several times before the agent accidentally kills Peter in self-defense. Bleeding, Costao shows the villagers the gold in Peter’s car trunk and tells them to call the customs office. He runs before the cops arrive, since they’re all on D’Mello’s payroll.

When Costao finally turns himself in days later — after the regional head of customs offers him protection — he’s in big trouble. The gold was gone before customs agents arrived at the scene, and D’Mello has made sure that none of the villagers will testify to having seen it. All Costao has is his word as to what happened, but he fled a crime scene. Soon enough, he’s on trial for murder.

The case on which this fictional story is based set an important legal precedent for the protection of civil servants against retaliatory prosecution. It has all the makings of a gripping courtroom thriller. Yet Shah and screenwriters Bhavesh Mandalia and Meghna Srivastava treat the trial portions of the story as an afterthought rather than the point of the film.

Instead, they focus on Costao’s personal life, painting an unflattering portrait in the process. In an effort to depict him as a man who puts his principles first, they portray him as a terrible husband and absent father. He frequently fights with his wife Maria (Priya Bapat), ignoring her pleas to think about the danger he’s put her and their three children in and the upheaval he’s caused by forcing them to move into secure housing.

As Costao’s murder trial proceeds, he’s prohibited from fieldwork and assigned to desk duty. He quickly gets bored and negotiates a transfer to Mumbai, leaving his family behind. Even when he’s eventually cleared of charges, he doesn’t return to them.

Whether or not this is accurate to the man who inspired this story, one could understand some reputation laundering by the filmmaker in this kind of movie. Yet it doesn’t seem like Shah realizes how unflattering his portrayal of Costao is. Rather, the story justifies Costao’s neglect of his family by having the officer’s daughter serve as narrator, closing the film with her praising his heroism without mentioning the price she paid for it.

If Costao is a movie about a man torn between love and duty, we need to see that. If this is about a man whose freedom is threatened by state-sanctioned corruption, we need to see that, too. What we get is a film that expects the audience to side with the civil servant because of his job title, regardless of how much of a jerk he’s portrayed to be. It’s a real disappointment.

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Movie Review: Crazxy (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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It takes guts to make a movie that is essentially just a guy driving around taking phone calls for ninety minutes, but that’s what writer Girish Kohli did with his feature directorial debut Crazxy. The unconventional thriller works beautifully, until a bizarre sequence renders it mostly unwatchable. Still, you’ve gotta admire its gumption.

Tumbbad‘s Sohum Shah — who also produced Crazxy — stars as the film’s only onscreen character, surgeon Abhimanyu Sood. We meet him as he loads a duffel bag full of something into the trunk of his Range Rover in a parking garage. The gloomy lighting and stark shot-framing let us know that he’s probably not packed for a weekend getaway.

Rather than follow the cinematic trend of flashing back to days or weeks earlier, his loading the trunk is where the story begins. It concludes in about as much time as it takes to finish the film, giving the plot a sense of urgency.

Abhimanyu is on his way to drop off money to get him out of trouble, though we’re not sure what kind of trouble at first. It’s the kind of trouble that takes 5 crore rupees (nearly $600,000) to get out of, apparently. En route, he gets a call from an old man (Tinnu Anand) who claims to have kidnapped Abhimanyu’s 16-year-old daughter Vedica (Unnathi Suranaa). Abhimanyu doesn’t have much of a relationship with the girl, so he wouldn’t know where she is anyway.

We learn more about Abhimanyu through his phone calls, as he tries to figure out what’s going on. His ex-wife Bobby (Nimisha Sajayan) can barely stand to talk to him. His girlfriend (Shilpa Shukla) — whom we only know as “Jaan,” based on her contact name on Abhimanyu’s phone — figures the call is a ploy by his ex to shake him down for money. His boss “White Coat” (Piyush Mishra) is anxious that Abhimanyu will be late to his appointment to drop off the bag of cash.

Further contact with the kidnapper assures Abhimanyu that his daughter really has been taken. The man wants 5 crore rupees — exactly the amount Abhimanyu has on him.

Most movie dads would rush to their daughter’s aid without a second thought, but not Abhimanyu. He’s a good doctor and a terrible father. Before Vedica was born, tests determined that she had Down Syndrome. Bobby didn’t care, but Abhimanyu did. He wanted a “normal” child. Hence their divorce. Is he heartless enough to not save his own teenage daughter?

Shah clearly enjoys playing anti-heroes, as he previously did in Tumbbad. He makes the most of this opportunity to have the camera all to himself. One would think it would get old watching a guy driving around taking calls, but Shah brings out all of Abhimanyu’s internal conflicts and calculations while he cruises around. Top notch voice acting by all of the performers on the other end of the phone definitely makes his job easier. Catchy songs by Vishal Bhardwaj and an evocative score by Jesper Kyd set the mood.

Before we reach the climax, things get gross. I won’t spoil how or why, but I had to stop watching for about 10 minutes, only stealing occasional glances at the subtitles. Even then, I got way more than I bargained for.

This wild sequence knocks points from Crazxy‘s total score, and the ending didn’t work perfectly for me either. But I admire Kohli’s boldness. We’re unlikely to get any other Hindi movies quite like Crazxy this year, and that’s a shame. The industry needs more risk-takers.

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Movie Review: Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins on Netflix

Netflix kicks off an entertaining new (potential) franchise with Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins, a fun, vibrant caper with a charming leading man.

Saif Ali Khan stars as Rehan Roy, a master thief who’s eluded Indian police for years. The cops follow him all the way to Budapest, Hungary, where he delights in giving them the slip.

Cheeky Rehan isn’t the first character we’re introduced to. That honor goes to Rajan Aulakh (Jaideep Ahlawat), a gangster-turned-art-collector who isn’t as far removed from his former profession as he purports to be. His accountant learns that the hard way when an error costs Rajan money, and the accountant meets a brutal end at his boss’s hands. It’s one of the rare instances of violence in an otherwise mostly bloodless film, but it establishes high stakes for anyone who gets involved with Rajan.

The gangster learns of an upcoming Mumbai exhibition of a rare African diamond called the Red Sun. One of the only people in the underworld who could fence something so expensive is the crime boss Moosa (Loitongbam Dorendra Singh), whom Rajan double-crossed a decade ago. Handing over the Red Sun would finally get Rajan off Moosa’s hit list, but he needs the help of an expert thief to get it.

Rehan doesn’t join forces willingly. He learns he’s been pressed into service when his estranged brother Avi (Gagan Arora, who brings intense emotion to his small role) arrives in Budapest to tell him that Rajan donated dirty money to their father’s charity hospital. Unless Rehan returns to Mumbai to steal the jewel, Rajan will report Baba (Kulbushan Kharbanda) to the authorities, destroying him and his hospital.

From this point on, we see Rehan doing what he does best: executing complicated plans that keep him one step ahead of everyone else. It starts with getting into India before top cop Vikram Patel (Kunal Kapoor) can nab him at the airport. Then Rehan, Rajan, and Rajan’s goons devise a scheme to nab the Red Sun before the museum exhibition opens. These sequences are a ton of fun, giving fans of heist movies everything they want from the genre.

Another necessary genre convention is a beautiful woman to complicate the thief’s plans. That would be Rajan’s wife, Farrah (Nikita Dutta), a painter trapped in an abusive marriage. When she lends a sympathetic ear to Rehan about his family problems, he resolves to steal her away from Rajan along with the diamond.

Having multiple subplots — not always a given in Hindi films — enriches the story and adds depth to Rehan’s character. It gives him more to explore in subsequent movies (which haven’t been officially greenlit by Netflix but are clearly planned by the film’s creator and producer Siddharth Anand).

The good news is that, should Netflix opt out of future films, this franchise could easily transition to a theatrical model because it feels like a big-budget release. International filming locations like Budapest and “Istanbul” (which at one point is represented by a shot of the Griffith Museum overlooking Los Angeles) contribute to the vibe, as do the glamorous sets and vivid color palette. It’s a very pleasing movie to look at.

Best of all is its perfect cast. Khan knows how to blend humor with sincerity, making Rehan a crook you love to root for. Kapoor and Dutta are a bit underutilized, but they do exactly what their roles need to impact the story.

Fans of Ahlawat are in for a treat. He’s menacing in a quiet, controlled way, making him all the scarier. When he unleashes upon someone, it’s quick and devastating. Ahlawat’s dancing in the disco-inspired credits song “Jaadu” grabbed attention because it’s not something he’s done much on screen, but he shows in the film’s few, highly entertaining fight scenes that he’s a skilled physical performer.

Also, kudos to Mohd. Faiz Abrar for really well-executed English subtitles. Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins has real crossover hit potential, and quality subtitles will play a big part if it takes off internationally.

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