Tag Archives: Indian Movies on Zee5

Movie Review: Lost (2023)

1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Lost on Zee5

Lost is a fitting title for Yami Gautam’s latest drama, because that’s how I felt when the movie was over.

Gautam plays Vidhi, an investigative journalist in Kolkata who stumbles onto a story when she meets Namita (Honey Jain) at a police station. Namita’s brother Ishan (Tushar Pandey) — a street performer who produces plays about Dalit rights — has been missing for two weeks. His disappearance came during a rough patch with his girlfriend Ankita (Piaa Bajpai), a news anchor who recently accepted a job and an apartment from politician Ranjan Varman (Rahul Khanna). But Ankita never reported Ishan missing.

Before Vidhi can dig in to the disappearance, a story is leaked that Ishan is involved with a Maoist group accused of terrorism. With Ankita refusing to answer her phone calls, Vidhi figures she might as well seek out the Maoist leader to confirm or deny Ishan’s involvement.

Lost is a very busy film. It speed-runs a plot that is dense with details but light on character motivation and devoid of atmosphere. Calling it a thriller is being extremely generous, since it lacks any tension whatsoever.

The only scenes that are allowed to breathe are between Vidhi and her grandfather Nanu (Pankaj Kapur), with whom she lives. She bounces ideas about the case off of him and he tries to pretend that he’s not worried about her safety, despite noticing two creeps taking photos of their house. The two actors have an easy rapport that helps regulate the story’s pace.

One way to improve Lost would have been to have Kapur play Vidhi’s father, and to eliminate her parents from the story entirely. Their absence could’ve freed up time for plot development elsewhere. Besides, Kapur is only thirty-four years older than Gautam, and the actors cast to play her parents are styled to look just as old as Kapur anyway.

There’s also an under-cooked subplot with Vidhi and her long-distance boyfriend Jeet (Neil Bhoopalam), who is coming to realize that relocating to be with a woman who’s addicted to her job might not be a great idea. The only good thing to come from his involvement in the story is an early scene in a restaurant where they discuss Ishan’s case. A song plays with on-the-nose lyrics like, “The road is dark and dangerous. You might get killed.” Vidhi hears this upbeat ditty and decides it’s time to dance. For a movie that lacks subtext, this feels appropriate.

Links

Streaming Video News: November 4, 2022

I updated my list of Bollywood movies streaming on Hulu with today’s addition of Brahmāstra, Part 1: Shiva (sometimes called Shiva No. 1). The superhero flick has Hindi and English dialogue options.

Also new today is the straight-to-streaming film Tadka on Zee5. This Hindi remake of the Malayalam film Salt N’ Pepper stars Nana Patekar, Taapsee Pannu, and Ali Fazal. (Update: if you’re trying to watch Tadka via the Zee5 app on Apple TV and use subtitles, the subtitles will appear at the top of the screen, obscuring the picture. See the photo below for an example.)

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime yesterday with the streaming debut of Ponniyin Selvan: 1. Mani Ratnam’s latest has Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada audio options.

Finally, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with a few new additions this week: the Tamil-dubbed films David and Uyire and the 2022 Telugu action flick The Ghost (also available in Tamil and Hindi). If you missed any of the Indian films added to Netflix in October, check out my monthly roundup for What’s on Netflix.

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