Tag Archives: Jitendra Joshi

Movie Review: Toaster (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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The first movie from Rajkummar Rao’s production house Kampa Film fits right in with his recent filmography. Toaster is a Netflix Original dark comedy, just like other Netflix Original dark comedies starring Rao: Ludo, Guns & Gulaabs, and Monica, O My Darling. While the new movie gets a lot of things right, it fumbles some important parts of the story.

It also inadvertently makes a case against the current trend of starting a movie with a shocking in medias res scene to grab attention before flashing back in time. At the open, Rao’s character Ramakant is shown digging a grave in an abandoned theme park. Then the action flashes back to a few weeks earlier, as a supposedly upright politician Amol Amre (Jitendra Joshi) is shown philandering with a pair of white women. A junkie named Glen (Abhishek Banerjee) obtains a video of the affair and uses it to threaten the politician. Both scenes hint at problems to come, but we expect stakes to escalate as the story progresses. A preview isn’t always a hook.

Those scenes are followed by the audience’s chronological introduction to the miserly Ramakant, which would’ve been a much more interesting way to start the movie. While out on his morning jog, Ramakant swipes a bananas from a fruit vendor while complaining over the phone about a six-rupee discrepancy in his telecom bill. He demands a cash refund, pretending to be an elderly man near death while exercising next to an old man with a walker. We learn that he’s a guy who’s happy to lie in order to save a few pennies. The demonstration of his character is a much better hook than the two throwaway opening scenes.

For all his faults, Ramakant is devoted to his wife Shilpa (Sanya Malhotra). She’s ready for kids, but Ramakant thinks they’re a bad return on investment. That doesn’t stop him from lying to their landlady Mrs. D’Souza (Seema Pahwa) about starting a family in order to negotiate cheaper rent.

Shilpa hits her limit with Ramakant’s stinginess when he proposes spending 500 rupees (about $5) on a gift for their guru’s daughter’s wedding. Instead, she buys a fancy 4-slice toaster for 4,999 rupees. It pains Ramakant to spend that much, but he’s happy to brag about his generosity to the bride’s family.

The next morning, it’s revealed that the groom-to-be got his secret girlfriend pregnant, leading the wedding to be cancelled. Against all rules of decorum and human decency, Ramakant goes to the bride’s house to ask for his toaster back. He’s outraged to learn they donated the gifts to an orphanage, so he breaks into the orphanage to steal the toaster.

At best, Ramakant is a grey character, but his relationship with Shilpa gives hope that he can be a better man than he is. Things get more dangerous when his toaster thievery plot intersects with the politician blackmail subplot. Turns out junkie Glen is Mrs. D’Souza’s son, and Ramakant’s neighbor. Tragedy ensues, raising the stakes for Ramakant both legally and morally.

About halfway through, Toaster loses its way. Ramakant crosses a moral line that is very hard to come back from, at least not without some kind of confession, atonement, or karmic justice. But Toaster treats this as just a plot point, and Ramakant isn’t transformed by what happens, making for an unsatisfying conclusion.

There’s some very clever dialogue and really good performances, particularly from Malhotra and Farah Khan in a funny cameo as the owner of the orphanage. Upendra Limaye is also entertaining as the politician’s henchman. Rao’s performance is in keeping with the many other “ordinary man” roles he’s played over his career.

The film gets bogged down with a segment of the story that involves an elderly neighbor, Pherwani Aunty, played by Archana Puran Singh. Maybe the section will hit with Singh’s fans, but it overstayed its welcome for me and added to the sense that the filmmakers didn’t calibrate the story correctly. Of all of Rao’s Netflix Original dark comedies, Toaster ranks last.

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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: Agni (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Agni on Amazon Prime

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: Thar (2022)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Thar on Netflix

A veteran cop’s boring beat is upended by three murders and the arrival of a stranger in the Western noir Thar. Rajasthan is the ideal setting for a Western, and the stunning scenery is highlighted beautifully.

Inspector Surekha Singh’s (Anil Kapoor) decades-long career has been uneventful. Stationed in the Rajasthani town of Munabao in 1985, there’s little in the way of crime, except for the occasional drug bust of smugglers bringing heroin across the border from Pakistan.

All that changes in a single day. A married couple is found shot dead in their home, their daughter’s dowry stolen. Another dead man is found hanging from a tree, an axe embedded in his chest. For the first time in their careers, Singh and his partner Bhure (Satish Kaushik) feel like real police. They figure drug runners are responsible for the deaths, as they set about investigating the connection between the victims.

At the same time, a taciturn stranger arrives in town. He reluctantly gives his name: Siddharth (Harshvarrdhan Kapoor). He’s looking for a few men to help him move some antiques back to Delhi. Men in Munabao routinely work jobs in the city for months at a time, so his request isn’t unusual. A woman named Chetna (Fatima Sana Shaikh) assures him that her husband Panna (Jitendra Joshi) and his friends will be back in a matter of days, and Siddharth agrees to wait.

After Panna — an arrogant misogynist — and his compatriots return, it becomes clear that Siddharth’s intentions are not good. His polite interactions with Cheta are at odds with his actions when he’s going about his business. The mystery at the heart of Thar is: why is Siddharth doing what he’s doing?

Keeping Siddharth’s agenda a secret for as long as the movie does de-prioritizes his character development, blunting the emotional impact when his motivations are finally revealed. That said, Harshvarrdhan Kapoor is great at being mysterious. Nonverbal communication plays a big part in Siddharth’s interactions with Chetna, and Shaikh and Kapoor play off one another exceedingly well.

Relationships play a huge part in Inspector Surekha’s life. He’s got a supportive wife, and Bhure is his best friend, not just his coworker. Writer-director Raj Singh Chaudhary and editor Aarti Bajaj make a point to emphasize how much Bhure means to Surekha. Anil Kapoor and Satish Kaushik are a delightful duo. And Jitendra Joshi is really, really good at playing the loathsome Panna.

The desert location in Thar is not only crucial for making the way the story plays out possible. It’s also absolutely stunning. Though geographically and botanically distinct from the American Southwest, the area in Rajasthan where Thar was filmed feels like the perfect place to shoot a Western. The rocky hills spotted with scrubby brush make an ideal setting for a shootout.

One cautionary note for squeamish viewers is that Thar is very gory — more so than it needs to be to make its point about the nature of the violence being committed. But no one can say the makeup department didn’t do their job, that’s for sure.

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