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Movie Review: Gandhari (2026)

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1 Star (out of 4)

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Gandhari is what happens when someone tries to remake Kahaani without understanding what made Kahaani so special.

Gandhari writer Kanika Dhillon is no slouch at weaving together multiple plot threads, as she did in the Haseen Dillruba films. That’s what makes Gandhari‘s slapdash plot so shocking. Disjointed directing by Devashish Makhija makes the movie-watching experience all the more frustrating.

Gandhari marks Taapsee Pannu’s sixth project with Dhillon, having previously starred in those Haseen Dillruba films. This time, Pannu plays Bani, wife of Gokul (Ishwak Singh) and mother of 5-year-old Mishty (Myrah Shivan). While the family is on a trip, their train stops briefly in the town of Joypurra. A woman nabs Mishty while Bani is in the restroom and Gokul is buying snacks.

Bani chases the woman carrying Mishty across the platform, but she runs headfirst into a metal pole. The woman escapes, leaving Bani and Gokul to file a police report while also dealing with Bani’s head injury. The police are no help, and Bani’s concussion results in temporary blindness. The couple will have to find their missing daughter on their own.

Well, not entirely on their own. A federal government official named Kabir (Jatin Sarna) arrives with his assistant Sanjukta (Priti Shroff) to follow leads on a child trafficking outfit known as the Blackhole Gang, the history of which they explain in excruciating detail. Kabir and Sanjukta never interact with Bani, which is weird. It’s as if Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Fed character in Kahaani never talked to Vidya Balan’s Vidya.

In this unfamiliar town, Bani just happens to run into her adoptive mother Jhuna Amba (Mita Vashisht) from back in her days as a child acrobat. Over the next month, Jhuna Amba secretly teaches Bani how to be a blind ninja assassin.

If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is.

All of this takes place in a town where seemingly everyone is involved in this child-trafficking ring. I don’t know much about gang finances, but employing so many people in a dangerous racket and buying their secrecy seems prohibitively expensive. Some retroactive continuity meant to connect Bani’s past to the Blackhole Gang that makes the plot even more ridiculous. It’s so bad, it’s actually funny.

Pannu put a lot of physical work into preparing for this role, and it’s a shame that the script lets her down. Action scenes are shot awkwardly and edited poorly, so nothing looks as good as it could have. The acting across the board is fine, given quality of the material.

Comparisons between Gandhari and Kahaani are fair, given how much the stories overlap. Both feature women looking for a lost family member in an unfamiliar city where identities are malleable. Balan’s character in Kahaani is underestimated because she is pregnant; Pannu’s is because she is blind and “a helpless mother.” Both of their searches reach their climax during a festival honoring a protective female deity: Durga in Kahaani, Chaumukhi Devi in Gandhari.

Yet Dhillon’s story lacks all the other things that Ghosh and his co-writers got right in Kahaani: magnificent world-building, ace character development, meaningful relationships, and twists that feel surprising but believable. Gandhari‘s world-building is terrible. Fight scenes and training montages take the place of character growth. Twists and secrets are used in quantity rather than quality.

Gandhari ends with Bollywood’s clearest indicator of a lack of narrative confidence: statistics. Three slides featuring data about the number of children trafficked in India are shown onscreen — as if the audience didn’t already realize that fictional stories draw inspiration from real life, and that, without the stats, we might feel there’s an acceptable number of children allowed to be trafficked. It undermines the emotional connections we were supposed to form with victims in the story.

The last of Gandhari‘s closing slides contains a quote so nonsensical that it provides the perfect ending to this awful film: “Behind every mother is a child…taken from a mother.” Exactly.

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Movie Review: Cocktail 2 (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Before Cocktail 2, it never occurred to me to question how much of the success of 2012’s Cocktail was due to Homi Adajania’s direction versus the screenplay by Imtiaz Ali and Sajid Ali. Adajania answered that question when he returned to direct the disappointing Cocktail 2, based on a cliched, outdated screenplay by Luv Ranjan and Tarun Jain that is beyond salvaging.

Following the same basic setup of a love triangle that undermines a female friendship, Cocktail 2 introduces long-time couple Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) and Diya (Rashmika Mandanna). They are seemingly happy in their live-in relationship until Kunal drunkenly jokes in front of their friends that, if he were to cheat on Diya, he’d be smart enough not to get caught.

Diya is embarrassed, but Kunal doesn’t see the big deal. His increasing time away from home feeds into her insecurities. She tells him they should get married, and he agrees, “If that will make you happy.” He implies that the only reason for marriage is to appease others outside the relationship, dismissing the possibility that Diya’s feelings have changed.

The critical point in this conversation is that Diya wants to be someone Kunal wants to marry, not for him to accede to her request just to shut her up. She wants real proof that he’s committed to her. He’s content with the status quo.

They decide to take a romantic trip to Sicily to renew their relationship, only for it to be hijacked by Diya’s college friend Ally (Kriti Sanon). She’s a vagabond who does odd jobs while traveling the globe, never staying in any one place for long. She tracks down the couple from Diya’s social media posts and insists that they stay with her for the duration of the trip. So much for a private getaway.

Diya secretly asks Ally to seduce Kunal; if he gives in to Ally’s advances, Diya will know their relationship is over. Ally points out that if Kunal resists, it won’t do anything to assuage Diya’s doubts. Even though no 30-something in Ally’s position would ever agree to participate, she does because this is a movie written by men.

There’s plenty more evidence that this is a movie by men for men. Ally dresses exclusively in bikini tops, even when she’s nowhere near the beach. Kunal is portrayed as the victim even though it was his own cruel joke and dismissal of Diya’s feelings that created the mess in the first place.

Kapoor and Mandanna don’t do much to make their characters interesting or sympathetic. He makes weird faces, whereas she plays things too straight, even while doing objectively ridiculous things.

Cocktail 2 is watchable thanks entirely to Sanon’s performance as Ally. As her pursuit of Kunal goes on, she finds herself falling for him — something she’d resolved never to let happen. The emotional toll weighs heavily on her, and Sanon depicts it with sensitivity.

Then Ally does a bunch of stupid stuff that would never happen in a movie where any woman had a hand in the script. Why Adajania thought he could make something thought-provoking or moving from this reductive story about overly-emotional women is a mystery.

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Movie Review: Dug Dug (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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A man’s accidental death births a religious cult when his motorcycle appears to move with a will of its own. Writer-director Ritwik Pareek’s feature debut Dug Dug is delightfully odd.

At a roadside stand along a busy trucking route at night, Thakur Sa (Altaf Khan) stumbles towards his motorcycle. He’s drunk and in no condition to drive, especially not after he smokes a joint. Thakur stands in front of a sign that makes it look he has like a halo encircling his head. Church bells ring. He slings his helmet over his arm and takes off on his bike, driving “into the light” of oncoming traffic. We know what’s going to happen.

Thakur makes it surprisingly far on his doomed final ride. Cinematographer Aditya Kumar uses the available light from the truck stop, passing vehicles, and Thakur’s own bike to paint a strangely beautiful picture of a world in transit. The score by Salvage Audio Collective is propulsive and tense, filled with anticipation more than dread.

On a side road off of the highway, Thakur is distracted by a billboard advertising a magic show. He falls off his bike in front of the painted image of a sorcerer and is promptly run over by a truck. The police collect Thakur’s body and bring his motorcycle back to the station. The next morning, the bike is gone.

Despite their efforts to lock up the blue motorcycle with a pink seat, it keeps reappearing at the spot where Thakur died, day after day. The townsfolk are left to wonder what it means. Did God use Thakur’s death to send a message? If so, what is it? How are they supposed to give this miracle the respect it deserves?

Thus unfolds Pareek’s satire of the commercialization of religion. Thakur — a drunk driver — is turned into a saint, and his sainthood spins off into business and marketing opportunities.

Dug Dug opens with a standard onscreen note that it is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Midway through the movie, a similar statement appears again on screen, reiterating that, while names have been changed, this is based on a true story.

The double clarification is an attempt to diffuse any potential anger from devotees of the “Bullet Baba Shrine” in Rajasthan, the true story on which Dug Dug is based. However, there’s no hint of disrespect in Pareek’s film, which admits that faith is complicated and highly personal.

Other than noting how ready people are to monetize a miracle, Pareek is careful not to make fun of the devotees. The town’s young police officer Pyare Lal (Gaurav Soni) refuses to participate in the new traditions of dropping money in a collection box and pouring booze on the motorcycle’s tires, but he doesn’t stop anyone else from doing so. The whole tone of the film is observational, not judgmental. The natural acting by the charming cast reinforces that.

Dug Dug moves at a languid pace that suits the sleepy rural town where it’s set. It bogs down in the latter stages with prolonged, repetitive musical montages of people handing over money, praying, and waving flags. Other than that slow section, Dug Dug showcases the talent of an intriguing new filmmaker with a distinct style and point of view. I’m looking forward to see what Pareek does next.

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Movie Review: Ikka (2026)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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The courtroom drama Ikka (“Ace“) is billed as a tense showdown between veteran actors Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna, and in that regard, it delivers. With a different directorial focus, Ikka could have been more than that. An intriguing premise goes unexplored in favor of an approach that is broad and shallow.

Deol plays undefeated celebrity defense attorney Arjun Mehra, nicknamed “Ikka” for his penchant for playing his key evidence in dramatic, last-minute fashion. He and his wife Avantika (Dia Mirza) share a 13-year-old daughter, Samaira (Daria Bedi). The girl is diagnosed with leukemia, which is treatable with a bone marrow transplant.

Meanwhile, Arjun is hired to defend Shourya (Khanna) — son of a wealthy politician — for the attempted murder of a young woman named Soma (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor), who is alive but unconscious. Arjun initially refuses, due to a long-standing conflict between the men, but he relents because he needs Shourya to donate his bone marrow to Samaira. Why? Shourya is Samaira’s biological father! He dumped Avantika when she refused to get an abortion, and Arjun married her instead, raising Samaira as his own.

The soapy setup is amplified by a heavy-handed Julius Packiam score that doesn’t trust the audience enough to draw its own emotional conclusions. Transitions between tense scenes and light-hearted ones are awkward as is, and the overwrought score makes them even more so.

Another way in which Ikka is heavy-handed (in a good way) is it’s pro-woman point of view. Arjun’s main moral conflict in his approach to how he litigates the case is whether or not to use Soma’s social media account — complete with photos of her drinking alcohol and posing for photos with men — against her. He doesn’t want to tarnish her image in order to win, even if his own daughter’s life is on the line. The movie spends a lot of time on this plot point, really emphasizing how repugnant victim-blaming is.

There are related themes that are brought up but aren’t explored as much as they could’ve been. Samaira is taunted by some classmates because her father is defending “that rapist.” It would have been great to have a scene where Samaira and her father talk about violence against women and legal rules versus moral ones — even better if Samaira copped a bit of age-appropriate attitude with her dad. Instead, the plot point is dropped after Samaira says that she defended her dad’s reputation offscreen.

Fans watching Ikka for tense scenes between Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna will not be disappointed. Deol pounds his fists on the table and shouts. There are multiple shots of Khanna scowling and walking in slow motion — a shot popularized in Dhurandhar that filmmakers will struggle to resist going forward.

Tillotama Shome plays the prosecutor opposing Arjun, Madhura Banerjee. Shome is as reliable a performer as there is, and she does a fine job here, even if she’s asked by director Siddharth P. Malhotra to make her expressions a bit more obvious to match the bold energy of the men.

Dia Mirza spends the film acting circles around everyone else in the cast. She plays her role straight and absolutely nails it, lending gravity to all her scenes. Had everyone in Ikka been encouraged to take the same approach to their performances, the film might have felt more substantial and less pandering.

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Movie Review: System (2026)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A lawyer from a wealthy family learns that justice has a price in the courtroom drama System. The film’s politics are in the right place, but tonal incongruities hamper the storytelling.

System opens with a prisoner lamenting that he can’t afford the cost to appeal his unfair sentence, only to hang himself in the next shot. It’s a grim opening that sets the stage for a critique of the Indian justice system.

Then the action shifts to the main character: public prosecutor Neha Rajvansh (Sonakshi Sinha). She’s dropped off at court in an expensive Range Rover. She awkwardly gets ready for court in the stuffy public bathroom, accompanied by a goofy soundtrack of what I described as “Italian gondola” music in my notes. It’s an abrupt tonal shift coming on the heels of a man’s suicide.

Neha is a new prosecutor, and she’s outmatched in her case against a club owner suspected of dealing drugs. Her salvation comes via a run-in with the court’s stenographer, Sarkia (Jyothika). During litigation, we see Sarika mouthing the judge’s decisions before he announces them, so clearly she understands the law better than what her credentials imply. She gives Neha a hint about the case that helps the government secure a conviction, giving Neha her first courtroom victory.

This is important, because Neha’s father Ravi (director Ashutosh Gowariker) has promised her a spot at his prestigious law firm if she wins ten cases in a row. Neha’s brother Alok (Adinath Kothare) already works for their dad, and so does her boyfriend Akshay (Gaurav Pandey).

To get an edge, Neha hires Sarika for a secret side gig helping evaluate cases. Since Sarika is the main breadwinner for family, the conflict of interest is a risk, but she is desperate for money. Unlike Neha’s chauffeur-driven Range Rover, Sarika takes the train to work and walks home to the tiny apartment she shares with her teenage daughter and husband, who is paralyzed.

The partnership between the women opens Neha’s eyes to economic realities outside the posh mansion where she lives with her parents and brother. She’s never questioned how her father made his money or considered those within her social circle particularly cutthroat. She only realizes how ruthless well-funded defense lawyers can be when she has to face off against her father in court.

Neha’s naivete is somewhat surprising, but that may be a matter of casting. Sinha is nearly forty, which, if Neha is approximately the same age, is too old to not understand the biases within the legal system.

Neha’s character development and increasing social awareness are treated with a light tone that feels at odds with the dark nature of the crimes she’s prosecuting. Her busy pseudo-Venetian theme music doesn’t fit alongside cases of rape and murder. A scene of Neha and Sarika dancing at a club is out of place.

That said, Sinha nicely depicts Neha’s evolution into a lawyer who realizes the biases within the system. She and Alok have a moving conversation about the ways living in their father’s shadow warped their growth. Kothare is particularly good in that scene.

Sarika is the more complicated character of the two lead women. She’s a low-paid worker who understands the law as well as judges and lawyers. She’s a devoted wife who’s having an extramarital affair. Jyothika’s performance balances the different sides of her character and makes her sympathetic.

It’s admirable what director Ashwini Iyer Tiwari and her writing team set out to do in terms of messaging in System. They make a compelling case that many people are priced out of affording adequate legal representation, so, sometimes, they must turn to unsavory methods to receive a measure of fairness from an unfair system. The question it poses to its main character is this: is Neha brave enough to turn class traitor for the sake of justice?

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Movie Review: Maa Behen (2026)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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In Maa Behen, a mother and her adult daughters find themselves with a unique problem: how to hide a dead body from their nosy neighbors. The fun, well-acted comedy comes with some sophisticated commentary on the way rumors and reputation shape women’s lives.

Madhuri Dixit plays Rekha, the “maa” from the title. Widowed young, she raised two daughters on her own in a hostile neighborhood. Rekha’s beauty and penchant for wearing sleeveless blouses (gasp!) turned her into an object of lust for the local men and, thus, an object of scorn for the local women.

The film bucks the recent trend of using computer effects to “de-age” stars for flashbacks. Instead, when we’re shown Rekha’s arrival in the neighborhood as a 22-year-old, Dixit looks more or less the same as she does now in her late fifties. A narrator simply says that she hasn’t aged a day, as far as her looks go — a believable explanation given how gorgeous Dixit still is.

Rekha’s oldest daughter is Jaya (Triptii Dimri). She did everything the right way growing up. Her reward is to be trapped catering to the ceaseless appetites of her ungrateful husband Manas (Shardul Bhardwaj), her demanding father-in-law, and her three ravenous brothers-in-law.

Worse, Manas is a regular presence on the social media channels of Jaya’s wild younger half-sister, Sushma (Dharna Durga), an aspiring influencer. Sushma and Manas play up the notion that they might be having an affair, which may not be true but is insulting to Jaya nonetheless.

The girls get a frantic call from Rekha late one night: Mr. Gupta (Ravi Kishan), the neighbor from across the street, lies dead in her kitchen. Rekha says she invited him over to play cards, but he made a sexual advance at her. They tussled, and he fell and hit his head.

Rekha watches a true crime show called “Khalbali” every day, so she’s certain she knows how conceal Gupta’s death and prevent a scandal. They just need to dump his body in the canal the following night. The only problems are that the women can barely lift him, and Gupta’s family is having a huge party to celebrate his daughter’s engagement. Maybe they can just keep him hidden until the wedding is over.

Rekha’s reputation is paramount in the story. A married man visiting her at night and dying in her house would confirm every sordid thing the neighbors have ever said about her. Those rumors dogged Jaya and Sushma as well, who are assumed to be as sexually forward as their mother allegedly is.

Throughout Maa Behen, the audience sees flashbacks to various salacious events in the women’s lives. These are introduced and narrated by the host of the fictional show “Khalbali,” (played by Shrivardhan Trivedi). He’s there to show us what “everybody” knows to be true.

Of course, that’s only one side of the story. But even if Rekha, Jaya, or Sushma were to present an alternative version, would anyone believe them? Such is the power of rumor and the unequal weight given to men’s opinions by society. Whether or not a negative reputation is “deserved” doesn’t matter. Women pay the price regardless.

Director Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani brilliantly weave social commentary into the story without coming across as preachy. They created characters beset by rumors and simply let us watch how it affects their personalities and experiences. It’s a sign of respect for an audience that is too often condescended to.

Dixit, Dimri, and Durga are terrific as a family at odds with each other as often as they are with the world. It’s a credit to digital creator Durga for fitting in so well in her feature debut, as well as a testament to Dixit’s and Dimri’s generosity and experience for helping her to do so. The rest of the cast nicely fill out the world and contribute to making Maa Behen a really smart, enjoyable movie.

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Movie Review: Kartavya (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Filmmaker Pulkit’s second Netflix Original feature Kartavya  (“Duty“) deals with the failure of institutions to protect children, just as his gripping 2024 Netflix Original Bhakshak did. His sophomore effort is less successful than his first due to a disjointed plot that lacks surprises.

Since Bhakshak is about a reporter, it’s fitting that Kartavya starts with a journalist’s murder. Reema Dutta (Radhika Chauhan) arrives in the town of Jhamli to investigate a high-profile religious figure named Anand (Saurabh Dwivedi), who she believes is responsible for the disappearance of several children. Despite having a police escort led by Inspector Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan), two assailants on a motorcycle — one of whom escapes — kill Reema.

Pawan’s superior officer Keshav (Manish Chaudhari) wants to suspend him immediately, but Pawan talks his boss into giving him and his junior partner Ashok (Sanjay Mishra) a week to close the case.

Before the investigation even begins, Pawan meets with a calamity at home. His younger brother Deepak (Saurabh Abrol) has supposedly eloped with another student from his college, Preeti (Suraksha Gaire), but no one can find them. That’s for the best, as Preeti’s brother and the local panchayat want to murder them in an “honor killing” for marrying across caste lines. Pawan’s father Harihar (Zakir Hussain) insists on waiting for proof before executing the young lovers, but he’s not opposed to the idea.

Pawan and his wife Varsha (Rasika Dugal) find Deepak and Preeti and agree to help them leave town. But then Pawan learns that the escaped assassin who killed Reema is a 16-year-old boy named Harpal (Yudhvir Ahlawat) — one of the missing children she was investigating. Now Pawan has to get this kid safely out of town, too, while his boss and Ashok cower in fear of Anand and his goons.

The story bounces between Pawan working the murder case, Pawan trying to save his brother, Harihar dealing with Preeti’s brother and the local government, and Harpal running from Anand’s cronies. There’s little urgency in these disjointed sequences until they finally come together at the midpoint.

That leaves lots of time for characters to sit around and talk and for Pawan to smoke. Boy, does he like to smoke. The best moments in the film are conversations between Pawan and Ashok because Khan and Mishra are so good together, but Kartavya needs more action.

The story’s thinness is enhanced by a lack of subtext. Characters straight up admit what’s happening, with little in the way of twists. Despite plenty of characters, most of them have little to do. Pawan might as well have been single for as much as Varsha contributes. As the holy man Anand, ex-journalist and debutant actor Dwivedi looks like a creep (no offense), but he’s not as an intimidating as the cops make him out to be.

On the other hand, Saharsh Kumar Shukla puts in a menacing turn as Anand’s henchman Nirmal. Ahlawat also does a nice job portraying young Harpal’s fear and desperation.

Kartavya‘s casting is strange because Khan is playing much younger than he is. He’s 55, but Pawan is 40. I’m not sure how old Hussain is in real life, but he’s only got a few years on Khan, at best. All the grey hairspray in the world isn’t going to make him believable playing Khan’s dad. Even Mishra is just six years older than Khan, so the age gap between the partners doesn’t look as significant as it’s supposed to.

Despite being generally about the same social issue, Kartavya has little to say about institutional failings, compared to Bhakshak. Critique is sidelined in favor of man-on-a-mission directness that feels under-developed. I hoped for more.

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Movie Review: Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa (2026)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A celebratory get-together turns deadly in the engaging whodunit Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa. Actor-writer-director Rajat Kapoor confines his suspects to a single location, elevating the drama in this murder mystery.

The title is ironic, of course. The film opens with the discovery of Sohrab Handa’s (Vinay Pathak) body, dead in the living room of his vacation home from a slit throat. His friend Jayanti’s (Palomi Ghosh) screams wake the dozen others in the house, all of whom had gathered to celebrate her ten-year anniversary with Raman (Neil Bhoopalam).

Raman calls the local police, led by Inspector Qureshi (Saurabh Shukla), who initially assumes Raman is the culprit because he placed the phone call. Clearly, the cops aren’t going to be much help in solving the crime, but their questions shift the narrative back to earlier in the day, before the murder.

The group of folks at the house owned by Sohrab and his wife Isha (Koel Purie) are old friends and relatives, including Sohrab’s father (M. K. Raina) and younger brother Arun (Chandrachoor Rai). There are a couple of outsiders, including Jayanti & Raman’s friend Chandra (Rajat Kapoor), a psychologist.

Our first clue that Sohrab might not be as beloved as the title suggests is the way he treats Chandra upon meeting him and learning his profession. As the group eats lunch on the vacation house lawn, Sohrab ridicules Chandra for being a psychologist, while simultaneously bullying Jayanti’s timid brother-in-law Sandeep (Sharat Katariya) for noting that the food was under-salted. Sohrab dumps salt into Sandeep’s food and forces him to eat it while lobbing attacks at Chandra and making everyone else uncomfortable.

Sohrab seems particularly bothered by men in more intellectual, unmasculine careers, as he later attacks Madhavan (Ranvir Shorey) for being a professor. Sohrab owns an unspecified business with Raman and only respects men who “make” things. He has further insults for his father and other women there. The only one who seems to escape Sohrab’s bullying is the house’s caretaker, Satya (Mahesh Sharma).

None of this is necessarily grounds for murder, though it’s hard to imagine many of the guests being truly upset that Sohrab is dead. Raman is secretly planning to ask Sohrab to sell his stake in their company — with a couple of potential buyers being among the guests — but again, that’s not really a matter of life or death.

Like many whodunits, the murderer’s reveal is kind of a letdown after an entertaining journey. Then again, the killer’s identity is perhaps less important than the relationships between characters and what led up to the crime. The characters are interesting and distinct, and their conversations carry this dialogue-heavy film. It’s particularly engaging for subtitle readers like me, as there are few breaks in the chatter (hence no opportunities to look down at one’s phone and get distracted).

Kapoor stages the film like a play, confining the activity to the house. Characters spend much of their time clustered together in the living room, with a few folks puttering in the background in the adjoining dining room. One scene finds five or six characters gossiping in the small kitchen, and the scene feels convivial, not cramped.

Where things go a bit awry is that Kapoor — and thus the film — seems to have much more sympathy for Sohrab than the character warrants. Pathak performs the man as cruel, yet Kapoor as Chandra judges him to be misunderstood. “I’m not sure he’s a bully. I mean, he pretends to be,” Chandra says of Sohrab, saying he sees him a vulnerable.

Is it even possible to pretend to be a bully without actually being a bully? The hurt feelings Sohrab causes are real. Trying to explain away Sohrab’s behavior by saying he really just hates himself doesn’t undo the damage he causes.

Instead of Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa being about an unsympathetic victim who actually deserves our sympathy, I think the film is about not realizing when old friendships have run their course. If the other characters in the movie are guilty of anything, it’s of not having the courage to be the first to walk away from someone they no longer like or respect.

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Movie Review: Tu Yaa Main (2026)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Tu Yaa Main (“You or Me“) is more than just a creepy creature feature. It has quite a lot of to say about wealth inequality, class differences, and the commodification of the individual in the age of social media.

Yet director Bejoy Nambiar employs two truly disappointing uses of the flash-forward in this film. The technique is trendy, and maybe it’s even something he borrowed from the 2018 Thai film The Pool on which Tu Yaa Main is based. Either way, there’s no reason to use the technique the way he does.

The film opens with a woman and two men flirting in a lake somewhere in southern India. One of them is eaten by an unseen animal, letting the audience know what threat the main characters will eventually face. It’s a classic monster movie setup.

Inexplicably, the next scene is a flash-forward of the two main characters Maruti (Adarsh Gourav) and Avani (Shanaya Kapoor) — who haven’t been officially introduced but whom the audience will recognize from the movie poster and trailer — arguing while trapped in a very deep, empty swimming pool. They aren’t in any immediate danger, and nothing exciting happens. The title graphic floats into frame as Avani yells for help.

What is the point of this scene? It’s like Nambiar forgot that he already had an opening sequence — one that was more interesting than two people bickering. Was he worried that people would be confused when they didn’t immediately see Gourav and Kapoor? Then he could’ve started with a pool scene and cut the animal attack sequence. It makes no sense.

The main story gets a proper chronological start after that. Avani is a popular lifestyle influencer known as “Miss Vanity,” and Maruti is an up-and-coming rapper called “Aala Flowpara.” He gets in trouble with her security guards while filming a music video in front of her mansion, and she’s amused when he flirts with her in the middle of the scuffle.

They meet again at a concert, and he follows her (and her manager and other staff members) home from the event. She hops out of her SUV and spends the night riding around with him on his motorcycle.

Privately, the pair start dating despite the huge class divide that separates them, bonding over their complicated relationships with their parents (Maruti’s dad absconded, and Avani’s are dead). Being associated with Avani is good for Maruti’s career, but he genuinely likes her. Being with Maruti affords Avani a degree of freedom she doesn’t have as “Miss Vanity,” who is as much a business as it is a persona. Her manager’s shriek when Avani discloses that she ate carbs while out joyriding with Maruti is very funny.

Both characters have people who depend on them financially, but their relationships with their dependents are quite different. Maruti’s trying to provide stability and material comfort for his mother, sister, and her infant, all of whom share an apartment with him that’s smaller than Avani’s swimming pool. Avani’s dependents are her employees. The couple’s romantic relationship comes with huge questions about its effect on both of their future earning potentials, a fact they are happy to ignore — until they can’t.

Gourav and Kapoor are both wonderful at humanizing their characters and making them more than superficial stereotypes. They communicate so much with glances that it holds your attention. A killer soundtrack of tunes largely co-written and performed by Gourav enhances the experience. The track “Jee Liya” — which Gourav sings with Lothika — is terrific.

Around 45 minutes into the movie — well after the audience has become invested in the main couple and right after an emotional sequence in which Avani tells Maruti about her parents’ tragic deaths — the movie again flashes forward to the couple stuck in the empty pool. Maruti finds a way out through a drain, but they don’t escape. No monster, no excitement.

Why?

Did Nambiar think we’d forgotten how the movie opened? Did he think we missed the foreshadowing when Avani mentioned the possibility of dying in her own large swimming pool or the significance of the scene of her parents’ drowning? Is the flash-forward supposed to benefit people who walked into the theater 20 minutes late or were scrolling on their phone?

If it’s because of the second question, well, tough luck to those viewers. Show up on time and pay attention. If it’s because of the first question, it’s an insult. How movie-illiterate does Nambiar think we are?

The empty pool finally comes into play in the second half of the film. The couple fight about their future and are sent away by Avani’s people to figure things out. Maruti’s motorcycle breaks down en route to Goa, and they get stuck at a rundown hotel that’s closing for the season. The hotel has a 20-foot-deep swimming pool with no shallow end that’s used for scuba training. They accidentally wind up stuck in the drained pool, but they aren’t alone.

Tu Yaa Main‘s pivot from relationship drama to survival thriller is well-handled and quite fun. The creature effects are very good, and the story finds inventive ways to keep our heroes imperiled. It’s especially proficient at emphasizing the physical toll on the characters. When they fall while trying to climb out of the pool, you feel it when they land on the hard tiles.

The film is otherwise so well done that it makes the two in medias res scenes extra jarring. I don’t know if they come from Nambiar’s (or his producers’) lack of confidence in himself or his audience, but the scenes are confounding distractions.

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Movie Review: Nukkad Naatak (2026)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Nukkad Naatak on Netflix

It’s rare to find a contemporary Hindi social issue movie that trusts its narrative to make its point without addressing the audience directly. Gimmicks like having the main character give a speech about the issue or closing the film with slates of statistics are so overdone that audiences just tune out.

Nukkad Naatak (“Street Theater“) is an example of the good kind of meaningful storytelling. It uses the framework of a coming-of-age story about two college students to convey a sophisticated explanation of the interconnected factors that entrench poverty, sans speeches and statistics.

Best friends Molshri (Molshri) and Shivang (Shivang Rajpal) are in their final semester at college. They became friends through a street theater group Molshri runs on campus, enacting plays about societal problems she and the other members feel passionate about. Performing gives timid Shivang an emotional outlet as he struggles privately to accept that he is gay.

When the pair see the owner of the campus canteen harass his poor employee Mukund (Lalit Saw), Molshri ropes Shivang into a revenge plan. They sneak into the canteen at night and steal drinks and snacks, which Molshri gives to Mukund as compensation. The duo are caught and expelled from school.

A chance encounter with the college’s director (played by Danish Husain) gives Molshri and Shivang a possible path to reinstatement. The director recognizes that the pair are driven by a desire for justice, but that they lack worldly knowledge. He takes them to the slum where Mukund lives, and he points out the dozens of children there in the middle of the day. If Molshri and Shivang can enroll just five kids from the slum in the local school, the director will reinstate them.

The challenge is almost too easy for Molshri and Shivang to believe — until they try to accomplish it. They run into roadblock after roadblock as they begin to understand the complicating factors that keep children out of school and, in turn, perpetuate generational poverty.

As Molshri and Shivang run up against obstacles, they grow as people while they — and the audience, by extension — learn about systemic poverty. It’s basic storytelling, but it feels novel compared to the standard Hindi-cinema approach to informative entertainment. Perhaps it matters that the film’s writer-director Tanmaya Shekhar is based in New York.

Shekhar keeps the main duo’s character growth at the center of Nukkad Naatak‘s story. Molshri has always been sure of her path in life, but the college director’s challenge throws everything up in the air. The opportunity to help Mukund’s younger sister Chhoti (Nirmala Hajra) learn to read becomes an obsession, but one Molshri’s unprepared to meet. It feels like starting from scratch, unless she can figure out how to integrate who she has been with who she wants to be.

Shivang’s growth arc is the opposite. He’s never seen a way to live his truth in India, so he’s only focused on getting into a North American graduate school, assuming he’ll figure out how to be comfortable in his own skin once he gets there. Expulsion forces him to confront how he’d have to live as a gay man if he had to stay in India — a fate he’s unwilling to accept until he realizes he doesn’t have to figure everything out on his own.

As actors, Molshri and Shivang are really skilled, considering their limited professional experience. Same for young Nirmala Hajra. Even the supporting cast of students and people who live in the slums make the world of Nukkad Naatak feel believable. Director Shekhar strikes the right balance, trusting that if he can hold the audience’s attention with an entertaining story, they’ll absorb his message as a matter of course.

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