Tag Archives: Pratik Gandhi

Movie Review: Dhoom Dhaam (2025)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Dhoom Dhaam knows exactly what it wants to be: a light romantic comedy with a touch of adventure that will make you laugh and not feel like you’ve wasted two hours. It delivers exactly that.

Yami Gautam Dhar and Pratik Gandhi star as Koyal and Veer. Their parents arranged their marriage, and they find one another attractive and accomplished enough to agree to the match. Koyal’s clingy family ensures that the couple never has a moment alone in the weeks before their wedding, but everyone seems happy with the arrangement.

Their first awkward moments alone in a hotel room on their wedding night are interrupted by a knock on the door. A pair of gun-toting tough guys barge in demanding to know where Charlie is. Neither Koyal nor Veer know anyone named Charlie, but the thugs assume they are lying.

A daring escape from their balcony reveals that Koyal is much more courageous than timid Veer. That’s further confirmed when they race away from the men in Veer’s car, and he’s more worried about getting a speeding ticket than the fact that their pursuers are shooting at them. Thankfully, Koyal is an experienced street racer.

That’s not to say that Veer is totally gutless. He’s a veterinarian, so blood doesn’t bother him. When their search for Charlie takes them to a male strip club, he does what he has to do and entertains the ravenous patrons with a cartwheel in his boxer shorts. Seeing a bunch of other women lusting after her new husband makes Koyal think that he might be a catch after all.

The action as the newlyweds race all over town is energetic, but not gruesome or too intense. This is definitely not an R-rated movie. Likewise, there isn’t a lot of heat between the couple, but their growing fondness for one another is quite sweet.

The couple’s physical awkwardness relates to the film’s theme: you can’t really know a person until you spend time with them, especially when there is such pressure to be perfect. Social media accounts and dating profiles are heavily curated. When Koyal and Veer meet for the first time, it’s in front of their whole families, with everyone on their best behavior. It’s easy to hide your true self and all your flaws under those circumstances, but it’s hard to do it forever.

What Dhoom Dhaam lacks in sparks, it makes up for in laughs. Gautam Dhar and Gandhi are both very funny and make good use of a solid script by Aditya Dhar, Aarsh Vora, and Rishab Seth, who also directed the movie. The writing team has a terrific handle on context and continuity, mining them for comedy while throwing in some delightfully absurd moments. Quality subtitles ensure that none of the humor is lost in translation.

Sequences are tightly edited, and without traditional choreographed numbers, the story moves at a fast clip. This is a movie intent on not overstaying its welcome, and Seth certainly achieves that. Dhoom Dhaam is really enjoyable.

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Movie Review: Agni (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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