Tag Archives: Suresh Triveni

Movie Review: Subedaar (2026)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Filmmaker Suresh Triveni’s latest movie Subedaar is so tense it’s almost unbearable at times. In terms of achieving the intended tone, it’s an undeniable success. However, that single tone makes it hard to maintain the story momentum.

The first few moments of Subedaar are light-hearted misdirection. Elementary school boys Bablu and Mannu ponder how people in airplanes go to the bathroom and come up with a funny answer. But as the cheerful boys start to run between the heavy machinery dredging sand from the local river, the music becomes ominous. The boys jump in the water. Mannu doesn’t resurface.

He’s not the first kid to drown in the river as a result of industrial mismanagement. The dredgers are controlled by gangster Babli Didi (Mona Singh). She’s currently imprisoned awaiting trial for murder, but her shadow hangs over the town. Mannu’s uncle demands justice, so Babli Didi’s reckless half-brother, Prince (Aditya Rawal), kills him.

Arjun Maurya (Anil Kapoor) is new to this city governed by fear. He recently retired from the military, where he achieved the rank of Subedaar (a junior commissioned officer). His beloved wife just died, and he’s trying to form a relationship with his college-aged daughter Shyama (Radhika Madan). He hardly knows her because his career kept him away from home for most of her life.

The transition from highly organized military life to civilian chaos is unnerving for Arjun. He looks like he’s barely holding it together even while trying to do something ordinary, like close his wife’s bank account. The frazzled bank clerk is so self-focused that he doesn’t register Arjun’s taut expression and the danger that lurks behind it.

The bank offers an early lesson in how the town operates. No one within the structures of power will help. They only protect themselves, particularly when Babli Didi and Prince are concerned. The mantra of the police chief is: “See very little, and forget everything.”

Prince is dangerous because he insists on controlling every interaction, enjoys humiliating people, and resorts to violence fast — and he never faces negative consequences for his brutal behavior. When Arjun refuses to be belittled by Prince and his cronies, it makes the former soldier a target. Arjun’s best friend Prabhakar (Saurabh Shukla) urges him to apologize and move on, but Arjun’s pride won’t allow him to do so.

At the same time, Shyama exposes one of her fellow students for his lewd behavior and is threatened with retaliation. She doesn’t tell her father about this, and he doesn’t tell her about Prince. When goons lurk outside the house at night or throw things at their home in the morning, father and daughter both assume they are the intended target. They’re both right, just at different times of day.

Though not always the main focus of the story, the relationship between Arjun and Shyama is the film’s most compelling. She has every reason to be angry with him, and he feels plenty of guilt mixed with his grief over his wife’s death (Khushbu Sundar plays Arjun’s wife Sudha in some sweet flashbacks). He’s doing the best he can to act like a parent to Shyama, but there’s no quick fix.

Troubled relationships between parents and children featured in Triveni’s two previous directorials as well: 2017’s Tumhari Sulu and 2022’s Jalsa. What makes the storylines work in each film is tremendous acting. Subedaar might be Triveni’s best yet, in that regard.

Kapoor is in top form as Arjun, trying to hold back the sea of emotions inside him. Madan shows us that Shyama’s hostility comes from a place of great pain. Both Kapoor and Madan are both very good in their action scenes. Shukla’s Prabhakar says volumes with a single look, and Singh steals every scene she’s in.

Rawal is utterly loathsome as Prince, which is just what the role calls for. He’s particularly good at invading people’s personal space, because in his mind, it’s all his space. His presence is oppressive because we know there are no good guys coming to the rescue.

That said, a little goes a long way with Prince, especially since he doesn’t change or evolve. The only subplot to offset Prince’s lopsided feud with Arjun is Shyama’s own struggle against stronger opponents, so the experience of watching Subedaar becomes emotionally fatiguing over time. It’s a classic case where chopping twenty minutes from the runtime would actually make things more impactful.

Triveni is improving as a director with each movie. Subedaar is another step in the right direction, with clearer character motivations than in previous films. I’m happy to see it.

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Movie Review: Jalsa (2022)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A hit-and-run accident upends the lives of a popular broadcaster and her cook in the drama Jalsa. Strong performances are the saving grace of a film that feels incomplete.

Jalsa opens with a shocking crime. A teenage girl is with a boy on a deserted railway overpass late at night. They fight and she runs away, straight into the path of an oncoming car. The driver and the boy flee, neither knowing if the girl is alive or dead.

Then the story rewinds to earlier in the day, before the accident. Flash-forward opens aren’t generally my favorite plot device, but this one effectively builds tension in Jalsa, because the story catches back up to the crash in about 20 minutes.

During that intervening time, the audience is introduced to Maya Menon (Vidya Balan), a TV journalist known for her tough — and maybe a little self-righteous — interviews of powerful people. Her long hours keep her away from her 10-year-old son Ayush (Surya Kasibhatla), who has cerebral palsy. Ayush is looked after by Maya’s mom (Rohini Hattangadi) and Ruksana (Shefali Shah), the family cook, whose long hours keep her away from her own family.

Since the audience and several of the characters quickly learn the identity of the hit-and-run driver, Jalsa isn’t a true mystery but more of an examination of the consequences of the crime. A subplot with a pair of cops trying to stall the investigation serves as a bit of a red herring, but it doesn’t feel organically integrated into the plot. Likewise, the speed with which a newly hired junior reporter at Maya’s station — who has only just moved to the city and knows no one — uncovers evidence of the police coverup is unconvincing.

Class plays a strong role in the narrative, as Maya and Ruksana face the challenges of parenting with dramatically different resources at their disposal. As someone from outside India and the diaspora (and as someone who’s not rich), I felt like I was missing context about the relationships between wealthy employers and members of their household staff. Without knowing what the expected level of intimacy between the employers and employees should be, I had trouble deciphering when people were acting abnormally or what should be read into certain interactions. Whether that’s my own lack of context or a fault of the writing, I can’t say.

It is worth noting that in my review of Jalsa director Suresh Triveni’s 2017 debut, Tumhari Sulu, I also felt like the movie wasn’t clear about the characters’ feelings or how the audience was supposed to feel about them. Maybe this is just an aspect of Triveni’s storytelling style that I don’t connect with. I also suggested in my Tumhari Sulu review that he bring on a co-writer for his next film, and he did: Prajwal Chandrashekar. Perhaps that’s why I found Jalsa slightly more successful.

Despite Triveni’s storytelling faults, Balan and Shah are such gifted actors that it’s hard not to be invested in their characters. Both women experience pain, anxiety, and anger, and the performances by Balan and Shah are right on point. Manav Kaul — who played Balan’s husband in Tumhari Sulu — has a nice cameo as Maya’s ex-husband/Ayush’s dad.

Another quality performance comes from Surya Kasibhatla as Maya’s son Ayush. Casting a boy who actually has cerebral palsy makes the role that much more impactful. We can understand why the adults around Ayush feel so protective of him, but also why he’s more independent than they think he is. Kasibhatla plays Ayush with just the right amount of cheek for a kid who’s trying to assert more control over his life but who still loves his family. Casting Kasibhatla was a great choice, and I hope to see him in other films in the future.

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Movie Review: Tumhari Sulu (2017)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Actors Vidya Balan and Manav Kaul carry Tumhari Sulu, a task made more difficult by the story’s lack of perspective. It’s hard to tell how first-time feature filmmaker Suresh Triveni expects the audience to feel about his characters and their journey.

Balan plays Sulu, a bored housewife who entertains herself by entering radio contests. Her husband, Ashok (Kaul), ekes out a meager paycheck managing a dysfunctional tailoring shop. Their eleven-year-old son Pranav (Abhishek Sharma) earns money on the side by selling dirty DVDs and magazines to his classmates.

Sulu’s more successful sisters delight in their sibling’s lower-middle-class status, chiding Sulu for not having a job while reminding her that her lack of a degree precludes her from getting a reputable gig, anyway.

When Sulu goes to the radio station to collect her latest prize — a pressure cooker — she notices an ad for a late-night radio show host. She finagles a meeting with the station manager, Maria (Neha Dhupia), who gives Sulu a shot, if only for the chance to laugh at the frumpy, naive housewife. However, Sulu’s sultry delivery is just what Maria is looking for, and a new radio star is born.

Triveni’s story — which he wrote and directed — takes a long time to get to this point without advancing the characters’ development. The plot meanders, never lingering long enough to develop any of the potential themes — topics like Sulu’s self-worth, women’s financial independence, or the challenges of a two-income household — beyond a surface level examination.

Even if one assumes that Triveni is leaving it to the audience to draw their own conclusions, he doesn’t give them enough information to do so, chiefly because the characters don’t have meaningful conversations. Sulu doesn’t take her husband seriously, and she has no friends to confide in. Without substantive dialogues — or even internal monologues — it’s hard to infer what is important to the characters, and there’s only so much meaning we can derive from their actions alone.

Triveni also takes for granted the notion that a family’s ability to function is ultimately a woman’s responsibility. When complications arise concurrent with Sulu’s new job, it’s implied that, even if the problem’s aren’t specifically Sulu’s fault, they are her responsibility to fix. Nevermind that Ashok’s work situation was hardly ideal or that Pranav was already a junior pornographer before Sulu started her radio gig.

As is the case with every movie starting Vidya Balan, she is Tumhari Sulu‘s greatest asset, always fun and engaging. Yet, Kaul’s performance enables Balan to be her best. During Sulu’s and Ashok’s happier moments, the pair are adorable together — an unexpected delight, given that Kaul usually plays villains. Dhupia is a great choice to play a hip radio station manager, but her character is too easygoing to be convincing, given the competitive nature of that industry.

Songs are weirdly integrated into Tumhari Sulu, and the inclusion of random parkour stunts into one of them almost hints at an insecurity about whether the film itself is exciting and cool enough to grab the audience’s attention. Perhaps a co-writer for Triveni would have mitigated some of the burden on Balan’s and Kaul’s shoulders.

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