The principal plot premise of Bad Cop, streaming on Disney+Hotstar and produced by Fremantle India, is as trite as they come. Two identical twins end up on two sides of the law. One becomes a police inspector, the other a small-time conman. Bad Cop is really just another Bollywood potboiler stretched out into an eight-episode...
Category: Movie Reviews
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Pashmina Roshan, In Her Bollywood Debut, Is The Film’s Primary Focus Of Attention
The bells and whistles and frills and fancies of a coming-of-age romantic drama are crammed into Ishq Vishk Rebound, an uneven but agreeable follow-up to a rom-com (Ken Ghosh’s Ishq Vishk) from two decades ago that gave Shahid Kapoor’s career a solid start. If there is one element in Ishq Vishk Rebound that is consistently...
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Junaid Khan Tries Gamely To Rise Above The Tameness Of The Script
The defamation case that Maharaj fictionalises with a fair bit of dramatic flourish was of historic importance. However, the Netflix film, notwithstanding the controversy that delayed its release, is anything but groundbreaking. The YRF-produced period drama raises important questions of timeless relevance but loses the plot somewhat by choosing soften its pivotal postulations. It resorts...
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Prabhas’ Film Has Firepower That An Aspiring Futuristic Franchise Needs
Its vaulting ambition, visual extravagance and bewildering millennium-spanning time-frame never desert Kalki 2898 AD. That contributes to as well as occasionally helps the Ashwin Nag-directed film leap over its narrative speed-breakers and hurdles. There are many, especially in the first half, which is an incoherent mess riddled with many an unanswered question. Kalki 2898 AD,...
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Diljit Dosanjh And Neeru Bajwa Turn The Clock Back Without Letting The Strain Show
Over a decade after Jatt & Juliet and its sequel became the highest-grossing films in the history of Punjabi cinema and, along with 2012’s Carry on Jatta, rescued a movie industry from years of dormancy, the third film in the franchise, powered by Diljit Dosanjh’s high-wattage charisma and his proven chemistry with Neeru Bajwa, has...
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A Lively, Warm Film Buoyed By Flawless Performances
It is not very often that a female-led dramedy from the Mumbai movie industry spells out its intent with the kind of refreshing lightness of touch that first-time director Tahira Kashyap brings to bear upon Sharmajee Ki Beti. Bright and breezy, but never unduly frothy, the film, written by the director herself, extends the concerns...
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Hindi Cinema Has Never Produced Anything Quite Like This
Hindi cinema has never produced anything quite like Kill. The film has emerged from a crevice hitherto unexplored by Mumbai cinema. It pushes the boundaries of violence and gore way beyond what a Bollywood action flick has ever imagined. Instead of staging the usual kind of bowdlerized Bollywood set-pieces that are designed to service the...
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Has Markedly Less Tensile Strength Than The First Two Seasons
The distance that the surviving gangsters and their accomplices and rivals traverse in Mirzapur Season 3 is considerable. But the tools and tropes that the Amazon Prime Video crime show employs in the new tranche of ten episodes remain firmly within familiar parameters. The reign of carpet exporter and crime boss Akhandanand Tripathi alias Kaleen...
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Akshay Kumar’s Film Does Not Exactly Soar Above The Clouds
Two competing stars – the story and the lead actor Akshay Kumar – jostle for domination in Sarfira, Sudha Kongara’s remake of her own National Award-winning Soorarai Pottru. The trouble is that they pull in different directions to the detriment of a film that is also undone a tad by a singular lack of nuance....
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Film Relies On Vicky Kaushal To Pull It Out Of The Fire
The good news first: Bad Newz is not all bad. But is that good enough for a movie that aspires to be an all-out laugh riot? NO. The moments in the overlong film that sparkle a touch are way too few and far between to fully offset the repercussions of the ones that don’t. Directed...