A Look Back on 2023 in Movies

Unlike most of the folks preparing for their NYE parties, my day job does not give me an off for the next day, so here I am sitting by my lonesome, filing the time by keying in my annual retrospective of watch experiences. If I have generated enough of a guilt feeling to dampen your spirits a little, that's mission accomplished. No? Oh well, we move on.

Compared to the last couple of years 2023 had me watching more films at the cinema, although they still add up only to a handful.  I also watched a few more web-shows than I normally do. Anyway here's this year in retrospective, divided into the usual good-bad-ugly categories (and listing the current streaming networks they're available on in India). Some of the choices will raise an eyebrow or sneering comment, but I'm just going by my gut instinct here. This list also includes a couple of releases from Nov-Dec 2022, which I only caught this year.

The Good Stuff

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (English, Netflix) About, this movie the first thing I would say is THE HYPE IS REAL. Visually outstanding, upping the ante on the terrific first film, this one is equally engaging drama-wise and leaves me wanting for the concluding installment like a heroin junkie craving for his fix.

12th Fail (Hindi) It's old-fashioned, it's sentimental, it's idealistic...it's also one of the best films Vinod Chopra has made (definitely better than anything his protege Raju Hirani made), and an object lesson in how mainstream Indian cinema need not be solely the exaggerated machismo jackasserie the industry is celebrating right now. I LOVED it. (Detailed review HERE)

Nanpakal Neratthu Mayakkam (Malayalam, Netflix) Apart from its all too on-the-nose "screen within the screen" conceit that constantly blares a sensory overload of symbolic dialog and songs, NNM is a pretty darn good whimsical little story about a man that appears to have been occupied by the spirit of another man, the ripples it creates in the lives of the people that knew each of the men, and finally his own identity crisis. Both director Lijo Jose Pelissery and star Mammootty seemed to have had a ball making it. Not a masterpiece like Ee Maa Yau, but damn good all the same.

Bheed (Hindi, Netflix) I thought Anubhav Sinha's film was pretty damn good as a story of grounded heroism in which a cop manning a state border post has to contend with busloads of migrant passengers trying to reach their home while he has orders to keep them out. Rajkummar Rao is a terrific protagonist and there is a sterling supporting cast. The movie falters somewhat when it tries to portray a larger picture about the govt's mismanagement as well as the more generalized points about class differences in society. But when it focuses on the characters and their drama it is a fine example of a more credible coming of age hero story.

Thankam (Malayalam, Amazon Prime) Thankam is a moral mystery (like another of Biju Menon's films - Aarkkariyam). It has its narrative slips (not tight enough in the procedural segments), but the easy depiction of deep friendships, and the emotional upheavals that come from unraveling of the secrets withheld even between the best of friends is terrific. Add in great performances from the lead cast (Biju, Vineeth Srinivasan and Girish Kularni) and some nail-biting tense individual scenes, and this noir-inflected drama is a worthwhile watch.

Dahaad (Hindi web-series, Amazon Prime) - In Dahaad, Sonakshi Sinha plays a lower-caste cop in Rajasthan investigating a series of murders by a womanizing serial killer. I thought it was worthwhile on the whole. Solid performances from Sinha and Vijay Varma in this nicely paced procedural with a well-realized setting. I would recommend it to fans of dark crime thrillers. (Detailed review HERE)

Farzi (Hindi web-series, Amazon Prime) The generic and lackluster first episode of this (Family Man fame) Raj and DK series had me seriously wondering if the burden of simultaneously taking on multiple projects had severely stretched out the creative juices of these guys. Thankfully, the further episodes picked up the slack, and while the best parts of Family Man are superior to anything we see here, this is still a well-made piece of entertainment. (Detailed review HERE)

Cinema Marte Dum Tak (Hindi web-series, Amazon Prime) Director Vasan Bala's exploration of the micro-budget exploitation movie scene by inviting four of its former major players to each make a new film and use it to chart the rise and fall of the genre has humor, passion and a lot of heart. There are moments that have you shaking your head in amused disbelief and other that will bring an honest-to-goodness lump to the throat. Well worth it for the non-snooty cinema nerd.

Arnold (English mini-series, Netflix) - In its 3 defined chapters - Athlete, Actor and American - Arnold sets out to demonstrate its subject's determination to "get there" in all of his chosen endeavors. It goes without saying that the treatment is glossy with more than a little dash of hagiography. But it does offer a detailed and entertaining picture of this larger-than-life fitness/movie icon for whom "Too big is not big enough". (Detailed review HERE)

The Decent Stuff

Oppenheimer (English) I struggled a bit whether I should put in my top-tier list, but my expectations for this film were higher than what it ultimately delivered to me. On the whole Christopher Nolan's magnum opus about the man behind the atomic bomb tests is a decent film, and has some strong moments, but ultimately it is not as emotionally affecting as it should have been. In the back-and-forth narrative I see inspiration from Oliver Stone's seminal film of JFK and David Fincher's The Social Network. But in terms of cinematic imagination the film lacks the bravado of a Kubrick or an Oliver Stone. It looks nice, sure, but not memorable.

Animal (Hindi) This male dominated violent drama is not without its problems, but it at least strikes me as a work that reflects the vision and sensibilities of an individual movie-maker and not a collection of box-office choices. The fact that I could sit through this 200(!) min slogathon without at the end wanting to kill myself tells me that it was doing a few things right. Your mileage may vary. (Detailed review HERE)

Khufiya (Hindi, Netflix) I watched Vishal Bhardwaj's spy drama with mixed feelings. Like with several of his movies there are some good scenes and excellent performances, marred by some really ill-fitting 'quirky' humor and absurd writing. And don't believe the 'based on a true story' heading for one second. Still, it went well enough for me to watch the whole thing late at night in a single sitting. Tabu is a pleasure to watch and I was impressed with what Wamiqa Gabbi, Ali Fazal and sultry Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon brought to their parts. (Detailed review HERE)

Mukundan Unni Associates (Malayalam, Hotstar) Mukundan Unni is probably the most amoral protagonist seen in an Indian movie. I can see where comparisons to the Jake Gyllenhaal movie Nightcrawler come in. This movie has issues for me - I thought it had a great ending near the scene of a bus accident, but it goes on for another 20 min unnecessarily dotting i's and crossing t's. Still, I would suggest giving it the look see.

Maamannan (Tamil, Netflix) Mamannan is a masala film but within that space does try to stand out. While there are fight scenes, the film does not devolve into a brainless machismo action fest. Likewise female lead Keerthi Suresh is not the usual birdbrained damsel in distress. The utter lack of nuance in Faasil's villain is a letdown, and the screenplay could have done with some serious pruning, but I found a film like this more palatable than Jai Bhim which reduces the lower castes to being faceless victims, dependent on rescue by Benevolent Brahminical Heroes. (Detailed review HERE)

The Pope's Exorcist (English, Netflix) After I saw the trailer for this film, I was expecting a campy LOL-fest knockoff of The Exorcist. In most respects this is true. Russell Crowe in the titular part seems to be aware of the camp quotient and his performance reflects the tongue-in-cheek. TPE has sufficient hilariously absurd material to be a decent time-pass watch, especially if you call over buddies and set up some drinks. (Detailed review HERE)

Evil Dead Rise (English, Jio) To its credit, this latest installment in the Evil Dead franchise runs a brisk pace, relies mainly on make-up and practical FX for the scares, and does not detour (apart from the prologue that gets an "eh, whatever" resolution at the end). It is decent popcorn entertainment if also eminently forgettable. (Detailed review HERE)

Renfield (English, Jio) This horror-action-comedy is never particularly inventive and the screenplay not the most well-constructed, but it is in large measure a fun film, in its scrappy way more fun IMO than several of the current phase Marvel movies. Nicholas Cage as Dracula seems to be having a good time.

Monica O My Darling (Hindi, Netflix) MOMD doesn't entirely escape Vasan Bala's penchant for over-writing and referencing, but this is fortunately rare enough that one can enjoy the film for what it is: a solid romp that owes more than a smidgen of debt to Shriram Raghavan's crime capers (dutifully referenced). Huma Qureshi (❤ ❤ ❤) and Sikander Kher totally owned their parts.

The Meh Stuff

The Railway Men (Hindi web-series, Netflix) The first episode of this YRF production gave me pleasant Kaala Patthar type vibes, of a tale of hope within a greater disaster. But soon after, the writing becomes so sloppy as to destroy all sense of immersion. By the third episode, the piling up of "kuch bhi!" moments like when the zombie bride rises up from her gas-slain wedding party to stroll down to the railway station and Raghubir Yadav's train ticket checker gives out a dying speech after he gets stabbed by villainous rioters while saving a Sikh woman, this feels more like one of the scores of terrible 80's Bollywood films. I did watch it to the end (it's just 4 episodes long), but by then I didn't care what happened to who.

Dancing on the Grave (Hindi/English web-series, Netflix) People of a particular generation in Bengaluru will remember the sensational case of Shakereh Khaleeli, on which the series is based. In terms of the making, I would think that the 'series' could easily have been an 80-90 min documentary. It loses too much time on re-enactment of trivialities. Still, if you're interested in this piece of shocking true crime history, it's only a couple of hours of your time in all. (Detailed review HERE)

Bholaa (Hindi, Amazon Prime) I'd say Ajay Devgan's Bholaa is to Lokesh Kanagaraj's Kaithi, what Feroze Khan's Dayavan was to Maniratnam's Nayakan, a remake that took the trappings of the original but buggered the spirit of it. What an absolute waste of time.

Ponniyin Selvan -2 (Tamil, Amazon Prime) I enjoyed the first installment of Maniratnam's adaptation of this historical fantasy but didn't much care for its concluding segment. PS2 seemed sloppier and more hurried, with events and character bits coming across very staccato. Even visually, the number of times the camera kept randomly circling around characters became annoying, and the battle scenes were generic.

Pathaan (Hindi, Amazon Prime) I can't see this as a BOLLYWOOD movie, it is so much borne out of director Siddharth Anand's love of the Mission Impossible and James Bond movies. And like the last few MI films, I admire the technical prowess, but I just don't feel anything for the characters. There is nothing in the writing that strikes a chord: Here everyone just too busy trying to appear cool.

Jailer (Tamil, Amazon Prime) There’s a scene around the 110min mark in Jailer where, as per Prime’s subtitles, Rajini’s character is advising a Telugu movie guy “Don’t make garbage in the name of commercial cinema”. Given the no-emotional-stakes, no-internal-logic and utterly no respect for the audience’s patience this wankfest displays, they have some gall to make a statement like that.  

Leo (Tamil, Netflix) This is basically A History of Violence for Dummies. A trainwreck script of dead-ends and pointless twists is occasionally made interesting by some energetic and imaginative action sequences. (Detailed review HERE)

Sisu (Finnish) In which a Finnish ex-commando turned prospector goes after a Nazi platoon for stealing his gold. I was really hoping to like Sisu, but it was more okey-dokey than thrilling. The movie was a lot like John Wick for me - there's a good bit of exaggerated action and grittiness abounds, but the tone and build-up were wobbly. It's a little too deadpan for its own good and I couldn't give a flying fuck for the lead guy...or even his dog.

Meg 2: The Trench (English) I wasn't expecting cinematic art, but even as a film featuring multiple giant sharks and a giant octopus, Meg 2 can't get its priorities right. The monsters are a muddled side-act in this leaky boat weighed down with an inept plot about muhahaha evil humans going after oceanic unobtaniums. While officially credited to horror maverick Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England) this one has all the signs of being made by committee.

Pachuvum Athbhuthavilakkum (Malayalam, Amzon Prime) Fahad Faasil vehicle in which he undertakes an escort mission that eventually tests his moral fiber. Individual scenes can be really good, brimming with emotion and subtle comedy, but the pacing is way off at the script level, and it fails to immerse.

Iratta (Malayalam, Netflix) I had great expectations from this, but after watching I thought it was a complete GAAND movie. The basic premise of a crime mystery film where you have identical twin protagonists and the plot is not about them exchanging places is interesting in itself, but the screenplay is sloppy as heck and relies on face-palming contrivances. Characters appear and disappear puppet fashion. You have BGM that orders you to feel a particular way instead of it coming across naturally in the performances. Joju George is a great actor, but this ego trip was a serious misfire.

Animal [dir. Sandeep Reddy Vanga]

With its 80's Bollywood meets graphic novel / videogame sensibilities, Animal reminded me a good deal of Kill Bill. It bears that same element of homage / masturbatory pastiche Quentin Tarantino legitimized as its own art form.

The first inspiration is of course The Godfather. Reddy's film borrows swathes of narrative from that classic (As Baradwaj Rangan's review puts it, "...the trashy Mario Puzo novel and the classy Coppola adaptation that followed"). Ranbir Kapoor's Vijay is Michael Corleone to Anil Kapoor's Don-like tycoon father Balbir Singh. Like Michael, he as a child idolizes the dad, gets estranged from him and then returns when that father is murderously attacked, to take on the family mantle and go after his father's enemies with a vengeance. Of course, one could say Vijay's hotheadedness and penis-driven thinking also make him a Sonny Corleone; And like Sonny is admonished by Don Vito, he is frequently rebuked by Dad Balbir.

Old-school masala movie grammar runs in full vein in the depiction of the father-son relationship. There is a cloying, fetishistic edge to how much the son adores Balbir, stopping just short of attaching himself to and humping the dad's leg. Of course, like most tycoon dads in Indian movies, Balbir can't give his kids time of day, and Vijay's early misdemeanors (as a high school kid, he fires an assault rifle in his sister's classroom to rattle the fellows ragging her) seem like desperate attempts to get his dad to pay attention, even if it is only to give him a dressing-down. Surprisingly for a bigshot business magnate based in Delhi, Balbir actually believes his son he could be imprisoned for a crime. If the Manu Sharma and Sanjeev Nanda cases have taught us anything, it is that rich connected kids can (at least before a major public outcry) get away with murder.

And in the Animal universe, the law simply doesn't exist. I don't think I saw a single police character, not even when the rich tycoon's son-in-law goes missing (SPOILER: he and Vijay don't get along) or to investigate the aftermath of the pre-interval bloodbath in which Vijay trashes a hotel and mows down 300 masked blokes (ANIMAL masks, get it?!) with the help of axes, assault rifles and later a golf cart mounted with a gazillion belt-fed Gatling guns. This sequence with its complete disregard for proportion (and an involved gag about underwear) is fun, though not as engrossing as Oldboy's corridor fight because what really should have been a series of uninterrupted takes is edited to bits.

Post-intermission, we see a more humanized Vijay - his injuries in the hotel massacre have him dependent on a catheter and urine bag, he grows a belly and makes references to needing more frequent pad changes than his wife (Rashmika Mandanna, more on her later). For some reason, he now requires a heart transplant. Of course, he's still (hah!) cocky, but it makes a lot of emotional sense here, him trying to hold on to his alpha-maleness (oh yes, the movie is sufficiently self-aware to give us early on a mini-dissertation on the subject from Vijay's POV). This part of the film was to me the most interesting character-wise, and I would have been interested to see vulnerable Vijay for a longer span. But Reddy has other plans.

After a pointless subplot about a mistress (Tripti Dimri, wasted), the film unveils the major antagonist, another alpha male. This one is played by Bobby Deol: Age and a beard lend him personality and the part is written to his strengths. Now the stage is set for a showdown between Vijay and this guy. It's a more stereotypical contest of beefy biceps and obligatory shirt ripping. It tries to have its moment when Vijay offers his enemy the chance for a cessation of hostilities (they're actually related - elements of the Mabhabharata here). But you know what the bad guy's answer will be.

I was hesitant to see Animal because the reports of Reddy's previous hit Arjun Reddy glorifying a self-centered misogynistic prick kept me away from that one. But while dominated by the conflict between alpha-males and featuring a vulgar brand of humor, Animal does not legitimize them. Vijay's willingness to shed pools of blood to protect the family doesn't necessarily win him their adulation. His position towards women is a little murky. He criticizes his sister for being doormatted by her husband, but that seems more an expression of territorialism - How dare someone outside of the family disrespect her? As his wife, Rashmika Mandanna displays a lot of agency. She accepts his alpha-male status but is ready to hit back when he crosses her boundaries. A telling moment is when she lashes out at her mother, justifying her devotion to her blood-crazy husband, because he stood by her in her moments of need when her own parents deserted her for their social standing. She also gets a great scene when she confronts Vijay about his infidelity - it doesn't justify the time wasted on that subplot (which has a laughable conclusion) but it's engaging and Mandanna gives a solid account of her dramatic talent - I also appreciate that Reddy retains her original South Indian accent instead of a generic dub. The chemistry between her and Ranbir Kapoor supports the volatile and intense relationship of their characters, and I wish more of the film could have been told from the perspective of this couple and how it affects their dynamic than from the traditional all-male angle.

Ranbir Kapoor obviously commits to the lead part. Why wouldn't he, it's like Al Pacino playing Scarface's psycho-gangster, a colorful OTT actor's showcase - he even gets to do the body transformation bit (or wears a convincing fat suit). One part of Vijay's life the film keeps behind closed curtains is the time between his leaving home after he is thrown out by his father (thrown out in style though, he at least gets to keep an airplane) and when he returns in the wake of the father's attempted killing. This is the period when Vijay supposedly lives an independent life in the US with his wife and raises two children. While it might have been nice to see a different facet of his personality (and how he functioned outside of his family), Reddy adds to the script's intrigue by not exploring that segment.  He does refer to it in a telling exchange between Vijay and Balbir towards the end when Vijay calls out his father's complete ignorance of his life away from the family and of the person he could be when not drawn into conflict. Sadly, Anil Kapoor gets the short end of the stick. The father-son relationship is a crucial dynamic of the film and at the heart of the protagonist's actions, but the part of Balbir Singh is flat and under-written. He is mostly a reaction board to Vijay's doings, reduced to either sounding out Vijay or lamenting his misdeeds. You don't get an overall sense of the man, who seems remote to his family, but is apparently so loved by his employees, they whoop with joy when his son proclaims vengeance on his attackers.

Some of Reddy's editing choices are strange. A crucial killing in the film is shown much ahead of time with a jarring jumpcut - the scene goes from just-married clean-cut Ranbir angling his honeymoon plane over a steep slope to him suddenly all bearded and mean heading a convoy of cars and armed henchmen out to cause murderous havoc. The narrative later backtracks to explain, but the overall effect is of needless complication in the name of style and reduces the impact of the scene. The second half starts get tiresome with all the convolutions (and a post-credits sequence that steps into parody territory). I respect that Reddy wanted to tell the story in a messy way, but too much is often just too much. For better or worse, the score of the film is in tune with its loud sensibilities - there are occasions where the music drowns out the dialog, and moments where you dearly wish for a pair of earplugs.

That said, Animal at least strikes me as a work that reflects the vision and sensibilities of an individual movie-maker and not a collection of box-office choices. The fact that I could sit through this 200(!) min slogathon without at the end wanting to kill myself tells me that it was doing a few things right. Your mileage may vary.

Leo [dir. Lokesh Kanagaraj]

Lokesh Kanagaraj's 'Thalapathy' Vijay-starrer Leo is basically A History of Violence (AHoV)...for Dummies.

In David Cronenberg's 2005 movie, Viggo Mortensen played amiable small-town restauranter and family man Tom Stall, who suddenly displays a ruthless streak taking down murderous thugs that invade his diner. Hailed as a local hero for his bravery, mild-mannered Tom's life gets complicated when a vicious gangster (Ed Harris with a scarred eye) drops in claiming that Tom is actually Joey Cusack, hitman for a crime syndicate. The gangster doesn't believe Tom's denials and stalks his family to pressure him into confession, even kidnapping Tom's son, which culminates in another bloodbath. The violence creates estrangement and strife in Tom's personal life. One day he gets a call from a man claiming to be Joey's brother, a big city criminal who wants Joey to return, threatening that he will otherwise come out to find him.

Kanagaraj lifts the premise almost wholesale: When crazed criminals invade Parthiban (Vijay)'s snazzy coffee shop in Theog, Himachal and threaten evil tidings to his little girl, he guns them down unhesitatingly and with superhuman accuracy. Shortly after, the kin of the slain gangsters who come in for revenge get slaughtered by Parthiban in a market brawl, making his wife (Trisha) wonder about the man she married. Then a gnarly old gangster Antony Das (Sanjay Dutt) drops in, insisting that Parthiban is actually his son Leo, a killer. Das also kidnaps Parthiban's son to make him admit his identity. Sounds familiar?

AHoV has a reputation as a masterful study of inner violence, but I couldn't buy into it. Compared to previous Cronenberg ventures like Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch and Crash, AHoV's layering is juvenile pop-psychology. The bad guys who come in after Tom/Joey, including his brother (William Hurt) are such flat caricatures there's no sense of the uncontrollable animal inside Tom.

But if I felt that way about the source film, Leo takes it down several notches, using the plot as yet another star-glorifying vehicle, albeit a frequently stylish one. In AHoV, till the diner assault, Tom is seen only as the sweet-natured whitebread townie. In Vijay's introductory scene he tackles an aggressive runaway hyena, even giving gyaan about animal behavior to the local forest ranger (Gautham Menon in another paycheck part), finally jabbing a tranquilizer by hand into the animal.

This is before we get the tour of him waltzing through the coffee shop to the strains of an English song called Ordinary Person, telling us how utterly "ordinary" this guy is. Yeah, right. Later on, we have more "Now feeling" songs like I'm Scared and Badass; because Thalapathy can't act his way out of a paper bag, he needs this Greek chorus equivalent to explain what his character is going through at each stage.  When the fracas with the coffee shop invaders happens, it is set to retro jukebox Tamil tunes, softening the impact of the violence, making it more a flashy "hero" fight. To Kanagaraj's credit he does give these baddies a neat little backstory of how they landed in the cafe. After gunning down the felons, Vijay expresses his character's horror at his own violence by yelling aloud, in a hilarious imitation of Kamalahaasan's Guna histrionics.

As Antony Das, Sanjay Dutt regurgitates the "heavy" he played in the Agneepath remake and KGF: Chapter 2. Das runs a front of a tobacco business, and to emphasize this point the characters in this movie smoke like chimneys (Thankfully, Netflix doesn't bother with the mandatory on-screen smoking disclaimers). But the real business for Antony and his brother Harold(!) - played by Arjun Sarja - is drugs. Even here Kanagaraj shows his weird tastes by having the brothers deal in datura, a poisonous plant. Datura extracts have psychoactive properties, but they are not the "feel good" variety of drugs, used more as ritual poisons / fear-generating hallucinogens. When in an extended flashback sequence that also bungs in a "mass" number, you are told Antony Das' motive to track down Leo, you start to wish you had some datura toxin to swallow.

Leo's screenplay is a trainwreck of dead-ends and pointless twists. As depicted here, the character's dual nature is not particularly different from films like Hum and Baasha where an apparently mild-mannered protagonist is revealed to have a violent history he is covering up. The near 3-hour runtime is such a slog I had to split my viewing into 3 instalments. But it does have some of Kanagaraj's best directed action sequences. The highlight for me is a chase sequence where Parthiban, riding shotgun on a bike, chases after a convoy of vehicles driven by Antony's gang who have kidnapped his son. It features that same brand of painstakingly storyboarded and executed action that distinguished his 2019 Kaithi. The camera is an active participant in the proceedings, swooping back and forth, even going through vehicles. It's (ha!) fast and furious, yet maintains clarity in the sequence of events. Leo is probably also the hardest that Vijay has worked on a film in recent years, physically at least. In contrast to turds like Sarkar, where he just waltzes through the fight scenes while bad guys fall all around him, he is shown to have tougher battles, often taking a fair pounding before he finally prevails. If you do decide to subject yourself to the film, these might be small saving graces.

Showing now on Netflix in India.

Hermana Muerte aka Sister Death [dir. Paco Plaza]

I confess, if it had not been for my trusted fantasy/horror movie reviewer Richard Scheib's positive opinion, Hermana Muerte aka Sister Death would have passed me by as one of those generic Netflix algorithm offerings, conceived as a low-budget knockoff of The Nun franchise. What also intrigued me was that it was made by Paco Plaza, who with Jaume Balaguero created [REC], a ferocious zombie movie that turned out one of the best examples of the found footage genre, and one of only two I find sufficiently rewatchable to have in my movie collection (the other is the Japanese film One Cut of the Dead, which brilliantly turns the concept on its head).

But Sister Death is as far away as it gets from [Rec]. The first thing that makes an impression is the film's presentation in the now-unusual 4:3 Academy aspect ratio. It could be a nod to the post-WW2 setting of the film, but it also harks back to an earlier age of cinema. Hollywood shifted to widescreen in the 50's, and other film industries followed suit across the next few decades. The mass adoption of widescreen home displays in more recent times means that this ratio is now wholly discarded from mainstream entertainment. It is now only occasionally seen, in the work of arthouse favorites like Andrea Arnold or Pawel Pawlikowski. Sister Death's visuals (DoP Daniel Abello) are composed specifically for the non-standard ratio, which at least indicates that the makers have a specific vision for this project; it is a not simply a work-for-hire.

The narrative has strong parallels with Guillermo Del Toro's 2001 chiller The Devil's Backbone (TDB). In that film, a young boy brought to an orphanage during the time of the Spanish civil war experiences a spectral terror rooted in the place's dark past. In Sister Death, novitiate Sister Narcisa (a radiant Aria Bedmar) enters a convent where young girls are sheltered. She is enthusiastically welcomed by the Mother Superior (Luisa Merelas) who is eager to have her ordained, mainly on account of her reputation as a little girl who had a divine revelation (this is depicted at the beginning of the film using scratchy, vintage-looking footage). Less cordial is the Mother Superior's lieutenant Sister Julia (Maru Valdivielso), who appears to resent Narcisa's fame.  Narcisa herself appears to be having a conflict of faith, doubting the veracity of her childhood vision, waiting for some confirmatory sign from the divine. Some articles on the film have commented on Narcisa's name being a reference to Narcissus, which is an interesting angle on how her actions are interpreted later in the film.

Unlike Hollywood's higher-profile horror pictures, Sister Death doesn't attempt to beat down on your head with jump scares. Initially, all Narcisa sees are a chair that repeatedly tips over, and an abandoned glass marble. Then things build up. Even though nothing is particularly novel (and banging doors are so cliche), the film generates some solid disturbing moments, like when Narcisa finds herself in an impromptu pastry tasting that has a nasty climax. The film also suggests that in her eagerness to decipher the mysterious happenings, she may have inadvertently caused a child's death. Eventually, after paying a steep personal price, Narcisa uncovers the truth of the hauntings in the convent's shameful war-time past. Like in TDB, we see that the spooky spectral entity is not necessarily the source of evil, but a response to the corruption in human beings.

Sister Death lacks the epic sweep of Del Toro's film, and it doesn't twist your gut the way [Rec] did, but in its contained modest way, this is a solid well-made chiller, worth your time and attention.

P.S. Sister Death is supposed to be a prequel to another horror film called Veronica. I haven't seen it, and I can at least confirm that it is not a pre-requisite to appreciating this film.

Falbalas [dir. Jacques Becker]

Prior to watching Falbalas, I'd only seen Jacques Becker's Le Trou aka The Hole, his jailbreak drama which engrossed me thoroughly (reviewed HERE). I have also heard a lot of good word about his crime drama Touchez pas au grisbi. What I liked about Becker was that his work seemed to cover a variety of genres.

Falbalas (translated as Paris Frills) is a drama set in the Parisian fashion world. Raymond Rouleau (who reminds me of a young Michael Redgrave) is haute couture designer Philippe Clarence who periodically refreshes his fashion catalog...and his love life. Devoted solely to his art, Philippe is a cad who throws over a woman with little compunction once his interest is exhausted. The only constant woman in his life is his business partner, the elderly Mme Solange (Gabrielle Dorziat). Micheline (Micheline Presle) is the latest girl to catch his fancy. The fact that she is fiancee to his friend Daniel (Jean Chevrier) does not stop Philippe from making advances. When after being seduced by his attentions Micheline expresses her intention to break off her engagement with Daniel, Philippe squirms out of commitment, proposing a "friends with benefits" arrangement. Realizing his inner nature Micheline gives him the cold shoulder, which in turn rekindles his desire, and he begins to pursue her again.

There are a couple of things that make Falbalas stand out from the usual melodrama. The first is the immersive recreation of the fashion world in its depiction of Philippe's studio. The same dedication to verisimilitude that made Le Trou remarkable is also seen here. We go behind the scenes with the army of seamstresses and assistants that translate the designer's vision into reality; the film contrasts their conventional nature to the bohemian artist's personality. Also, Becker is not afraid to take the melodrama darker places. When Philippe resumes his pursuit of Micheline, his harsh uncaring words condemn his factotum and former lover Anne-Marie (Françoise Lugagne) to a cruel fate. Despite her spurning of his "friendship" offer, Micheline finds her physical passions aroused by Philippe, and she can no longer reconcile to marriage with Daniel. Philippe's obsession eventually descends into a spiral of madness that takes us back to the image of death we see at the beginning of the film.

There are several scenes where Becker shows his penchant for building tension. A wonderful example is when Micheline, after her betrayal by Philippe, comes home to a table-tennis game played by her family and refereed by fiance Daniel. Pestered mid-match by questions about the upcoming marriage, she remains silent, only following the ball's back-and-forth with her eyes until she can't bear it anymore and breaks down. Towards the end, an increasingly distraught Philippe locks himself up from the world, intently studying his mannequin draped with the wedding gown he had designed for Micheline, seeing it come alive in her likeness - this is more in the territory of Gothic fantasy. There are some snazzy visuals too - early on, the camera accompanies Philippe as he descends in the elevator while speaking out at Daniel. While not a masterpiece, Falbalas is an engaging feature that shows Becker (who also helmed Casque d'or and Touchez pas au grisbi) to be more than a maker of crime dramas.

A brief word on the UK blu-ray of Falbalas from Studio Canal, available either individually or as part of an Essential Becker boxed collection.:

Video-wise the transfer is strong, with good contrast and grayscale. The sound (DTS-HDMA 2.0 mono) I felt lacked presence - whether it is a limitation of the source elements or aggressive filtration, I can't say. It's still okay, if you raise the volume. The optional English subtitles are clean and easy to read. Extras include a half-hour featurette with Becker's son Jean talking about the film, an interview with star Micheline Presle and a featurette about the film's influence on fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. On the whole Falbalas was a lovely way to start off the Becker box. I'm looking forward to the other films.

12th Fail [dir. Vidhu Vinod Chopra]

Despite the glowing review from my go-to movie critic Baradwaj Rangan, I had reservations about 12th Fail. Based (at least loosely) on IPS officer Manoj Sharma's life, the film details the story of how he went from being a 12th class fail to successfully clearing the hyper-competitive Public Service Commission entrance hurdles. From that outline, it threatened to be like the numerous cliched Indian sports movies of the last 10 years, only without the sportsing. And how does a film generate excitement about someone passing an examination - Ticking the right answer box hardly conveys the viscerality of scoring a goal or smashing a cricket ball into the stands, right? This worried me.

The other factor was Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Chopra made a name in the late 1980's with his crime thrillers Khamosh (1986) and Parinda (1989). The low-budget Khamosh was a first-rate mystery that cleverly used its film-within-a-film conceit; Even in its limited release it garnered eyeballs, and the unveiling of its suspense was a tour de force discussed by fans years later. Parinda - a noir mixed with Bollywood sentiment - was script-wise shaky, but its technical chutzpah courtesy his frequent collaborators - art director Nitin Desai, DoP Binod Pradhan and editor Renu Saluja - impressed cinephiles.

Post-Parinda, Chopra became Bollywood's Golden Boy. Sought after by stars and handed massive budgets, his next project 1942: A Love Story - an escapist period drama almost 5 years in the making - reflected the bloat of his ambition. The technical wizardry was there, but the storytelling was a meandering mess. The man who at one point was poised to turn the course of Bollywood had succumbed to its excess. 2000's Mission Kashmir, which Kashmiri origin Chopra claimed to be a passion project, reduced complex terrorism issues to childish outbursts and cartoon villainy. This was enough to put me off his cinema, and it coincided with his own hiatus from direction. Chopra was now content to produce films, majorly those of protege Rajkumar Hirani (the Munnabhai franchise, 3 Idiots, PK, Sanju). The subsequent occasional forays he made into direction (Ekalavya, Shikara) did not interest me at all. Still, Rangan's review, coupled with the praise from my other trusted movie reviewer Deepa Gahlot, goaded me to take this one in at the cinema.

In 12th Fail, we first meet Manoj Sharma (Vikrant Massey) as a high school pupil in Chambal, a province of Madhya Pradesh in northern India historically (in)famous for its dacoit gangs. It is also notorious for rampant cheating in the board examinations, which is not only permitted but actively supported by the school authorities. After an honest police officer (Priyanshu Chatterjee) disrupts the operation, Manoj and his entire class end up failing their year. That same officer later comes to Manoj's aid when he and his brother are hassled by the constabulary for crossing a local politico's goons. Manoj is inspired by the upright cop to become one himself, a dream that eventually leads him to the challenge of clearing the public service exams.

The story could have been one of Rajkumar Hirani's projects (I would not be surprised if it had started out that way). But I suspect Hirani would have loaded it with cute catchphrases and artificial sweetness.  While 12th Fail has its own catchphrase in its repeated refrain of "Restart" it's used more sparingly. Also, Chopra at the helm brings in a lot more believable texture. It's not just in the production design, it's in the writing of the characters and the casting of actors suitable for the parts, instead of marquee names. The scale is deliberately kept small, detail substituting for scope. Manoj's dusty ill-lit village where he and his brother are suddenly burdened with maintaining the family, after their father (Harish Khanna) takes a suspension order for disobeying his corrupt superior's instructions, feels authentic. When he comes to Delhi, we are not given the scenic tour of the capital. Manoj's world is one of narrow crowded alleys, makeshift classrooms and dusty bookshelves. En route he has already lost the money his grandmother (Sarita Joshi) gifted him from her precious pension savings; he must clean toilets, mill flour and work other odd jobs to earn a living (the flour milling is also an analogy to the daily grind of his existence). These misfortunes are depicted with matter-of-fact restraint, focusing less on the tragedy and more on his resilience.

Vikrant Massey (Death in the Gunj) gets the lion's share of the applause for his committed performance in the lead part. But unlike other mainstream movies where the remaining cast is solely defined by their equation with the "hero", every character is etched and performed in a manner that transcends caricature. In a late scene, the aforementioned father meets with Manoj and tearfully breaks down over how his proud honesty has destroyed his family and that the poor can never hope to win. "But we can't admit defeat either," Manoj responds. Geeta Agarwal Sharma as Manoj's mother gets some memorable moments - check out the finely modulated scene of their encounter when Manoj returns home dejected after initial setbacks. Even the actor doing a one-scene part of a valet Manoj encounters when paying a surprise visit to his girlfriend in Mussouri comes off as a rounded individual instead of a stereotype.

As regards the girlfriend (Medha Shankar), this is in the end a movie meant for mainstream consumption; a romance angle is deemed mandatory. There are some gauche stumbles here, like when the girl Shraddha mistakes Manoj to be an aerospace engineer just because he is holding a book on that subject, which leads to a misunderstanding later. But Chopra and his co-writers keep it mostly integrated in the main narrative. Shraddha has her own little arc - she is an idealist that has quit medicine to join the IAS because she wants to ensure adequate treatment for the poor. While advancing on her path, she remains supportive of Manoj; without tomtomming feminist credentials, the film shows that the woman can be an equal, even superior partner in a relationship. The normally played-for-laughs 'hero ka dost' role is also depicted with greater nuance and substance: The easy-going Pritam Pandey (Anant Joshi) generously accommodates the struggling Manoj and backs him when he is down, but when Pritam's own fortunes turn, it affects his outlook and their bond of friendship. Again, this is handled in a credible and sympathetic manner.

Right from his early films, Vinod Chopra was regarded as an Indian Brian De Palma, a brilliant visual director. In 12th Fail his command over the form continues: DoP Rangarajan Ramabadran employs handheld tracking, overhead shots, complex pans, the works. And Chopra, who at one point created some of the most gorgeous images in Hindi cinema, is not afraid to use unflattering source lighting or grimy textures. It is an uncharacteristic yet welcome shift that feels more like the effort of a fresh and hungry filmmaker. More importantly, it is all in the service of the storytelling.

In a time when mainstream Indian cinema is regressing with its extended celebration of machismo jackasserie, it is wonderful to see films not about gym-bred jocks tossing off hordes of minions in slow motion with barely a scratch on their well-oiled pecs. Armed with only the grit to withstand life's trials, Manoj Sharma held steadfast and finally reached his goal. A similar determination to telling an honest story allows 12th Fail to make its place in our hearts. I award it a First Class.

Thiruchitrambalam [dir. Mithran Jawahar]

I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by saying this, but Baradwaj Rangan's review of Thiruchitrambalam gives a rather good analysis of what works and what doesn't in this 2022 Dhanush vehicle. With a piece that comes more than a year after the film's theatrical release (and a couple of months after it started streaming on Prime), I suppose I am rather late to the party. But then the film itself is drawn in good measure from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's cinema as well as the 90's Hollywood rom-com.

The Thiruchitrambalam of the title is the embarrassingly archaic name given to the characters of both Dhanush and his grandfather (played by director-actor Bharatiraaja, who in his heyday was known for his rural dramas and remarkable crime thrillers). Of course, almost no one calls them by this appellation. Instead, both are commonly addressed as 'pazham' (literally fruit, roughly translating as simpleton). It is a simplification that to some extent also defines how the world sees them.

Thiru Jr makes deliveries for a food aggregator app, while the retired grandfather takes care of the house. The third member of their home is the father (Prakashraj), a police inspector. At the beginning of the film, against visuals of an automobile accident, Thiru Jr monologues about how life is like a piece of glass even a single crack can destroy. The crack is reflected in the broken relationship between son and father. At home they either completely ignore each other or bicker using the grandfather as a go-between. In the first scene we see them together, the inspector father slaps Thiru Jr at the police station when he is taken there after having being dragged into a scuffle.

That's the other trait for Dhanush's character. Far from the archetype South Indian 'Mass' hero, he runs away from the mere whiff of confrontation (except his verbal spats with dad). His profession also becomes a source of awkwardness when he has to deliver meals at the homes of former college-mates, including the girl he had a crush on (Raashii Khanna). If Thiru Jr has any feeling of freedom, it is in the company of his neighbor and 3:00 am buddy Shobhana (Nithya Menen). As Rangan's review points out, Shobhana is in many ways Thiru's polar opposite. Where he is pessimistic and withdrawn, she is a bubbly go-getter. She lends Thiru a sympathetic ear and backs him up when he doubts himself, but is also brave enough to laugh at his confusions while giving him pragmatic advice. Given this is a mainstream romantic drama, one can see where this leads, but the writing and the chemistry between Dhanush and Nithya keep the journey interesting.

One way TCB deviates from the rom-com template is by allotting sufficient breathing space to the drama in Thiru's family. The animosity between father and son is not reduced to cute standoffs - When towards the interval point the father suffers a major health calamity, for a long time it is Thiru Sr who must serve his son's needs because the grandson cannot find it in himself to tend to the man he has thus far hated. Which is not to say that their lives are wholly grim. The vibe between the grandfather and the grandson remains a warm and humorous one. They share pints and opinions; Thiru Sr serves a similar function as Shobhana in the narrative: he's a sounding board, life coach and motivational speaker to his grandson; he even doles out love-life advice.

The little details, the dedication to keeping a low-key approach is where TCB shines. Where other films would make a huge do about the reconciliation of father and son, where the son getting over his timidity would be an extravagant 'HERO' moment with slow-motion, wire-work and guitar-driven BGM, the scenes here play out with a minimum of directorial fuss, and the characters remain within their skins. As writer and director, Mithran Jawahar deserves kudos for not stooping to incorporate the star mannerisms Dhanush employs in his 'mass' films.

Of course, there are flaws in the bigger picture. Rashii Khanna as a former classmate calls Thiru a topper that abruptly disappeared after college. Surely if you are in the same city, it can't be that hard to track a classmate, and even in the pre-smartphone days, news of family tragedies did travel. While class consciousness is a continuing sickness in our society, the way in which Thiru Jr's classmates openly jeer at his lowly occupation in public is a cheap way to garner sympathy for his character. The most significant "Tchah!" moment for me was late in the narrative when Shobhana is suddenly revealed to have been infatuated with Thiru right from their schooldays, as her brother claims, when he scatters a boxful of unsent Valentine's Day cards from her. It reduced her from the pragmatic, supportive friend to a stereotype wallflower from a more primitive age of Indian cinema. Thankfully it doesn't entirely take away from the charms of the film, which remains watchable.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that TCB was one of Tamil cinema's big hits for 2022. That this breezy low-key character drama managed to stand well amidst the din of the adi-thadi (biff-pow) Ajith, Vijay and Kamal starrers is a heartening trend.

Khufiya aka Secret [dir. Vishal Bhardwaj]

The Khufiya (Secret) in the title of Vishal Bhardwaj's new film (produced with Netflix) covers both the professional and personal life of its protagonist. Krishna Mehra aka KM (Tabu) works in covert intelligence, a spy 'handler' executing missions for the country that will never be highlighted in newspapers nor discussed at dinner parties. Krishna regards herself a professional and personal failure. We first see her reacting to a major workplace disaster. On the domestic front she lives apart from her ex-husband and son, and is almost always absent from the latter's big moments: Early in the film she turns up late for his performance as Brutus in a Hindi stage production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (which in itself appears a nod to VB's penchant for adapting the bard). Even this teen knows that her job at the "Central Secretariat" is a front for something else, and resents her constant bluffs. Krishna has another secret. She is separated from her husband (Atul Kulkarni) because she is a closet lesbian.

This detail is not doled out in linear fashion. Khufiya begins with a birthday soiree in Bangladesh, where an attractive woman brings a gift for Brigadier Saqlain Mirza (Shataf Figar) of the Bangladesh military, believed to be in cahoots with Pakistani intelligence. The gift is actually a lethal weapon, but the woman has been betrayed, and she is the one killed (with a fork stabbed into her jugular, perhaps a nod to Julius Caesar's murder?). The woman is Heena Rahman aka Octopus, a protege of Krishna. We soon enter a flashback in which Rahman proactively approaches Krishna with an offer to spy for her. Rahman is played by sensational Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon, whose innate magnetism makes it easy to digest the chemistry she develops with Tabu's character and the emotional turmoil caused by her assassination. Long after her character is off the screen, you feel her impact.

Bound by orders from her superior (Ashish Vidyarthi, in a rare non-mugging part) and driven by personal angst, Krishna sets out to catch the mole responsible for Heena's death. The obvious suspect is staffer Ravi Mohan (Ali Fazal) who seems to enjoy a lifestyle exceeding his official income. Ravi is rather easily recorded copying office secrets (literally, on a photocopy machine. It seems a little too quaint, but the narrative is set in the pre-millennium years, when USB drives and even CD burners were not mainstream technology). To figure out who is pulling his strings and how the information is transmitted, they set up an elaborate surveillance network covering Ravi's home as well. Thus we are introduced to his wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi, of Godha and Jubilee fame) and mother Lalita (Navnindra Behl). Charu is a doting spouse and mother...who, when alone, rolls her own joints and shakes a sexy hip to hippie-era Bollywood ditties. Lalita spends time with an Osho-inspired spiritual guru Yaara-ji (Indian Ocean / Aisi Taisi Democracy's Rahul Ram). When KM's team sets out to apprehend Ravi, things go very wrong; she has to start all over to catch a traitor and avenge the death of her lover.

From a bare outline this must sound all bog standard for the spy genre. But, at least when it's not wavering, there is an emotional core that's more John le Carré than Robert Ludlum. From what I hear, the script (by VB and Rohan Narula) changed the lead of Amar Bhushan's source novel to a woman and a queer. It takes the narrative to a more interesting personal, even romantic space. KM's equation with Heena has her deeply hurting by the latter's death, more so since she cannot discuss it with anyone (the ex-husband seems quite understanding, but I guess there are some things hard to share with a spouse). When Ravi's wife, after having been abandoned by him in escape, reaches out to Krishna to track him and reunite with her son, Krishna understands the perspective of a mother deprived of her child's love (Of course, it helps that this ties in with her own agenda). Even Ali Fazal's traitor is given some dimension - Ravi is a loving family man, but when Charu catches up with him again, he has to worry about her true motives and the risk to his own survival.

So far so good, but Khufiya's script fumbles badly in the consistency department. Almost as if Bhardwaj is afraid of audiences not being gripped by a serious drama, he bungs in jokes and farcical elements that break the immersion. The aforementioned fork stabbing is more Grand Guignol than anything else. When Charu tracks down Ravi in hiding, it would have been interesting to see how her mission tangled with her emotional involvement with the family, but this is jettisoned in favor of cheap jokes like when her mother in law pooh-poohs Ravi's security concerns describing her as a godsend "free maid". A later scene where a target is lured in with the idea of giving him a doped mutton dish and the other members at the table keep giving excuses about why they are not consuming it views like a particularly bad scene from a Jeffrey Archer novel.

Still, I was carried enough by the good stuff (Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi's cinematography is classy cool) to sit through the not-inconsiderable 157 min runtime in one go without feeling too distressed, which is more than I could say about some of VB's other films in the past few years, or the ridiculously overrated Raazi from Meghana Gulzar. Your mileage may greatly vary.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn [dir. Tsai Ming-liang]

In Goodbye, Dragon Inn, two characters stand silent for a long spell in the cramped disused corridor of a movie-hall building, while outside the rain steadily pours. Finally, one says to the other, "They say this theater is haunted." Coming somewhere around the halfway mark, it is the first instance of an original spoken line in this 82-min film. This is not to say that the proceedings thus far had been silent, or even devoid of dialog. But all the words heard till then came off the movie screen as it played the film-within-a-film of King Hu's Dragon Inn. In Tsai Ming-liang's languorous post-millennium arthouse drama the flickering images from Hu's 1967 swordplay epic are like ghosts. Ironically, these visuals and the crackling diegetic sounds are also the most vital element in a film whose 'real' characters all act like specters or somnambulists.

The most significant specter is of course the theater building itself: a crumbling edifice with dripping un-carpeted corridors, winding staircases and toilets that need to be manually flushed, it is living in the past. You can almost smell the dankness and decay. Even the films screened are ghosts, re-runs from long ago. We are privy to the last show of the day, maybe the last show ever for the cinema.

This shadow of fatalism hangs over all the other characters. They have no names, no identities beyond what we immediately see. There's the handicapped ticket-lady (Shiang-chyi Chen) who also doubles as janitor. The film devotes swathes of footage to her clomping deliberately along the lengths of passages or climbing multiple flights of stairs. She has unrequited attraction for the projectionist: when after making her way up she doesn't see him in his room, she stares a while at the still smoldering cigarette on the table edge, as though taking in his essence from its vapors. One of the most film's memorable images is when she looks up from behind the screen at the warrior woman in Dragon Inn gracefully leaping, dodging and slicing her path. It is a stark contrast to our ticket-lady with her slow clop.

Then there's the Japanese guy (Kiyonobu Mitamura) who mouths the line I referred to in the opening of this piece. Sitting for a vintage Mandarin potboiler in this derelict movie-house he is a fish out of water. We see him shift from one place to another: once to move away from a pair of women noisily crunching snacks, once as though to check on an old man sitting so still he might be dead. His encounter with a predatory woman slowly cracking nuts between her teeth is both humorous and creepy. We later learn that his interest in the movie-hall is not purely cinematic: it is a cruising joint for gays (In one scene a row of men take an undue amount of time at the urinals as they  discreetly size each other up). His remark about the haunted theater is intended as a pick-up line, but in Goodbye, Dragon Inn's deadpan world, all passions run cold, all desires go unfulfilled.

Going into the film, I knew this might be a polarizing "love it or hate it" experience. I get what Tsai Ming-liang was going for, an existential ghost story where the ghosts are memories of times gone or the desires/aspirations that either fell by the wayside or remained unsatisfied. The film has parallels with some of Wong Kar-wai's work, particularly In the Mood for Love (ItMfL). I don't know if it is representative of Tasi Ming-liang's general style, but in contrast with the lushness of ItMfL's elegy, Goodbye, Dragon Inn has an austere, even anemic vibe. I have to say that at least on first watch, I wasn't wholly engrossed. Like the ticket-lady's steps the pace is plodding, and it may be telling that during the runtime I had a repeated urge to pause this and re-watch my copy of Dragon Inn instead.

That said, it may prove more evocative on repeat watches when the rhythm of the film is already in the head. Ming-liang's affection for the theme and the setting is certainly evident (Apparently the idea came about after the theater owner told him that the place was going to be shut down). To complement the footage from Dragon Inn, two of that film's stars have cameos here that kindle the nostalgia factor. Perhaps on another rainy day, I may make a trip to this rundown theater and sit for a repeat show.

Dahaad aka Roar [dir. Reema Kagti]

I'll say one thing for Reema Kagti and her frequent collaborator Zoya Akhtar: With an output that includes material as diverse as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), Talaash, Dil Dhadkne Do (DDD) and Gully Boy, they are certainly versatile. Of course, there is the question of whether this versatility is backed by sufficient substance. ZNMD and DDD are fluffy crowd-pleasers providing an aspirational upper-crust western-influenced lifestyle married with some desi sentiment; like Karan Johar films, but less insufferable. Talaash (2012) and Gully Boy (2019) treaded grimier territory - the former was a crime noir with some supernatural underpinnings, the latter showcased the gritty saga of a lower middle-class Muslim boy using art to first shut himself off from his circumstances, and then to rise above them. The results are more mixed here, but they do achieve a credible texture in their capture of the urban underbelly. Kagti also made a period sports film called Gold (2018) with the country's biggest wannabe patriot Akshay Kumar, which I really did not care for (my impressions HERE).

The point of this extended prelude is, if Kagti and Akhtar do not necessarily have first-hand knowledge of the culture and milieu captured in their crime series Dahaad, they can be relied on to do their research to provide a sufficiently nuanced portrayal, at least for the purposes of mainstream entertainment. The setting here is mofussil Rajasthan, primarily the town of Mandawa. Progress, both technological and social, is lagging behind metropolitan India: Smartphones are rare, as are dedicated career women. Sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha) faces the double-whammy of being both a woman and a lower-caste. When her team goes investigating, Anjali is barred from entering the homes of the dominant caste. A running gag shows an upper-caste colleague in the police station lighting incense to ward off her aura. Her melodramatic mother is constantly at her to get married. Like with Sinha's previous character Akira, Anjali's reaction to these challenges is to double down and fight even harder, because to give an inch would be to give up the fight altogether.

In several ways this series' antagonist is her antithesis. Anand Swarnakar (Vijay Varma, who I first saw in Gully Boy) is the eldest son in a traditional well-to-do goldsmith family. He is an articulate soft-spoken language teacher, much admired by his pupils and colleagues. While dismissed by his businessman father as a non-achieving black sheep, he has a shining reputation for his efforts at educating children in remote areas during his weekend leisure. Even his wife, who is carrying on an affair with a workplace colleague, believes Anand to be a noble man. But Anand is also a serial killer that preys on lower-caste women, first seducing and then murdering them (no spoilers here, the series is not a whodunit, but about how he is ultimately caught).

Anjali and Anand's paths cross when she comes upon a string of disappearances of under-privileged women who apparently eloped with an unknown lover; she charts a connection between them, concluding that a single man is behind all of it. Of course, the idea of a serial killer in Mandawa is laughable to most of her colleagues. Her only support comes from Station House Officer Devi Singh (Gulshan Devaiah), whose interest in her may be more than professional. Going back and forth in time, the series follows Anand's crimes and the efforts of Anjali and her colleagues to unmask an intelligent and remorseless killer.

There are many things to like about Dahaad, but some missteps as well. Sonakshi's Anjali is a spunky protagonist, determined to breach the limits placed by society. Even if it occasionally seems too eager to signal Anjali's liberated spirit (she has a casual sex relationship with a drinking buddy we never see outside of that context) Kagti-Akhtar's characterization is strong in terms of expressing Anjali's determination to be a tough girl in a tough world. Devaiah's Devi Singh is less well-etched - It's nice to see the actor playing a "good guy", but Devi comes across so "correct" in all his opinions and actions, he is bland as oatmeal. His character has a 'manufactured' feel, as though Kagti-Akhtar wanted to imbue all their expectations for an ideal male into him. I was ready to throw up when Devi Singh gives his son the sort of enlightened talk about women and sex most metropolitan men wouldn't. Even when introducing the idea of Devi being attracted to Anjali (which may be further developed in the almost certain second season), they appear obliged to soften it by giving him a shrewish nag wife.

Sohum Shah's Parghi is a competing colleague to Anjali who is trying to obtain a transfer by currying favor with his superiors. He shows some interesting character development, especially in his reluctance to bring a child into an increasingly fucked up world (I empathize), but his transformation towards the end of the season could have been better articulated. Vijay Varma's killer is a lot more believable - his modus operandi is based on a real-life character dubbed as Cyanide Mohan. Unlike the glamorous psychopaths from the Hannibal Lecter universe, Anand doesn't believe in playing amusing mind-games with the police or arranging his victims in artistic tableaux. He is a blunt petty-minded villain, whose cloak of civility only shrouds an unmitigated ugliness. Even when alluding to a childhood trauma, the writing and Varma's performance do not try to generate sympathy for the character; they only show how he uses it to further manipulate people around him. 

A few logical missteps notwithstanding* my only disappointment was that the caste hierarchy element has little play in the investigation of the actual killer - It would have been interesting if Anjali's sometimes reckless pursuit of Anand had been labeled as caste revenge and affected her agency. Still, Dahaad was a nicely paced procedural with a well-realized setting, and I would recommend it to fans of dark crime thrillers.

*One thing that bothered me was, in a narrative so conscious of caste identity, why did the suspect's name Swarnakar (literally meaning 'Goldsmith') not ring immediate warning bells for the cops, especially since it is revealed to them beforehand that cyanide is used by the gold industry. Instead, they continue to fret over where he could obtain the poison. It also occurred to me a lot earlier than to these intrepid investigators that the killer, after having sex with his victims, was persuading them to consume the cyanide by disguising it as a contraceptive or morning-after pill.