The soul of Dhurandhar is rooted in quiet deception. Wait, I’m talking about Hamza Ali Mazari’s (Ranveer Singh) mission. He’s a spy operating across borders in this 214-minute film, and given this running time and the number of characters, motivations and political threads it handles, this film could very easily have collapsed into something rambling…
Category: Film Reviews
Kaantha review: The murder of innocence
Kantha is so dense with meaning and layers and emotional subtext that a simple reading of whether it’s good or bad, impactful or not, would be a grossly reductive, unfair response to it. The longer I contemplate the film, the more it seems to reveal itself… the writing choices and the emotional motivations underneath its…
The Girlfriend review: The girl who couldn’t say no
How do you rescue yourself from a bad situation when you’ve never been allowed to fend for yourself? When you’re huffing and puffing while carrying luggage upstairs (like in that first scene of The Girlfriend) and someone asks if you need help, what are you supposed to say? What are you allowed to say? Is it okay…
Good Bad Ugly: A fever-dream of homages and hero worship
The Good Adhik Ravichandran’s cinema is a genre unto itself—it’s not so much a film as a rave party. And like all parties, some are more intoxicated than others. It’s not a space for nuanced conversations or emotional coherence. At any given moment, someone’s dying in slow motion, as we laugh and cheer or both….
Game Changer review: Big ideas, thin characters, little feeling
Perhaps it’s the repetition of certain ideas, or perhaps it’s the undeniable power of Shankar’s hit cinema, but it’s impossible not to think of his earlier works—his heyday, shall we dare call it—while watching Game Changer. A road grinding to a halt due to governmental apathy reminds you of Mudhalvan. A government authority dismantling corruption?…
Sudhir Srinivasan 