Recent Reviews by Rohit Vats
DNA
Rohit Vats is a journalist, film critic, translator and a digital strategist with more than 14 years of experience. Currently, he is serving as the Editorial Head of DNA India (Zee Digital).
Films reviewed on this Page
Black Warrant
Citadel: Honey Bunny
Singham Again
Don't Move
Do Patti
Tortoise Under the Earth
Black Warrant
Netflix jail drama has grit and terrific actors
Seconds into the show and you meet the lead of the biographical drama, jailer Sunil Gupta, a docile-looking but gritty middleclass boy.
This review is based on the initial three episodes of the new Netflix show titled Black Warrant, based on a book of the same name by journalist Sunetra Choudhary and former Tihar Jail superintendent Sunil Gupta. However, going by the detailing shown in these episodes, there are chances of the rating going even higher eventually. Confession in the beginning: I haven’t read the book, which has given me a fresh perspective that is mostly driven by the entertainment quotient of the show. If you’re not looking for the mismatch between the book and the show, then you’re mostly looking for the right tempo and pace. Seconds into the show and you meet the lead of the biographical drama, jailer Sunil Gupta, a docile-looking but gritty middleclass boy with empathy in eyes and a hesitant body language. Wait a minute, have I not seen this full of potential actor somewhere before?
All 9 reviews of Black Warrant here
Citadel: Honey Bunny
Varun Dhawan, Samantha try powering this dull series
Citadel Honey Bunny is a tedious watch with occasional sparks, though Varun and Samatha seem good casting choices.
The Indian spin-off of Prime Video’s American show Citadel, titled Honey Bunny, tracks the making of super-agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra). Though Priyanka is not in the series, it’s about her parents Honey (Samantha) and Bunny (Varun Dhawan) and they become Citadel agents. The little Nadia (Kashvi) is very much present throughout the series and shows early inclinations of being a tough girl. While Honey is a struggling actor, Bunny is a stuntman who lives a double life of an agent under Baba (Kay Kay Menon). The time period is somewhere around 1992 and the play areas are Mumbai, Belgrade, Nainital and Bucharest. As expected, Baba and his ace killer KD (Saqib Saleem) are after Honey’s life even after eight years in 2000, but as the sentiments would go, Bunny returns to be the wall between death and life.
All 12 reviews of Citadel: Honey Bunny here
Singham Again
Ajay Devgn headlines Rohit Shetty's biggest actioner, simplistic plot overshadows massive cameos
Though the director Rohit Shetty has managed to assemble the biggest star-cast of the current era in Singham Again, its lead Ajay Devgn stands out for all the right reasons.
Rohit Shetty is probably the biggest showman in Bollywood right now. With Singham Again and the idea of a cop universe, he has pulled off the biggest mainstream casting in the last 25 years. With at least five top commercially viable actors—Ajay, Akshay, Ranveer, Deepika and Kareena—he has made the canvas of Singham Again so big that it is most likely to become the ‘go to’ movie of this year.
All 17 reviews of Singham Again here
Don't Move
Psychological thriller with enjoyable moments
A good film is probably more about coherence in the plot development than being fine tuned for perfection. Sometimes, the rawer it looks, the more relatable it becomes.
For psychological thrillers, it’s a given that we live in a broken world, a place with predators lurking around. Usually isolated from civilisation, literally and metaphorically, such a space evokes fear, horror and then survivalist tendencies. A new Netflix film Don’t Move portrays a similar canvas where a 30-something Iris (Kelsey), grieving the accidental death of her child, has lost the will to live, but she surprises herself with the fightback she still has in her when a family man-cum-ruthless kidnapper Richard (Finn) enters the scene.
All 2 reviews of Don't Move here
Do Patti
Kajol is a misfit in this convoluted Kriti Sanon drama
The film begins with a lot of promises—picturesque locations, popular faces, fast-paced music and a hint of crime, but does the momentum sustain for a little above two hours?
There are twin sisters—Saumya and Shelly—played by Kriti Sanon in a beautiful Uttarakhand town with paragliders covering the blue sky. What a sense of relief in this confusing weather. Defused lighting and a lot of touch ups to bring out the best facial features of good-looking leads ensure a soothing start of a tale which harps on the childhood animosity of the twins. They both have their eyes set on a baby-faced yet quite violent Dhruv Sood (Shaheer Sheikh), which eventually leads to a cop and criminal chase led by Vidya Jyoti aka VJ (Kajol) to a point where the real purpose of law books and its practical usage would be discussed.
All 18 reviews of Do Patti here
Tortoise Under the Earth
Documents more than displacement, it’s about a new style
I watched emerging filmmaker Shishir Jha’s festival hit Tortoise Under The Earth (Dharti Latar Re Horo) a couple of months ago in Goa. Thanks to other tasks at hand, I willingly gave the film enough time to settle down in my memory, in such a way that I could reminiscence about it, preferably laden with nostalgia. I mean, what better way can be there to acknowledge a talented young filmmaker! Not even watching the trailer of the film to remind myself of the film’s exact plot was a conscious decision, something that could impact the original perspective I might have formed the first time. If certain visuals and sounds stay with me for all these weeks, rather months, then it’s probably going to have a similar effect on others as well.