
Recent Reviews by Uday Bhatia
Mint Lounge

Uday Bhatia is Film Editor with Mint Lounge in Mumbai. He was previously with Time Out Delhi and The Sunday Guardian. His work has appeared in GQ, The Caravan, Indian Quarterly and other publications.
Films reviewed on this Page
The Mehta Boys
Mrs
Deva
Sky Force
Emergency
Black Warrant
Baby John
Despatch
I Want to Talk
Self-Potrait as a Coffee-Pot
The Mehta Boys

Soft-edged drama lacks novelty
Boman Irani's directorial debut is a heartfelt but unexceptional film about a warring father and son
Boman Irani began acting in films in his 40s. From the start, it seemed like he’d always been there. He was a throwback to an earlier era of actors like Charles Laughton and Alex Guiness who were happy to disappear behind a wig, a fake nose, an accent. Irani could, of course, play it straight, like the father in Lakshya. But no one was better at going broad. His Khurana in Khosla Ka Ghosla and Asthana in Munnabhai M.B.B.S. are legend, but there’s a spectacular rogue’s gallery stretching from Darna Mana Hai to Don, Well Done Abba to Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd to Jayeshbhai Jordaar. Irani stars in The Mehta Boys and does a fine, fussy, fretful job. It’s also his first film as director, co-written with Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman) and co-produced by his company, Irani Movietone. It’s a polite little film about a recently bereaved family, emotionally available, a bit shapeless. Not all directors start with a big swing, but this is closer to forward defence.
All 3 reviews of The Mehta Boys here
Mrs

Arati Kadav’s drama sticks close to Malayalam original
This Hindi remake of ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ is cutting and effective, but might not offer much to those who've seen Jeo Baby's 2021 film
Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen was intended for theatrical release in 2021, but likely benefitted from the covid restrictions that resulted in a digital-only release. With everyone stuck inside, it was the right time for a film about the value of domestic work. It was one of the most acclaimed films that year, and it seemed only natural to hear some months later that the Malayalam film would be remade in Hindi. What was surprising to me, though, was the director attached to the project. Arati Kadav has directed one feature (Cargo, 2019) and a handful of shorts. A slim filmography, and yet she’s one of the most distinctive voices working in Hindi cinema today. Her work till now has tended towards science-fiction with a warm, handmade quality. A remake never seemed like the right use of her capacity for whimsy and invention, though I was curious to see what direction she might take Jeo Baby’s film. Having watched Mrs., I’m hoping this is Kadav’s ‘one for them’.
All 9 reviews of Mrs here
Deva

Sobersided thriller offers a few surprises
Audiences expecting a flamboyant cop film might be wrong-footed by this Shahid Kapoor-starrer
When was the last time the hero in an Indian commercial film was introduced without any fanfare? Deva opens with downbeat credits composed of fractured surveillance images. And then its titular character just appears, riding his bike down a tunnel. No buildup. No flying bodies. No ‘Sparkling Star Shahid Kapoor’. Ten minutes later, Kapoor is, in effect, reintroduced: there are sundry hero shenanigans and a dance number. But the opening is enough to guess that this is a rare contemporary Hindi commercial film whose rhythms aren’t those of Tamil or Telugu cinema. Then again, its hurt, sombre rhythms aren’t classic Bollywood either—despite Dev being positioned before a mural of Deewaar while ‘Main Hoon Don’ plays.
All 8 reviews of Deva here
Sky Force

Undercooked fighter pilot film takes a curious turn
‘Sky Force’ doesn't have the skill or scale required for a slick war film, but it does head in a direction atypical of the genre
This week last year, a film released that seemed to epitomise popular Hindi cinema’s decline over a decade. Fighter might have set out to cash in on the success of Top Gun: Maverick, but it played like an advertisement for the sitting government at the centre. Releasing months before the general elections, the film—like Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019—showed the prime minister as capable commander in chief while engaging in hysterical Pakistan-baiting. “Unhe dikhaana padega ki baap kaun hai (we’ll show them who daddy is),” the PM in the film says, a statesman-like sentiment befitting a Republic Day release. Sky Force also takes a ‘baap’ jab at Pakistan, but it’s a half-hearted swipe. As a fighter pilot film releasing on the weekend of 26 January, there are certain jingoistic beats directors Sandeep Kewlani and Abhishek Anil Kapur must feel they have to hit. And they do, but their heart isn’t in it. On the face of it, there’s not much to recommend this film—it’s underwritten, square and tries to pull off elaborate action on a clearly insufficient budget. But where Fighter tends towards rabid nationalism, Sky Force stumbles awkwardly in search of reconciliation.
All 7 reviews of Sky Force here
Emergency

Kangana Ranaut’s film is at war with itself
Kangana Ranaut is too fascinated by Indira Gandhi to make a damning indictment of the Emergency
There were only two things I asked of Emergency. One was to literally see the presses stop (we’re shown this twice). The second was for Sam Manekshaw to call Indira Gandhi ‘sweetie’, like Vicky Kaushal does in Sam Bahadur (2023). This, surprisingly, wasn’t fulfilled. I’m certain the makers were aware of the legend of the army chief saying this to the prime minister, but chose to leave it out. Its absence says a lot about this curious film suspended between opposing impulses. Emergency isn’t what I was expecting. For starters, its focus isn’t the Emergency; the events of 1975-77 take up, at a rough estimate, half an hour in a 146-minute film. Instead, this is very much a Indira Gandhi biopic, progressing in linear fashion from her childhood to her assassination in 1984. Since it’s Kangana Ranaut—a BJP MP who has made a number of incendiary statements about minorities and protestors—directing, producing and playing Indira, I was expecting a crazed hatchet job. This too doesn’t happen.
All 8 reviews of Emergency here
Black Warrant

It’s the little things that make this Tihar series sing
Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh's series is a dense, fascinating look at the closed world of Tihar jail in the 1980s
“People say prison is a trashcan, but it’s really a circus,” DSP Tomar (Rahul Bhat) tells his new jailers. Black Warrant suggests that hangings are the circus’ circus. The sentenced are celebrities of the prison world. The visiting hangmen are celebrities for the Tihar staff. Inmates become nervy; reporters start asking questions. Everyone’s on edge—all except ASP Dahiya (Anurag Thakur), grinning broadly as he massages banana pulp onto a noose. The best Hindi streaming shows of the past few years are carefully built from the ground up, the longer runtimes allowing for more complex narratives but also challenge creators to populate and make believable specific universes—stock markets, village councils, counterfeit operations. I didn’t know hanging ropes were once smoothened with mashed banana. It’s not a vital piece of information; you’d miss it altogether if you weren’t paying attention for those three seconds in the second episode. But it’s sort of detail that gives me confidence, tells me the makers have burrowed deep inside their setting.
All 10 reviews of Black Warrant here
Baby John

A final subpar Hindi commercial film to end the year
This Hindi remake of ‘Theri’ starring Varun Dhawan is imitation without conviction
A boy of maybe five or six stands over his dead parents. They’re in a row of bodies on the ground in front of a high-rise, construction workers who died because of low-quality netting. The builder at fault calls the boy over (he’s from the northeast—migrant labour!), gives him 10 rupees and tells him to buy some chocolate. In the next scene, John (Varun Dhawan) crashes the builder’s party, decimates his goons, and sends the man crashing through a window to his death. One of the onlookers is the young boy, who takes a triumphant bite of chocolate.
All 11 reviews of Baby John here
Despatch

Breaking news, broken man
Manoj Bajpayee plays a beleaguered journalist in Kanu Behl's paranoid thriller
There’s a moment late in Despatch when Manoj Bajpayee looks, suddenly and disconcertingly, like his character from Kaun? (1999). It made me think of the giddy fun of that turn, driving Urmila Matondkar half-crazy with those nagging ma’ams. It also made me wonder—despite the obvious differences—what this film might have been like with that Bajpayee performance. Bajpayee once played heels with obvious relish, whereas his character in Despatch is wrapped in disgust and disdain, a bitter pill to spend two hours with.
All 9 reviews of Despatch here
I Want to Talk

Living on a thin line
In Shoojit Sircar's film, Abhishek Bachchan plays a cancer patient with an uncommon determination to survive
Shoojit Sircar’s recent film work has been preoccupied with mortality. Shiuli’s freak accident and subsequent state determine the course of October (2018). Gulabo Sitabo (2020) is a comic look at death, with an ageing man hoping for the demise of his even older wife. And Sardar Udham is death-haunted, not just the historical fact of the protagonist’s execution but the guiding hand of the ghosts of Jallianwala Bagh.
All 10 reviews of I Want to Talk here
Self-Potrait as a Coffee-Pot

Chaos and creation in the studio
This series of video essays is a brilliant dissection of William Kentridge’s artistic practice and a lively covid diary
A portly white-haired man walks into the frame and, even before he’s sat, addresses the camera with some urgency. “Before he arrives, there are some things I just want to say. It’s about the nature of the structure of, and the destructure, and the non-structure of what we see." He lists the disparate thoughts running through his head: a green cake he once ate in Naples, the fish pie he must take out of the freezer, a line from Mayakovsky, digging in The Great Escape and as a young boy on the beach, a row of coffins for mass burial, the impending birth of his granddaughter