Aakhri Sach (25 Aug - 22 Sep 2023)

Genre: Crime Mystery Thriller

Channel: Disney+ Hotstar

Language: Hindi

Season: 1

No. of Episodes: 6

Running Time: 31-50 minutes

Writer: Saurav Dey

Director: Robbie Grewal

Cast: Tamannaah Bhatia, Abhishek Banerjee, Shivin Narang, Sanjiv Chopra

One fine morning, all the 11 members of Rajawat family are found hanging dead with no sign of struggle, except for the old mother who is found dead near her bed with signs of struggle!!

Tamannaah Bhatia plays the diligent Inspector Anya Swaroop who solves this multiple layered extremely confusing heart wrenching case, while fighting her personal mental trauma.

The series is little spooky but quite well enacted and presented.

It keeps you hooked and wondering till the end.

Do watch it.

Jaane Jaan (21 Sep 2023)

 

Genre: Crime Thriller Drama

Channel: Netflix

Language: Hindi

Duration: 139 minutes

Writer: Sujoy Ghosh, Raj Vasant, Keigo Higashino

Director: Sujoy Ghosh

Cast: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Varma, Saurabh Sachdeva, Naisha Khanna, Karma Takapa, Lin Laishram

Introduction: 

Jaane Jaan is an adroit adaptation of Keigo Higashino's crime novel The Devotion of Suspect X (2005).

Plot:

Settled in the scenic and silent hill town Kalimpong, Maya D' Souza (Kareena Kapoor Khan) is a single mother and a hands-on cafe owner.

Around 14 years back she ran off from the clutches of her sinful & abusive husband and cop Ajit Mhatre (Saurabh Sachdeva) who has somehow located her whereabouts and intimidates her by visiting both her cafe and home.

In the past, Ajit - the perennial money monger had manipulated his wife to be a pole dancer and now wishes to do the same to his new found daughter Tara (Naisha Khanna)!

This leads to fierce protest from Maya. One thing leads to another and Ajit gets killed by Maya with some help from their daughter!!

Naren or Teacher (Jaideep Ahlawat), Maya's next door neighbour is a maths genius and school teacher who silently admires her since her arrival in their building!

He offers to help her get rid of the dead body and instructs her on preventive actions so that Ajit's murder is never traced back to her.

However, arrival of charming and dedicated Inspector Karan Anand (Vijay Varma) from Mumbai, changes everything.

Though he visited Kalimpong searching Ajit for an in-house police matter, he eventually gets embroiled into solving his murder and his prime suspect is the deceased's estranged wife Maya!!

Karan and Naren happen to be FTII graduates and friends from the same batch and are well aware of each other's grey matter and modus operandi.

A cat and mouse game ensues, wherein Karan uses his charm and grit to connect murder clues to Maya, while Naren uses his sharp mind and logic to mislead him on a different path!

See the movie to see who ultimately wins and how.

Analysis:

The movie has enough twists to keep it interesting, but it's kind of disjointed as a complete product, so the required adrenalin rush is missing.

All the lead artists and side artists have performed quite well, but Jaideep Ahlawat has simply surpassed himself and introduced an altogether new style of silent acting with occasional mischievous glint. He comes across as a sharp brained gentle giant!

It's heart warming to see Kareena Kapoor Khan experimenting with method acting and non-glamorous role, which she manages with aplomb, though at times her ire seems over acting and the required chemistry between the mother-daughter duo is missing.

Relatively better sense of empathy can be sensed between Naren and one of his students who constantly challenges him for a coin trick game!

However, with enough close-up shots, Kareena brings ample star power and beauty to the movie. 

She is a dream to watch when she sings the classic title track in a karaoke bar.

Vijay Varma has cakewalked his role with easy charm and smile. His character lacks depth, but that is not his doing.

Conclusion:

Jaane Jaan is an intelligent thriller with good acting and tight screenplay. It's engaging but don't expect any edge-of-the-seat moment.

Do watch it and ponder how the entire storyline could have been depicted better!!

Avinash Tiwary Is Reigning Supreme In Both Sep 2023 Crime Thriller Web Series!!! 🙂

The first one is Bambai Meri Jaan (14 Sep 2023) on Amazon Prime Video and the second one is Kaala (15 Sep 2023) on Disney+ Hotstar.

Playing the chief protagonist in both the web series, he effectively portrays the role of a dreaded gangster in the first one and a committed Intelligence Bureau official in the latter.

Directed by Shujaat Saudagar, Bambai Meri Jaan is a 10 episodes web series with 30-50 minutes running time. 

It depicts the life span of Dara Kadri (Avinash Tiwary), the D Company founder, from his childhood days till he leaves for Dubai to escape his arrest warrant by Mumbai Police. 

Ismail Kadri (Kay Kay Menon), an honest and devout Mumbai cop turned gangster Haji's (Saurabh Sachdeva) accomplice turned spiritual recluse, plays his father and narrator of the series. 

Kay Kay has a crucial role and he has played it brilliantly, mostly with stoic silence and one liners. His acting in the series is beautifully layered and perhaps the best of his acting career!!

The web series has multiple important characters and all have been casted wonderfully and enacted effectively. In fact their combined acting prowess has surpassed the storyline and script!

The entire series is embedded with Mumbaiya expletives and at one point the blood and gore becomes too much to handle.

Overall, the series is familiar, engaging, entertaining and well edited with top class production design.

Directed by Bejoy Nambiar, Kaala is an 8 episodes web series with 45 minutes running time.

It delves deep into the not much familiar territory of reverse-hawala carried out by billionaire Naman Arya (Taher Shabbir) and  meticulously investigated by IB officer Ritwik Mukherjee (Avinash Tiwary) and his team and eventually officials from other government organizations, like - CBI, BSF and State Police.

Rohan Vinod Mehra well plays Subhendu Mukherjee aka Adinath Bagchi aka Ritwik's father and BSF officer turned revenge seeker and eventually the secret informer of his son!

Jitin Gulati as Balwant Singh is the surprise package of the series and completely mesmerizes with his layered acting as and how his persona undergoes major transformations in the series!

Here again, the casting is impressive (read Hiten Tejwani, Mita Vashisht, Shakti Kapoor etc.) and almost everyone has performed well.

The expectant blood and gore is present, but it's designed on familiar grounds and always in control.

Unusual but deep father-son relationships form the crux of both the web series.

While both of them travel the deep, dark alleys of underworld, thankfully both the series are intelligently infused with small patches of comic relief and mild romance.

You will enjoy binge watching them both!! 

Haddi (7 Sep 2023)

 

Genre: Crime Drama

Channel: ZEE5 

Duration: 134 minutes

Writer: Adamya Bhalla, Akshat Ajay Sharma

Director: Akshat Ajay Sharma

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Anurag Kashyap, Saurabh Sachdeva, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Ila Arun, Vipin Sharma

Till almost a decade and a half back, whatever representation of gay characters I saw in a Hindi movie was always comical and kind of ridiculous.

While everyone around guffawed at their scenes, I was always confused and not really comfortable because -

a. not much info was available on the subject.

b. I have always believed that all forms of existence have a serious and compassionate side. No one can be born to be just laughed at!

Fortunately, sometime around 2009, I watched Sean Penn starrer Milk on a movie channel on Tata Sky, wherein he brilliantly portrayed Harvey Milk, the groundbreaking gay politician. 

Later on, he also won an Oscar for Milk.

Merely watching his performance rested so many of my queries and I wondered when will Hindi movies produce something like this.

To everyone's surprise, it was the spate of the concerned webseries that attacked the Indian celluloid with full gutso around 2016, thanks to the absence of vigilant censor on the OTT platform.

They showed and continue to show much more direct, detailed and logical content encompassing the lives of LGBTQIA+ community. However, very few of them are Indian productions.

Haddi is one such rare Indian OTT movie that dares to go deep into the life and emotions of a transgender women, played amazingly by Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

As and when required, he appears a weak & tender woman or an indifferent passerby or a cold blooded killing machine!!

He has handled all his scenes with adroit and poise.

However, the problem lies with the storyline which is based on underworld activity, revenge and retribution, which makes the movie quite grotesque to watch and confuses the identity of transgender people.

The movie does not provide any sort of distinction between transgenders, cross-dressers and others.

In short, the movie lacks the depth & layering required to handle such an unexplored subject amidst such a complex violent setting.

You can still watch Haddi for good attempt & toil, impactful make-up & styling and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.