Genre Shifter

 No blog about 2025 movies would be complete without Dhurandhar (Hindi). This is the movie that cannot seem to stop its victory run at theaters, and largely deservedly so, as this recasts the Indo-Pakistani spy thriller from a world of honey traps and hyperbole to gritty execution (no pun intended) – largely on the mean streets of Karachi. Hamza Ali (a buffed up Ranveer Singh) is a faceless Baloch, rescued from hoodlums who finds his way into the ranks of the formidable Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna). And these are just two of the memorable characters in a movie that includes the formidable SP Choudhury Aslam (Sanjay Dutt), Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), Yalina (Sara Arjun), and the aggrieved Ajit Sanyal/ Doval (R Madhavan) who set it all in motion. Dhurandhar has multiple dimensions – the high stakes gangster totem pole in Karachi, the army ISI politicians and organized gangsters in cahoots in Pakistan, and that not all incursions can be stopped but revenge can present its opportunities nonetheless. I would suggest watching this movie for sure – but you already have haven’t you now

16.5/20

What Idiots!

3 Idiots is a perfect example of why Bollywood is not world class. Here is the perfect showcase for explaining what learning is all about. 3 students – one from a lower middle class background who desperately needs that job, another from a slightly “better” background and with an unrealized passion (wildlife photography), and lastly – the protagonist – Aamir Khan as the precocious nonconformist who time and again shows how engineering should be taught, while excelling at it in evaluation and in tests of real life. All great so far. What is incongruous is a full blown romance (and a poorly cast Kareena Kapoor whose large framed glasses cannot quite obviate her glamour quotient), a sloppy treatment of all subjects to do with medical care – insensitive vignettes on a paralytic, unscientific child delivery, and a second paralyzed man who comes to his senses through an improbable turn of events – the whole approach appears trite and insensitive – and not in the least uncommon in Hindi movies (though one would imagine that Aamir Khan and his ilk would have raised the bar by now, sadly the Indian audience seems inured to the insensitivity of this stuff). And the fairytale around our protagonist continues in science, in love and in being a general do-gooder. In the end I got the feeling that this movie is about as representative of the Indian middle-class struggle between the need to survive by being on the beaten path vis-à-vis the need to self-actualize, as some of the airy thoughts that I heard from many at various points of time in IIT and IIM – idealistic but only lacking in any real substance, depth or conviction. Saving grace – getting to see the alma mater (IIMB) campus all over again, including (improbably) a good deal of d-mezz (my ex-wing)

7.5/20