An Action Hero

Maanav is thirty and an action star at the height of his career. He goes to a town in Haryana for a shoot. There he argues with the brother of a local politician. There is a scuffle and the young man dies. Whether it was an accident is not clear. Maanav runs. The dead man's brother Bhoora comes after him; he is a politician with power in the region. Maanav goes first to London. Bhoora goes too. The two meet outside the country. Meanwhile the news channels in India discuss the affair day and night. Anirudh Iyer directs; it is his first film as director. Ayushmann Khurrana plays Maanav and Jaideep Ahlawat plays Bhoora. The language is Hindi. Its form is satire; the film takes aim at the action genre and the star system at once. The narrative criticises the news channels directly; how the affair is inflated is shown in detail. There are many references; to other films, to actors and to real events. The character Jaideep Ahlawat plays is what is most cited and is not one dimensional. The film did not take the expected result at the box office and interest in it grew later. At the end the narrative deliberately blurs the line between reality and fiction. Its limit is structure; the register is uneven, the plot strained and the last section comes apart. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian satire and games with genre. Who it is not for: the references are dense, the register uneven, and the ending strained.