Dhamaka

Arjun Pathak used to read the news on television; now he presents a radio show and his career is going down. A call comes on air; the man says he will blow up the bridge in Mumbai. Arjun takes it for a joke. The bridge goes up. In that moment he understands that this conversation could be his way back. He moves the broadcast to television, goes live and keeps talking to the bomber. The ratings rise. Then the bomber asks him for something and Arjun cannot leave the studio. Ram Madhvani wrote and directed. Kartik Aaryan, Mrunal Thakur, Amruta Subhash and Soham Majumdar are in the cast. It is an Indian production. The film is the official remake of the 2013 South Korean production The Terror Live; the bridge there is in Seoul and here in Mumbai. The shooting was done in Mumbai in December 2020 and took ten days. It was released on 19 November 2021. The narrative happens almost entirely in the studio and the character does not leave the desk. The matter it treats is the ratings arithmetic of the news; the film shows the presenter not as a victim but as an accomplice. Kartik Aaryan does something different from his usual comic roles. The narrative also gives the bomber's reason and ties it to a neglected workman's grievance. The tension is short lived and the film runs a little over eighty minutes. The ending was changed from the original and that choice was argued over. Its limit is depth; the narrative is fast, the characters shallow, and the message spoken outright. Who it is for: viewers who like thrillers set in one location. Who it is not for: it is short, shallow, and the ending dark.