Star Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Mahima Chaudhary, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman & others
Director: Kangana Ranaut

What’s Good: No political vested interest but a balanced yet incisive look at India’s most controversial prime minister.
What’s Bad: An episodic feeling in parts.
Loo Break: Certainly not!
Watch or Not?: Yes, it is edu-tainment for all.
Language: Hindi
Available On: Theatrical release
Runtime: 148 Minutes
User Rating:
Though the film is titled Emergency, based on the darkest chapter in Free India and the biggest and mammoth blunder done by Indira Gandhi, it is no less than a biopic (that genre which flopped right and left last year!) as it details her life from childhood till her death, seven years after she lifted the emergency.
Surprisingly for Kangana Ranaut, an actor-director whose political ideology and party affiliations are polar opposites to Indira Gandhi, this film is a balanced look at the controversial enigma the political figure was.
Emergency Movie Review: Script Analysis
Kangana Ranaut has developed a story from Indira Gandhi’s life, covering key episodes in the latter’s career and scriptwriters Ritesh Shah and Tanvi Kesari Pasumarthy weaved this into a gripping narrative that is episodic but mostly does not seem so (like Sam Bahadur, Main Atal Hoon, and some others) because of the clever way the content is amalgamated. The director has decided not to present Indira Gandhi as the megalomaniac individual she had become in the mid-1970s.
Even at the risk of making the film seen like a sycophant’s interpretation, it analyses the reasons why the late prime minister became what she was and why a craving for power led to her doing whatever wrongs she did, and how she could not control her own despotic son, Sanjay, from his ego-driven and power-crazy excesses like the forced sterilization movement, based, as per this film, on a casual remark by his friend that we Indians breed like flies.
There are rare flashes of satire and humor, and we have even US President Nixon voicing his opinion on Indian women in general that, if authentically researched, is nothing less than a poor reflection of his tastes! We also have the barbs aimed at Indira by Jagjivan Ram, her erstwhile colleague, when the Janata regime took over in 1977, but for me, the sequence where she comes out of jail and meets Jayaprakash Narayan, her staunchest opponent, stands out.
The affectionate and patriotic but never power-hungry visionary who once called her “Gudiya (doll)” in her childhood again addresses her by that name. The script does take a few liberties, but they are judiciously done. Again, if the initial scene where she tells Atal Bihari Vajpayee that she can see him as a future prime minister has happened in real life, then it is excellently done. But if that is fictitious, it is indeed ingenious!
A point is made that Indira spearheaded the first Pokhran test in May 1974. Her face-off with Nixon is depicted well, but the script shies off her controversial role in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death and the subsequent investigation into it, as revealed later in another authentic film on real events, The Tashkent Files (2019). The script also does not touch on the recorded fact (in close friend and biographer Pupul Jayakar’s book) that Indira had a premonition of her death. Instead, a scene between her ever-loyal secretary, R.K. Dhawan, shows her stating that she did not want her Sikh bodyguards removed (“because they too are Indians”) after Operation Blue Star, which earned her the ire of that community.
And while the ban on Kishore Kumar finds token mention, we see the inglorious Indian Express chapter also shirked over, though the clamping down on the freedom of the press is mentioned in detail. The script finally emerges as a more than simplistic look at Indira’s psychology all along, and all in all, this is one of screen fiction writer Ritesh Shah’s (Namastey London, Raid, Maidaan, Dahaad) better works.
Emergency Movie Review: Star Performance
Kangana Ranaut shoulders a mammoth responsibility to etch out a very human and, in many ways, vulnerable woman whose exterior was tougher than the proverbial nails. And her performance is amazingly fluid, magnetic, and seamless. At no point does she falter or go off-kilter: it’s no less than a tour de force and a histrionic triumph. Under the circumstances, it may perhaps be politically incorrect to state this, but she could be one of the strong contenders for the National Award yet again!
Anupam Kher as JP is restrained and mature, and the late Satish Kaushik fits Jagjivan Ram’s whimsical character like a glove. Milind Soman brings out the aggressive patriot in Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw very well, and Shreyas Talpade is excellent as the ardent Vajpayee. Darshan Pandya scores high as R.K. Dhawan, Indira’s loyal personal secretary and ‘doorkeeper.’ Mahima Chaudhari is strictly all right as Pupul Jayakar. The rest of the actors do what is needed.
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Emergency Movie Review: Direction, Music
Rising far above her mediocre-to-average directorial debut in Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019), which she co-directed controversially with Krish Jagarlamudi, Kangana Ranaut now shows a tight reign on her craft as director. The painstakingly conceived frames, the interplay of visuals with the lines, and even the backdrops and music show a woman (no less controversial in her profession, perhaps, than Indira in hers!) striving for perfection without compromise. The technical side is brilliant all through, so the director
deserves prime credit for the same.
What stands out and is most welcome is her self-restraint in not showing the gorier side of happenings all along, like we do not experience Indira seeing her son’s body in the morgue and the excesses during the forced sterilization.
Indira’s own bullet-ridden body is not shown either. All this points to a director who knows what to do and—more vitally— what not to do.
The soundtrack by G.V. Prakash fits in well. Singhasan Khaali Karo is brilliantly done, and Arko’s sole composition, Aa Meri Jaan, is superb. Manoj Muntashir Sharma’s lyrics stand out, and so does Sanchit and Ankit Balhara’s background score.
Emergency Movie Review: The Last Word
When one sees ignorance all around about contemporary Indian history (we know the films and songs of the 1970s but not the events, troubles, and leaders India had!), Emergency is perhaps the right film to educate while it indisputably entertains. Historically accurate in what it depicts (the errors as mentioned are all by omission!), the film is one of the rare biopics where a second watch will not bore us.
Four stars!
Emergency Trailer
Emergency released on 17th January, 2025.
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