Star Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Manushi Chhillar, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Anshumaan Pushkar, Swanand Kirkire, Saurabh Shukla, Saurabh Sachdeva
Director: Pulkit
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What’s Bad: It’s a complete surrender to unoriginality!
Loo Break: Whenever…after the first 15 minutes.
Watch or Not?: I did, unfortunately!
Language: Hindi
Available On: Theatrical release
Runtime: 149 Minutes
User Rating:
I firmly believe that some titles are jinxed! In 1972, there was a film of this name, with a single ‘a’ (Malik), which was an insufferable melodrama. This one’s anything but ‘mellow,’ but it’s unbearable too after the first predictable yet slightly engaging and optimistic (I am an optimist while watching any movie!) hour.
A simple farmer’s simple son (Rajkummar Rao) swears vengeance when his father is brutally attacked while protecting his employer (maalik)’s fields. The man who ordered the operation dares the son to tackle the actual culprit who ran the tractor over his father. The young man kills the man (who is nicknamed Langda as he is a cripple) in a violent bloodbath and soon tastes blood (literally). Things move from here to a bloodcurdling fiesta of gore where the usual political louts, betrayals, and acts of vendetta dominate. The only novelty here is that it is Rajkummar Rao who is this new animal christening himself as Maalik (owner or master).
Another routine angle involves a police officer, Prabhu Das (Prosenjit Chatterjee), out to get Maalik dead or alive, but this time, this suspended cop is also not all above board. Also in the bloody race are an MLA (Swanand Kirkire), his mentor Shankar Singh urf (also known as!) Dadda (Saurabh Shukla), the man who challenges and later mentors Maalik as well, and a business rival, Chandrashekhar (Saurabh Sachdeva).
Despite his overtly sadistic, openly rebellious, arrogant, and violent nature, Maalik is fond of his parents (Rajendra Gupta and Balwinder Kaur), his wife Shalini (Manushi Chhillar), and his friend Badaun (Anshumaan Pushkar).
Anyone schooled in Hindi gangsta rap (so to speak!) could have written this script, which specializes in a complete and studied lack of inventiveness. The beginning, middle, and end are so utterly predictable that one only waits to see at which and to what extent the predictable happens. The film is set in the late 1980s in Allahabad, not that this adds or subtracts from the drama or storyline.
KGF2 comes in as recent inspiration for a specific situation comprising Maalik (like Maalik himself in the film, I have forgotten his original name. I think it may be Deepak, though!) and his wife. Though again as fresh as yesterday’s online news (!), the husband-wife interplay does catch some attention, and Manushi and Maalik share a great chemistry in the limited scenes they have.
Betrayal by a trusted colleague, wimpy police, trucks loaded with something that must pass the police check-posts smoothly but illegally, an item song, a narrative flashback, a man’s head thrust into boiling oil—the film even straddles new heights in violence and brutality with overconfident aplomb.
The dialogues, too, are completely ‘been there done that’ and we have a quote that I am sure writer (and also director) Pulkit thinks will become cult: about a majboor baap (helpless father) and mazboot beta (strong son). Really? Don’t think so, though!
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Rajkummar Rao, the methodical method actor he has always been, is technically good but lacks the impact of actors more successful and trained in such anti-hero roles. It is Anshumaan Pushkar who shines best as his loyal lieutenant. Saurabh Sachdeva and Prosenjit Chatterjee shine initially before dissolving into routine stereotypes.
Saurabh Shukla shockingly sleepwalks in his umpteenth negative old man role. Swanand Kirkire is brilliant in parts and Manushi Chhillar is present in parts when the writer feels some romance is needed. Huma Qureshi drops in for a forgettable item number, though Rajendra Gupta and Balwinder Kaur make a mark as Maalik’s parents.
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But for filler sequences, it would seem that director Pulkit has entrusted most of the film to his action director and VFX people. The emotions are extremely flippant.
The music, for a Tips Music production (Tips Films), makes me resigned once again to the complete demise of film music, irrespective of the music label nowadays. Time was when good music prevailed even in terrible films produced by music labels!
If you are a gangster drama-villain as hero-violence freak, you will find nothing here that was not there in the zillion such underworld-meets-politics movies that everyone from Ram Gopal Varma and Mahesh Manjrekar to Anurag Kashyap and the South filmmakers have been peddling for more than two decades now.
One and a half stars!
Maalik released on 11th July, 2025.
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