‘Nishaanchi’ review: Anurag Kashyap imitates himself

Aaishvary Thackeray is saying something to Kumud Mishra when a fly buzzes in his face. It throws him off for a split second, but then he brushes it off and continues speaking. Nishaanchi is three hours long and this moment lasts a few seconds. But in a film where nothing is urgent and time goes by so slowly, it struck me as a rare precise bit of problem-solving.

There’s a larger problem that’s not so easily solved. Anurag Kashyap’s last three releases, Choked, Dobaaraa and Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, were different kinds of disappointing, while Kennedy not finding any kind of release here showed his stock had fallen considerably. Nishaanchi suggests he wants his audience back. Insofar as there’s a Kashyap niche, this is it: north Indian town, twangy Hindi, assorted lowlifes and lovers and family squabbles. It’s a film that’s eager to please and careful not to pick fights, something you can hardly say about any of the director’s previous work.

After a bank robbery gone comically wrong, small-time Kanpur thug ‘Nishaanchi’ Babloo (Thackeray) ends up in jail. The other members of his decidedly amateur gang—girlfriend Rinku (Vedika Pinto) and nervous twin brother Dabloo (Thackeray)—are at large, and unhappy. Also unhappy is the twins’ principled mother, Manjari (Monika Panwar, severe and striking), who’s being pressed by local strongman Ambika (Kumud Mishra) and the crooked cop in his pay (Mohd. Zeeshan Ayyub). Babloo, meanwhile, is being pummelled in jail by Ambika’s men. Throughout the film, this quartet is beset by misfortune. Like the old blues song, they could each claim that if it wasn’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all.

And yet, the film is anything but despondent. Much of the writing, by Ranjan Chandel, Prasoon Mishra and Kashyap, is funny and pungent. There are half a dozen pastiche songs—one parodying desi English, another whose lyrics are Hindi movie titles. There are exciting fights in prison and in the akhara. It’s clearly meant to be a riotous entertainer… and you can feel the strain. Scene after scene rambles on, telling us what we already know. So much here is reminiscent of Gangs of Wasseypur and Mukkabaaz, but those films had ideas for days, and were directed by a Kashyap with more fight in him. The constant shenanigans of Nishaanchi feel secondhand—self-imitation by a much-imitated director. Unlike Wasseypur, where a teeming cast of eccentrics made even the tangents interesting, here the players are fewer and less magnetic. Most surprisingly, Kashyap seems to have little of note to say—no barbs, no feathers to ruffle, no state of the nation warnings. All that’s offered is salty folk wisdom and a lot of banter about backsides (I'd be fine if I never heard ‘jackfruit’ in a film again).

The battle lines are laid out early: Manjari holds a deep grudge against Ambika, Babloo works as his hired muscle, but loves Rinku, who owns a piece of land that Ambika desperately wants. Yet, just as we’re getting to know the four principals, Nishaanchi wanders off into the past. The story passes to the twins’ father, Jabardast (Vineet Kumar Singh), a village wrestler. Somehow, we’re watching Mukkabaaz again, Vineet playing another fighter who refuses to throw fights to advance his career. Even as it explains the origins of the Manjari-Ambika feud, this passage feels hopelessly protracted. Wasseypur-era Kashyap would’ve done it as a neat five-minute detour with a Piyush Mishra voiceover.

The film eventually returns to the twins and Rinku, still in flashback, Babloo having emerged from his first stint in prison with a scar and a self-given name: ‘Tony Mantena’. Sent by Ambika to evict Rinku, he falls hard for her instead. Rinku is a standard Kashyap heroine: fearless, mouthy, sexually confident. It’s a type we’ve seen in too many films, and Pinto struggles to stand out from the other variations. Babloo could be the fifth lead on Mirzapur, which is to say he’s adequate but generic (I preferred Thackeray as the timid Dabloo). Vineet Singh is touching, though his arc hobbles the film, a bit of irony the unlucky Jabardast might appreciate.

During the flashback, I got thinking how this sort of backwards-bending structure has been used a lot recently by first films in planned franchises. I should've followed that thought to its logical conclusion. Instead, when Nishaanchi ended abruptly, unresolved, with the promise of a future instalment, I was shocked. Why would Kashyap try to make his thinnest story into multiple films? At one point, a character is offered a choice between Mughal-e-Azam and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. It seems to encapsulate Kashyap’s predicament, trying to turn a family entertainer into an epic, only to be left holding a jackfruit.