Mirzapur: The Movie has the peculiar challenge of starting in the middle of a story, a set of relationships and a world that its audience already knows intimately. There are no introductions, no explanations, no time wasted telling us who these people are, what they want and what they mean to each other. They arrive on the big screen with histories, grudges, loyalties and complicated equations that audiences have watched unfold over three seasons of Mirzapur.
During the movie’s 197-minute running time, writer Puneet Krishna’s screenplay begins to introduce a new plot and new players, and what initially seems like an elaborate exercise in fan service gradually finds a life of its own.
It begins with Akhandanand Tripathi, or Kaleen Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi), conducting a pooja on the day the Tripathis get the throne of Mirzapur. In this moment of celebration, the film makes clear that loyalty is rewarded and hierarchy remains sacrosanct. Kaleen encounters a betrayer, and the tone is established quickly: this is an unforgiving world in which loyalty is temporary and everyone has an eye on the throne. Kaleen Bhaiya soon finds himself surrounded by old enemies and new contenders.
For a while, the pleasure is largely that of recognition. Here is Munna. There is Guddu and his brother Bablu. There is Sweety (Shriya Pilgaonkar), and a simmering love triangle. Familiar faces and relationships fall back into place, and the film luxuriates in the mythology that has built around Mirzapur.
Ravi Kishan enters the world, and he is a terrific casting choice as Babban Babua, bringing to the character his natural swag and mischief. He gives Babban the kind of easy charisma that makes even his criminal calculations entertaining to watch. An ambitious drug smuggler besotted with singer-dancer Mumtaz (Sonal Chauhan), Babban is hiding out in the desert around Jaisalmer, on the run from another drug lord, Bhairav Singh (Sushant Singh). Mohit Malik plays Babban’s right hand, Birju Lohar, adding another unpredictable presence to the mix.
As these characters and their stories gather momentum, the film slowly shifts gears. What began as a return visit for Mirzapur devotees becomes a more conventional crime thriller, with a fresh narrative driving the film forward. You don’t need to remember every detail of the first season, in which this chapter unfolds, to become invested in who wants what, who is hiding from whom and who might survive.
That transition is one of the film’s smartest moves. Krishna and director Gurmmeet Singh use the audience’s familiarity with the show and its characters as an entry point before widening the story.
Singh, who has directed the series as well as the film, gives this expanding world a cinematic scale. The action moves out into the sandy landscapes of Rajasthan, where car races and fights acquire a physicality and spaciousness that the series’ more enclosed world doesn't always allow. There are set pieces built for the big screen, including shootouts and an excessive action sequence involving Guddu Pandit.
The script balances suspense with humour, sometimes allowing a moment of absurdity to puncture the tension. Characters are motivated by ambition, lust, greed and the hunger for power. Everyone wants something, and most people want the same thing: the throne of Mirzapur. Love exists alongside all of this in many forms—maternal love, romantic love, sexual desire—but the world remains overwhelmingly male, populated by men with guns, men making threats and men competing for territory and control.
The women may be fewer, but two of them get slightly meatier roles. Beena Tripathi, played with familiar slyness by Rasika Dugal, and Vasudha Pandit, Guddu and Bablu’s mother, played by Sheeba Chaddha, understand that in this world, power is rarely available to them directly. Instead, they use guile, emotional leverage and their positions within the family to influence husbands, lovers and sons. They may not wield the guns, but they know how to manipulate the men who do, operating through intimacy rather than brute force.
Munna is back, and with him returns his accomplice Compounder (Abhishek Banerjee). The return of Munna Tripathi is fan service that works because Divyenndu is so good at playing him. Munna is petulant, insecure, entitled, funny and terrifying, sometimes within the space of a few minutes. One of the film’s best scenes comes when Kaleen Bhaiya stands up for his son and Munna receives the validation he has been desperate for. It is a small moment of paternal approval that reveals just how much Munna has craved his father’s recognition.
Ali Fazal’s Guddu gets his own crowd-pleasing transformation, in an almost Incredible Hulk-like moment that is so over-the-top it could only belong in Mirzapur. Jitendra Kumar is the new and decidedly less endearing Bablu Pandit. A song montage introducing the various love stories gives the film another opportunity to connect old and new, teasing characters such as Robin, while laying out the emotional complications that sit beneath the violence.
And then comes the collaboration you didn’t know you needed. It is exactly the kind of moment that shows how thoroughly the film understands its audience. There are characters here that viewers have quoted, memed and mourned. In bringing them together you can almost feel the filmmakers anticipating the reaction in the theatre.
Mirzapur: The Movie has a double identity. It is both cinema and marketing. It is an extension of a highly successful franchise, designed to reward the people who already love it. But it is also a feature film that knows it needs a story of its own. Singh’s direction gives the familiar world enough new terrain, new characters and new spectacle to keep it moving.
The film understands that fans don’t want to spend the entire evening looking through an old photo album. Something new needs to happen in the world they recognise. So it gives them something new—with the familiarity of bullets, obscenities, bloodshed, song, dance, a hefty body count, plenty of entertainment and, of course, nostalgia.
‘Mirzapur: The Movie’ is in theatres.
Udita Jhunjhunwala writes about cinema, art and contemporary culture.