‘Nishaanchi’ movie review: Anurag Kashyap returns with Gangs of Kanpur, sprays idioms and bullets

Noted French filmmaker and screenwriter Jean Renoir once said, a director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again. A decade back, I related to this famous quote while watching movies of Mahesh Bhatt and Ram Gopal Varma when their graphs were coming down. This week, Renoir’s words echoed in my ears while watching Anurag Kashyap’s Nishaanchi.

One of the most original voices of our times, Anurag seems to have cut down his cult of Gangs of Wasseypur (GOW) into fragments and then casually stitched them into a fresh screenplay around crime, revenge, and sibling rivalry.

Laced with potent social commentary on patriarchy and the politician-criminal nexus in the Hindi heartland, the idea is not new; some of his expressions of the human condition have become stock. However, like GOW, Anurag subverts Bollywood tropes and titles to create a tantalising experience that works in spurts and disappoints in chunks. The best is the limerick made out of Andha Kanoon, Sarkar, and Baghban.

Rooted in the revenge of the son, Anurag has transported Faizal, Mohsina, and Nagma from Wasseypur to Kanpur as Babloo, Rinku, and Manjari. Nishaanchi Babloo (Aaishvary Thackeray) takes time to find his range. A lot of posturing and dialogue banter in the build-up, centered around Babloo, his twin Dabloo, and love interest Rinku (Vedika Pinto), feels pointless. When a bank robbery goes kaput, the swaggering Babloo lands in jail, and the docile Dabloo gets a chance to be close to Rinku.

However, it is only when Anurag presses the flashback button that the film becomes zabardast (gripping), literally. A gifted wrestler and a trusting friend, Jabardast (Vineet Kumar Singh) falls into the trap of nepotism set by his guru (Rajesh Kumar) and the machinations of a self-serving friend, Ambika (Kumud Mishra). His fiery widow and former trap shooting champion, Manjari (Monika Panwar), defies the advances of Ambika, but fails to protect Babloo from his influence. He becomes the cocky boy’s godfather. After spending time in a juvenile prison, Babloo returns to set the house in order, but finds that his mentor is standing between him and his love.

A lot of what the film says has been said many times before, but Anurag creates a tapestry of poignant and boisterous moments to send, as the cheeky Babloo and the restless Rinku discover, a variety of hormones on a high. A cunning friend whose cowardice becomes his strength. A girl who develops a feeling for the twin brother of her boyfriend in his absence. Anurag excels in exploring these forbidden areas where the sound of a fly generates a soul-shattering impact. In Monika, he has cast a powerhouse performer who justifies the strong character on paper. Vedika is not bad either, but perhaps someone has whispered in her ear that she is substituting for Huma Qureshi.

Creative people tend to go out to come in. Anurag’s shift from the ‘velvety’ Bollywood to the culturally aware space of Tamil and Malayalam cinema finds a shape in his Kanpur chronicles.

There is a folksy rhythm in Anurag’s storytelling as he crafts Kanpur’s loud-mouthed attitude with a groovy background score for the current generation.

Set at the cusp of the new millennium, you can see flashes of people and politics around you in Anurag’s world. If Rinku reminds one of Sapna Chaudhary kind of stage performers, the guru in akhara talks like a popular politician who rose from the dust bowls. The director of Mukkabaaz doesn’t hold back in expressing the shattered dreams of sportspersons without patronage. The scene where Jabardast cradles his child with the gold medal that his mother won in shooting sends a shiver down the spine.

However, after a point, the cinephile in Anurag gets the better of the storyteller in him. When Sholay segues into Scarface, the alloy feels right, but then there are long stretches when the hat tips reduce to a show-off.

Moreover, Anurag has offered newcomer Aaishvary more than what he can chew. He is functional as Babloo and Dabloo but lacks the firepower of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the director’s regular collaborator. Like Vedika, for the most part, Aaishvary follows a type rather than a character. Kumud Mishra shows how to walk the thin line. He is in peak form as the morally ambiguous Ambika.

ALSO READ: Anurag Kashyap calls out Tamil composers for anglicising film music

Unlike GOW, the film has not been publicised as a two-part venture. As a result, in the first viewing, it takes time to get used to its structure. It reaches an emotional peak at intermission, but after that, you realise that Anurag is in no mood to reach the denouement and keeps introducing little elements. Known to lose his way in the second half, when Anurag suddenly shuts shop, you mutter Oh! No. Dabloo remains to be unleashed, but do we care?

At one point, Manjari tells her Babloo that there is a difference between a jungle and a zoo. In the latter, there is no difference between the status of a tiger and a monkey. Anurag would know the same logic applies to a tiger and a monkey in the festival circuit and the box office! There is no point in camouflaging the stripes!

Nishaanchi is currently running in theatres

Published – September 19, 2025 01:16 pm IST