Two brothers: one a ruffian, the other timid; a slain father, a widowed mother, a goon, a corrupt cop, a feisty love interest, small-town crime, jail-time, violence, betrayal, multi-generational vengeance… and Anurag Kashyap. There’s also “permission,” and a “bird saving its backside.” Sound familiar?
Well, this Gangs of Wasseypur-sounding mish-mash of familiar characters, tropes, and themes from the Kashyap universe is his latest — Nishaanchi.
The film opens in 2006, Kanpur, where twin brothers Babloo and Dabloo (both played by Aaishvary Thackeray), along with Babloo’s girlfriend Rinku (Vedika Pinto), botch a bank robbery. Babloo, the ruffian elder (by 10 minutes), ends up back in prison — this time as a repeat offender. His first stint was from age 10 to 18 in a juvenile facility for murdering the local akhada chief (played by Rajesh Kumar), who he believed was responsible for his wrestler father Jabardast’s (Viineet Kumar Singh) murder. As Babloo is taken away again, their mother Manjari (Monika Panwar) — who looks nearly the same age as her sons — watches on, and the film goes into flashback.
It’s 1996. Manjari, a shooting champion, and Jabardast, a wrestler, lock eyes at a tournament, fall in love, get married, and have twins Babloo and Dabloo. She dotes on the former, teaches him shooting, literally making him a nishaanchi (shooter). A sling shot is soon replaced with a gun, when a conspiracy by Jabardast’s conniving friend Ambika Prasad (Kumud Mishra) leads to the wrestler’s murder and his son avenging his death, or so he thought.
10 years go by, and the boys turn out to be chalk and cheese – one rash, hot-headed, and not flinching once before pulling the trigger; the other timid, calmer, but overshadowed by his brother both in trade and love. Both Babloo and Dabloo fall for “rangeeli” Rinku, a dancer, Ambika’s newest target. The three end up forming a gang, only to fail in the end.
On paper, Nishaanchi has everything fans expect from a Kashyap film: blood, betrayal, grit, grime, and grey characters. But while Wasseypur was grounded in a specific time and place — the coal mafia era in Dhanbad — Nishaanchi’s 2006 Kanpur setting feels arbitrary, adding little to the narrative.
While it’s common for siblings to grow up differently despite similar situations, you would want to know more about how the twins turned out poles apart from one another. Rinku’s quicker-than-lightening transformation from a kathak-learning simpleton to a bank-robbing spitfire is also hard to grasp. Even her attraction for Babloo, who she knows is of the same gang responsible for his father’s murder, is also hard to follow.
Kashyap’s films are known for their unconventional music, but here, it feels forced and lacks impact.
Despite its flaws, performances stand out, and every actor delivers, for the most part. While Thackeray makes a good debut, and Mishra can’t go wrong, it’s Panwar who absolutely takes the cake and eats it. While, at first, it’s difficult to place the 30-something actor as the mother of two adult sons, it's when the movie goes into the flashback that Panwar delivers, and how! She is cracking in her chemistry with Singh, as much as standing up to Mishra, or toiling, rather, tailoring her life away to raise her sons.
Despite its flaws, it’s important to admit that the film might be looked at differently if it hadn’t come from Kashyap. Given that he has already delivered cult classics, especially with Gangs of Wasseypur and Dev D, Nishaanchi feels formulaic and predictable. Instead of breaking new ground, Nishaanchi feels like a recycled blueprint. It’s as if Kashyap disassembled Gangs of Wasseypur, shuffled the pieces, and reassembled it with new actors, characters, and a screenplay. However, while the cult classic left everyone waiting for its second part, Nishaanchi, with a running time of 176 minutes and being a standalone affair, fails to do so.
Film: Nishaanchi
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Aaishvary Thackeray, Monika Panwar, Vedika Pinto, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Kumud Mishra
Rating: 2.5/5