Anek Movie Review: An Engaging Yet Disjointed Story

Plot

Director Anubhav Sinha's latest offering, Anek, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, is set in Northeast India and highlights the region's socio-political conflicts. Khurrana plays Joshua, an undercover cop tasked with restoring peace to the area while navigating the internal friction within separatist leaders and rebel groups. While the film touches on important issues, the plot is confusing and convoluted, and the first half is spent building up a premise that never reaches a destination.

Acting

Khurrana shoulders the film with his gritty and diligent performance, while Andrea Kevichüsa, who plays Aido, a Northeastern Indian boxer struggling with biases to realize her dream, delivers a decent performance for a first-timer. Amid the supporting cast, Kumud Mishra and Manoj Pahwa bring their experience to good use and deliver some great scenes.

Cinematography

Cinematographer Ewan Mulligan's rousing use of long takes, hand-held wizardry, and exploring light at different hours of the day bring out the distinct drama and lyricism of the film, shot mainly in Assam and Meghalaya. However, while the film takes great care to cast actors from the North East, use authentic locations and dialogues, it fails to bring out the air and character of these parts.

Direction

Sinha's intentions are in the right place, but he fails to weave everything together into a compelling story that would keep audiences hooked. The film tries to address many issues but is disjointed and confusing, with too much going on in a meandering way. The authentic landscape of the North East is not enough to bring out the diversity that the film vehemently claims to protect, as it clubs all of the states into one uniform voice of woes, trading specifics for generalities.

Conclusion

While Anek is a decent watch and a must for those interested in the geopolitical situation in the Northeastern region of India, it falls short of Sinha's last three directorial projects that hit the right chord and started a conversation. The film's heart is in the right place, but the execution disappoints, and it is not a story that everyone would understand with equal amounts of empathy and interest. Ultimately, Anek is high on patriotism but fails to deliver a cohesive and focused screenplay that could have made it a memorable and thought-provoking film.

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