This Kennedy film review examines Anurag Kashyap’s brooding noir, led by Rahul Bhat’s restrained performance in a morally fractured Mumbai.
MUMBAI: This Kennedy film review looks at Anurag Kashyap’s long delayed noir thriller, now streaming on ZEE5 Global after festival acclaim and certification cuts. Premiered at Cannes in 2023, the film marks Kashyap’s return to bleak, character driven storytelling rooted in moral ambiguity.
Rahul Bhat plays Uday Shetty, a presumed dead cop who now lives under the alias Kennedy. Operating in pandemic hit Mumbai, he works as a contract killer for a corrupt police commissioner who keeps him officially erased. In exchange for carrying out off the record assignments, Kennedy seeks information about Saleem, a gangster tied to his past. The film unfolds across five nights leading to an ominous final reckoning referred to only as The Night.
This Kennedy film review finds its greatest strength in atmosphere. Cinematographer Sylvester Fonseca transforms Mumbai into a shadowy labyrinth of silence and decay. The lockdown backdrop deepens the sense of isolation, making the city feel complicit in Kennedy’s violence. Murders are staged without glamour. They are blunt, procedural and emotionally vacant. Kennedy rarely speaks, his gravelly monologues replacing confession with cold fact.
Sunny Leone appears as Charlie, a lonely neighbour who becomes an unexpected emotional thread in an otherwise sterile world. Their connection offers brief relief from the suffocating moral landscape. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky’s compositions create a striking tonal contrast, swelling beneath scenes of brutality.
If the screenplay occasionally sacrifices narrative tightness for mood, the performance anchors the film. Bhat’s stillness becomes the pulse of the story. This Kennedy film review concludes that while it may not be Kashyap’s most accessible work, it is among his most atmospheric, demanding patience but rewarding those willing to enter its darkness.
