Hindi
Inkaar: A love story badly told
MUMBAI: Inkaar has been widely promoted as a film on sexual harassment at work place. Ideally, the work place here is an ad agency. Ad agencies are generally identified with glamour because that is what they cater through their ads and are thought to be full of people with open and free minds. It helps the cause of the film because, otherwise, ad agencies are not the only place where romances, affairs or molestations happen. Whatever the perceptions created, Inkaar, in a nutshell, is just another love story.
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Producers: Tipping Point Films, Viacom 18. |
Arjun Rampal is a high flying ad executive, the CEO of a happening agency with a US tie-up. Since ad agencies are generally identified with their leaders, Rampal is a legend in his own right in the ad world. Like all good leaders he encourages and grooms his team. One such person he has chosen to groom and hone talent of is Chitrangada Singh, a sensuous, sharp and ambitious girl from a small town, Solan in HP. Even before she can prove herself, Rampal is struck by her poise and beauty; if you count his ogling her at all meetings and briefings that happen in any office, he is obsessed with her!
Rampal takes Singh under his wings, she shows sparks and soon her talent and contribution make her the blue eyed girl of the agency. The proximity leads to a romance between Rampal and Singh. The job creates many opportunities to travel and spend time together and soon the relationship becomes physical.
Singh has also impressed the owners, especially the American partner, and she is soon delegated to the American partner agency. On her return, before the romance can rekindle, a management move to make her the creative head of the agency leads to parallel powers in the agency. After all, she is an ambitious woman and has no reason to say no despite Rampal‘s suggestion not to accept as he thinks she was not yet ready for the responsibilities.
In the egos clash, romance is sacrificed, and this being a creative field, also sacrificed are some client accounts. Every time Singh needs Rampal‘s help, there are hurdles, or so she feels. Due to their past liaison, she smells a demand for sex whenever she encounters him. Exasperated, she decides to complain of harassment against her CEO, Rampal. You would expect a horde of woman activists to descend on him and newspaper headlines all over. But, no, here it is all hush, hush, no media and no activists, only one social worker; Deepti Naval sits on an inquest.
As both the parties are called to testify in turns, the film‘s narrative comes in flashbacks because the inquest hears a particular incident told by Singh, Rampal follows with an explanation. This leads to unfolding of the film in various flashbacks. This does not help the cause of gripping the viewer with a taut telling of the story and fails to involve him. Other colleagues also tell their part in the events over the years. While a bias is evident against Singh from most colleagues, Naval also thinks that with two attractive persons working closely, sex is bound to happen! When the matter is not clear, Naval asks the panel sitting with her to vote on guilty or not guilty!
When there is no inquest in progress, the ad world seems busy in revelry, drinking and generally having fun.
Rampal has decided enough is enough and SMSs his resignation and heads home to Shahranpur to meet his father of various flashbacks in the film, Kanwaljeet Singh. Before that, he has had a confrontation with Singh in the washroom. When asked by Singh about his attitude, his response is ‘Because he was angry and because he loved her‘. Singh remembers it and its time for her also to pick up her car keys and follow Rampal to Shahranpur!
Due to the piecemeal style of the script, the direction never gets a handle on the proceedings. Music lacks appeal.
Rampal, as a lover in flashbacks and an annoyed accused in present is good in latter part. Singh is mainly glamour. Rest have no definite roles to play.
Inkaar, has opened with poor response with little chance of improving.
Mumbai Mirror: Lacks face value
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Producer: Raina S Joshi. |
A guy wanting to be the clone of Salman Khan is understandable. After all, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan have had hundreds of them. But the hero here, Sachin Joshi, in his self financed film, also wants to clone a Salman Khan film! So, Mumbai Mirror is to be watched with Joshi as its hero but while imagining you are watching Salman Khan on screen.
Joshi, in his pretence of playing Salman Khan, brings along the same actor, Prakash Raj to play the villain. What lets him down is his thin voice.
Joshi is a police inspector in a station headed by his maternal uncle, Mahesh Manjrekar. He drinks, womanises, gambles on cricket matches and finally, also takes to snorting drugs. However, when it comes to action, he is never found wanting. Worst crime a man can commit, according to him, is raise a hand on woman of which he is unforgiving. Typically, he had a thing going with a bar dancer, Gihana Khan, who is now the don Raj‘s mole.
Raj is the biggest don of Mumbai owning almost 70 per cent dance bars in the city, a man whom no policeman can touch. Joshi and Raj are soon to be pitted as the latter wants to open a dance bar in Joshi‘s precinct which Joshi would allow as long as there are no dance girls involved. Joshi also learns that dance bars are just a front and the real business behind this façade is that of drugs.
The war between Raj and Joshi peaks and game of chess laid out in Raj‘s den now becomes real as both try to outwit the other. As a result, Joshi is suspended from the force. He continues his fight and, in the process, also meets a TV reporter, Vimala Raman, to add a mild romantic angle to the proceedings. Joshi adds another bad man, Aditya Pancholi, to the fight, turns Raj and Pancholi against each other. He is surprised to trace the source of drugs supply, and carries out the final elimination. Also eliminated is the corrupt CBI man and Raj‘s puppet, Sudesh Berry.
To fill up the screen and make the film watchable, there is a line up of some known talent in the cast. There is always some action on screen but the problem is that there is nothing new. Dialogue by Ghalib Asad Bhopali is good when not remixing old Salman Khan lines. Music is out of sync. With a seasoned supporting cast, the performances are good. Joshi, Gihana and Raman are okay.
Mumbai Mirror, lacking face value, finds no takers and is faced with no show situation.
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
