Hindi
Agneepath remake fails to impress
MUMBAI: What would justify remaking a commercial flop, Agneepath, earlier made with the reigning star of that era, Amitabh Bachchan? It seems the producers felt disappointed with the audience verdict and eventually decided to remake the film and prove the audience wrong! No business involving crores is worth doing on emotional grounds, least of all filmmaking.
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Producer: Hiroo Yash Johar, KaranJohar. |
The plot is the same old: set in Mandwa village, off Mumbai‘s coast, with its honest teacher, Dinanath Chavan and the usurper, Kancha Cheena. Sanjay Dutt is Kancha Cheena here, with a devilish getup just so that an impression is made of his sinister character. He frames the noble school teacher in a child molestation case leading to his public lynching from a village tree.
Having established the villain and his macabre ways, the process to build the angry young hero begins. It is done easily enough as Hrithik Roshan commits his first crime even before reaching teens, that of shooting a cop.
However, it is the other villain, introduced in the form of Rishi Kapoor, who remains sketchy. Introduced as the one in flesh trade auctioning young girls to shady and filthy-looking buyers, suddenly he is a drug lord and ‘owns‘ Mumbai.
Hrithik Roshan has a goal which he never discloses but the viewer somehow knows. His ultimate aim is to kill Sanjay Dutt and free the locals of Mandwa from his slavery. Therefore, once introduced, Sanjay Dutt goes invisible till post-interval when he will be needed to close the story he started by killing the village teacher.
The romantic link sans any romance on screen is provided by Priyanka Chopra who, like all angry young heroes‘ beaus, has to hang around in the background till needed for a song number or an emotional scene, both of which are scant and flat whenever attempted. There is the mandatory honest cop, Om Puri, who knows everything wrong that is happening around him but never gets the go ahead to do anything.
The story demands that the hero do it, not the police. Rishi Kapoor has refused to do business with Sanjay Dutt and bad blood exists between the two. Hrithik Roshan joins Rishi Kapoor with the aim of playing one against the other, which will lead him to Sanjay Dutt. Hrithik starts his campaign by betraying Rishi Kapoor, killing his son and heir and later Rishi Kapoor when the drug lord finds out about the betrayal. What happens hereafter is that the film, already patchy and dull, goes haywire.
Eventually, Hrithik invites himself to Mandwa to confront Sanjay Dutt, gets slashed by a sword four times. He is bashed up for most of the last few reels as he is led to the village tree to be lynched like his father when, like a bolt from the blue, he rises again. He fells Sanjay Dutt with a couple of blows and then hangs him from the same tree as his father.
The close-up expressions of Sanjay Dutt while Hrithik prepares to hang him seem to suggest, “I could have got up 10 times in so much time and bashed you up so better finish fast whatever it is you have to do!”
Agneepath is a huge comedown on its original which itself was no great shakes; a vengeance story without a solid cause does not work, especially if the grudge is worth nursing for 15 years and translates to nearly three hours of screen time. The director seems to emulate many 80‘s directors of mass movies. His prime inspiration seems to be Mukul Anand, the director of the first Agneepath. Here, director Karan Malhotra also seems very fond of filling up the screen with crowds, may it be a fight scene or a song.
Songs are no help in the film and the choreography is bad; the much touted item number by Katrina Kaif, Chikni Chameli, falls flat. And there is no indication of the relevance of the Ganpati procession sequence and song to the story. The film lacks finesse with everything about it being drab. As for actors, Hrithik Roshan has been grossly misused. He has to look sullen all the time and talk less: the famous Rober Mitchum look which Sunny Deol did convincingly.
Sanjay Dutt only emerges as a caricature, carrying his one evil look throughout the movie. Rishi Kapoor is the only one who stands out despite the limitations of his role. Priyanka Chopra, Zarina Wahab, Om Puri and others are incidental to the happenings. A massive session of editing could have helped to some extent.
Agneepath the remake offers nothing worth liking it for and is grossly less watchable over its original.
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.
