Kennedy

One word.. Beautiful.

I was fortunate enough to watch this movie yesterday at London Indian film festival. Will reveal nothing about the story here as words are different to the actual vision. Director Anurag kashyap has poured his soul into making this craft and when that happens , It goes straight into your heart. It's deep. It's a movie that makes you question about yourself ? As the intro says ," Rahul bhat is Kennedy. That itself speaks alot. He has done such a great job that no one else could be Kennedy. Such a versatile actor that spoke 1000 words through his eyes. Sunny Leone as Charlie was a delight to watch. She was fabulous. Infact the casting was done very cleverly and every character leaves an impact on you. Background music was so brilliant. This movie is one of the best ones in many years and I hope it gets recognized. Thank you to the whole team for creating magic on screen.

What happens when a director bends the rules of genre filmmaking so much that a new type of beast pops out as a result? If the film has popular appeal, then studios market it to oblivion but if it is artsy, strange and non commercial then studios struggle to market and distribute this "aberration" they created with their money. If released such "aberrations" may find their audience but they usually struggle....years and sometimes even decades may pass before this "aberration" may eventually get tagged as a cult classic and deemed ahead of its time etc. Unfortunately Kennedy is that movie.....It premiered at Cannes in May 2023 and has yet to find a home in theaters or streaming anywhere on planet earth even after more than two years. Fortunately I was among the lucky few to sit in its screening as the centerpiece of this year's NY Indian Film Festival.

Kennedy is an arthouse, Mumbai Neo-Noir, Graphic Novel-esque, Crime Thriller with one of the most daring character studies brought to (At least the film festival) screen in the Hindi Film Industry. The movie belongs to 2 people - first and foremost its director, Anurag Kashyap who creates a modern, dark, corrupt, realistic, criminal universe set during the pandemic and gives it a stunning dark graphic novel look. And its lead actor, Rahul Bhat who descends into one of the darkest, most complex and unique characters in recent history.

Bhat's portrayal of a social monster who lacks empathy, morality and remorse on first look is so well written and brought to life that it somehow manages to get the audience to feel for him, worry for him and even care for him by the end of the movie. His look, his demeanor, his actions, his secrets, his feelings, his guilt, his cracking psyche and everything that haunt him, makes for an extremely interesting, compelling and complicated character. The way Kashyap captures his movements, his lack of expressions, his deep voice with a very few words to say is reminiscent of Arnofsky bringing Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson to life in The Wrestler. Kennedy is Bhat's tour de force performance.

In the post screening Q&A Kashyap and Bhat discuss how they brought Kennedy's character to life. Kashyap ensured that Bhat didnt take a bath, stayed awake the night before they shot the movie at late night on weekends and bulked up by 18 Kgs of pure muscles for the role. His tiredness, bloodshot eyes, big built, messy look, no nonsense attitude and apathy towards others feels real and natural. The modest, soft spoken, fit and lean Bhat who interacted with the audience in the Q&A session seemed like a completely different person from the character that he embodied for the 2 hr 22 mins run time of the movie.

The movie is a slow burn, dark and gritty character study of a psychologically scarred ex cop turned hitman for the Mumbai commissioner who is on a focused mission to get to his nemesis.... Saleem, an underworld mob boss whose whereabouts are unknown. Kennedy is an arthouse crime thriller and not an action packed commercial entertainer by any measure. It does erupt into the occasional explosions, car chase and very realistic gunshots from time to time but they aren't meant as shots of adrenaline rush. They increase the tension, raise the stakes and gradually reveal more and more about Kennedy AKA Uday Shetty.

The other characters of the movie also gradually take shape. The commissioner, the cop, the mobster, the guy who just doesn't stop talking to Kennedy after each kill. All played very well by the respective actors. Sunny Leone's character has an important role but neither did it need Sunny Leone to play it, nor does Sunny Leone do any real justice to it. She looks good but odd and ends up being a bit of a distraction because we want to quickly get back to Bhat's character and story. The underground poetry based songs in the club are definitely unique and give the movie a very different and somewhat odd flavor.... I think it is so new that it may require a few additional listening sessions to settle in and find a home.

Anurag Kashyap has created a new sub-genre of crime thriller with Kennedy and Rahul Bhat has created one of the finest and darkest protagonists of recent times. The movie starts with Bhat's Kennedy slowly peeling an apple and its ends with his character fully peeled and understood by the audience, packed with a heart wrenching ending....as the screen turns to black, the audience stays glued and fully attentive to the darkness and the sounds of the movie which are met with random sighs of despair and words like "Oh No" from this side of the silver screen. And then it suddenly ends as the screen proudly reads "Written and Directed by Anurag Kashyap"....the theater erupts into applause.

Like several of Kashyap's "Cult Classics", Ugly, Bombay Velvet, Raman Raghav 2.0 etc, Kennedy is not an easy watch. It is not everyone's cup of "whatever" is being served here. It is an acquired taste. It may never see the light of day in a theater in India and even if it does, it is very unlikely going to even gross a fraction of the box office that so many over the top commercial action flicks earn over their opening weekend. But it is exactly what Kashyap and Bhat set out to make. Art, creativity, a gritty character study. It is what good cinema is all about. A Must watch for hardcore Anurag Kashyap and arthouse cinema fans. Others have been cautioned. 8/10.

Finally, I watched Anurag Kashyap's neo-noir crime thriller, Kennedy, thanks to the New York Indian Film Festival. Oh man, how I have missed this side of Kashyap's storytelling.

Kennedy, like Ugly and Raman Raghav 2.0, delves into the dark and sinister underbelly of corruption deeply ingrained within the Indian police force. It also serves as a stark reflection of the bleak truth of human greed.

Rahul Bhat delivers a captivating performance as Kennedy, an insomniac ex-cop presumed dead who has now become a covert contract killer working for corrupt forces in post-lockdown Mumbai. Following his performance in Ugly and Black Warrant, Bhat delivers yet another compelling performance.

Supporting him are actors such as Sunny Leone, Prammod Sanghi, and Shrikant Yadav, who all delivered solid performances.

However, the one performance that truly stood out for me was by Abhilash Thapliyal. Beyond the crime narrative, the movie also explores the profound impact of mental health on individuals and their surroundings, and his role in the movie is critical to narrate that. It sheds light on the consequences of mental health issues and how they affect not only the person but also the people they interact with.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kennedy. It made me so happy to see an Anurag Kashyap movie in the theaters after so long, but it is also immediately made me sad that such a good movie hasn't released in India and is stuck in limbo. Such a loss of Indian cinema.

Kennedy is a mid film because all the bits I liked about it came out as peripheral devices like dialogues that take potshots at police apathy or political ideologies. The references are superb and I loved them. I watched this at the 2023 MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and people were hooting for dialogues like "Mi Marathi Mannooss" (I'm a Marathi guy), so you can imagine that what works for the film is not what's in the core. The core is where a hitman, a former cop, who works for the commissioner goes berserk because he's behind a guy for revenge. The rawness and violence that arise as a result are thrilling to watch though I felt the occasional hiphop song and the monoact performance in the middle and Sunny Leone laughing instead of speaking every time a character is aruond her felt sore. I'm not saying it's a bad film but it's not extraordinary.

The most personal film from AK in a while. The ending made me begin to weep like a child. The classical music was so beautifully used. Just for that I'm going to see it again. Is it just me or does Rahul Bhatt sound like AK in the film in some way. Either I'm projecting or it's intentional. Wherever the politics or the personal came in, the film was in its best gear. Thoroughly enjoyed it. There is a poem in the third act that reminds me so much of Hamlet. Apathy is the devil. That's my take away. And that's a lot to take away if you think about it. Anurag sir had taught me dialogue writing at FTII in 2004. Also, as a Side note, one of my cinematic heroes and me are now connected in a very strange way. The endings of one my most personal films and this film are so ridiculously and strangely connected that my mind is blown. It's something that's going to stay with me till I'm alive.