Bandar Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Bandar is a dark, unsettling prison drama that benefits greatly from Bobby Deol’s career-best performance and Anurag Kashyap’s uncompromising direction. While the film’s slow pacing and uneven screenplay prevent it from becoming a masterpiece, its powerful themes and emotional intensity make it a compelling watch for viewers who appreciate serious, thought-provoking cinema.
Some films want you to feel good when they end. Bandar is not one of those films.
Anurag Kashyap’s latest is a prison drama built around a simple, uncomfortable premise: what does justice actually look like when every person involved — officers, prisoners, lawyers, media, the public — is operating with their own compromised version of the truth? The film spends over two hours in that question without ever offering the clean answer audiences usually expect.
It is heavy going. It is also, when it works, genuinely powerful.
Bobby Deol Carries the Film on His Shoulders
The story centers on a former prison officer whose involvement in a high-profile case turns his life inside out. Media attention follows. Public outrage follows. Legal battles follow. And underneath all of it, the film slowly unpacks what actually happened and why nothing about it is simple.
Bobby Deol plays this character in a way that feels like a genuine step change in his career. There are no big speeches here, no moments designed to make the audience lean forward and root for him. Instead, he communicates through restraint — through silence, through expressions that suggest a man carrying something he can barely hold, through body language that conveys exhaustion in a way that dialogue rarely can.
He never asks for your sympathy. He just exists in the character, flaws fully visible, and lets you make of it what you will. That’s a harder choice than playing for audience approval, and it’s the right one for this material.
Over the past few years, Bobby Deol has rebuilt his reputation with a series of strong supporting turns. Bandar feels like something more than that — a full, complete central performance in a film that demands everything he has.
Anurag Kashyap Directs With Full Commitment
Anyone familiar with Kashyap’s earlier work will recognize the fingerprints immediately. No glamour. No concessions to conventional thriller mechanics. A world that feels grubby and real and slightly suffocating from the first scene.
The prison sequences are particularly well-constructed. The physical space feels genuinely oppressive — the walls close, the light harsh, the tension never fully releasing even in quieter moments. Kashyap creates a consistent atmospheric dread that keeps you unsettled throughout.
The supporting cast matches the tone. Sanya Malhotra brings real emotional weight to her role, and the ensemble around her feels populated by actual people rather than types. That grounded quality is essential for a film making arguments about institutional reality. Sapna Pabbi is looking good.
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Where It Struggles
The pacing is the main problem, and it’s a real one. At over two hours, the film repeats itself in places. Emotional beats that land well the first time are revisited past the point where they add something new. Some scenes feel like they were included because they’re meaningful rather than because they’re necessary.
The screenplay also tries to carry more than it can comfortably hold. Power structures, media trials, gender politics, institutional failure, personal redemption — these are all present, and all worth addressing, but the film’s attempt to engage with all of them means some receive less depth than they deserve. At moments it feels more interested in making a statement than telling a story, and the narrative momentum suffers for it.
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Is It Worth Watching?
Yes — but with honest expectations. This is not a thriller that builds to a satisfying reveal. It’s not a conventional prison drama with a clear protagonist and a clear enemy. It’s a film that sits in moral complexity and asks you to sit there with it.
For viewers who engage with that kind of cinema, Bandar is one of the more significant Hindi films released this year. Bobby Deol’s performance alone earns the viewing time.
The dark tone will not appeal to everyone. Viewers looking for a conventional thriller with pace and momentum may find it too heavy-going. But for those willing to engage with what it’s actually trying to say, it’s a film that lingers.
Bobby Deol’s career-best performance and Kashyap’s fearless direction make it worth your time — even with its rough edges.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5) — A powerful, flawed, and genuinely thought-provoking prison drama that deserves more attention than it will probably get. Bandar is uncompromising in a way that not many Hindi films are. It doesn’t hand out easy answers. It presents a messy reality and asks you to sit with it.