11-07-2025
‘Maalik' review: An overly familiar crime saga of a master of none
The brilliant actor Rajkummar Rao tries out something new in Maalik. We haven't seen Rao like this before, buffed-up and aphorism-heavy, drenched in blood and steeped in carnage – perhaps with good reason.
Pulkit's Hindi film is set in Allahabad between 1998 and 1990. Rao plays Deepak, a farmer's son whose path to crime is littered with the usual insults to family honour and the weariness that comes with being serf rather than ruler.
Deepak and his college mate Badauna (Anshumaan Pushkar) establish a gang so deadly that policemen are scared to go near its operations. The one cop who dares to is forced to lick his own spit.
At least in this scene, Pulkit establishes Deepak to be as cruel as his supposed tormentors. In other moments, Deepak, who grandly calls himself maalik or master, enters or exits the frame in slow motion, surrounded by mist and hubris.
Deepak's ambition threatens his patron Shankar (Saurabh Shukla) and Shankar's lackey Balhar (Swanand Kirkire). Nobody is able to stop Deepak, neither his rival Chandrashekhar (Saurabh Sachdeva) nor the top cop imported from Kolkata, Prabhu (Prosenjit Chatterjee). Only Deepak's wife Shalini (Manushi Chhillar) has some sway over the hothead.
There's little in the antihero's journey from athletic student to feared gangster to superhuman bullet-dodger that hasn't been seen before. Pulkit and co-writer Jyotsana Nath aren't remotely curious about seeking the elements that might make Maalik any different from previous crime dramas set in the Hindi heartland.
Since the kill-or-be-killed strategy is followed by both Deepak and Prabhu, there's nothing to distinguish cop from criminal. With so much that is familiar, the 152-minute movie can be reasonably expected to stage striking scenes of gore – which it does – and give Deepak a Scarface-like varnish, which it doesn't. Maalik is a slickly packaged film, with top-notch work by cinematographer Anuj Rakesh Dhawan and editor Zubin Sheikh.
Rajkummar Rao is only occasionally commanding as the master of none. The feeling that the actor is performing rather than living the part of a gangster never quite leaves his studious performance.
Rao has very few scenes in which he can make Deepak rise above the garden-variety thug who slaughters at will. Rather than Deepak, the most memorable character turns out to be the slippery, triple-dealing Balhar, who is deftly played by Swanand Kirkire.
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