Mumbai, India – Taapsee Pannu’s latest film Gandhari, now streaming on Netflix, is a thriller that attempts to blend the divine wrath of mythology with a gritty revenge narrative. Directed by Devashish Makhija and written by Kanika Dhillon, the film follows Bani, a mother who loses her eyesight after a brutal attack and transforms into a force of vengeance against a child-trafficking ring. However, despite an intriguing premise, the film is let down by underdeveloped ideas and an erratic execution that leaves it feeling bland and intellectually burdened.
The narrative is set in the fictional town of Joypurra, a hotbed of child exploitation. Bani’s harrowing journey begins when her young daughter is abducted from a crowded railway station. The film tries to marry Makhija’s realistic, socio-political minimalism with Dhillon’s commercial feminist template, but the result is a movie bereft of tonal identity. The mythic parallel, invoking the Devi, feels forced and muddles the gritty realism of the child-trafficking plot. The reveal about Bani’s past, intended to recontextualize the story, feels more like a throwaway trick than organic narrative evolution. The storytelling oscillates between a moody indie and a loud, mainstream revenge potboiler, with monologue-heavy confrontations puncturing scenes that require quiet agony.
Taapsee Pannu is efficient as the defiant mother, but the performance offers little artistic surprise, as she has navigated similar emotional and physical landscapes in Blurr and Dobaara. The surprise comes in a few pulsating action sequences that effectively capture a mother’s fury. The supporting cast, including Ishwak Singh, Mita Vashisht, and Chhaya Kadam, are competent but function as props in a narrative that refuses to look past its central star. The visual and auditory choices pander to an algorithm-friendly streaming palette, with jarring pop music choices shattering any sense of place. Ultimately, Gandhari is consumed by its own contradictions, leaving the audience lost in an aimless maze of structural tunnels that lead nowhere.
