‘Dogs’ ('Kuttey’): Review

Dir: Aasmaan Bhardwaj. India. 2023. 108 minutes 

At first glance, the new Bollywood Hindi-language crime thriller Dogs (Kuttey) appears to have a lot going for it. An array of colourful characters—cops, criminals, politicians, radical insurgents — in a perennial game of one upmanship, crackling dialogue in popular patois, pulsating music, fast-paced action and a stellar ensemble of some of Indian cinema’s most accomplished actors. But the promise of a wild ride eventually ends up as a disappointingly tame affair, failing to deliver a punch and lacking a vital sense of fun.

Drugs, expletives, scatological humour and sex, encounters and shootouts, bodies and endless pools of blood.

The first big Bollywood release of the year after a disastrous 2022 at the box office, Aasmaan Bhardwaj’s debut feature film about multiple gangs of crooks attempting to rob an armoured van loaded with cash in the outskirts of Mumbai seems unlikely to make a splash when on releases in India and the UK on January 13, even with the presence of stars Tabu, Konkona Sen Sharma and Naseeruddin Shah.

It’s a familiar botched heist film, confidently executed but in search of individuality and distinctiveness. Despite the eminently Indian context, the spirits of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, together with Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj (the director’s filmmaker father), are writ large on the high-octane, cocky, non-linear narrative with interwoven sub-plots. The robbery at the centre unfolds from multiple perspectives in three chapters, with a prologue and epilogue to boot.

Dogs is bookended by two significant Indian realities—the armed resistance of radical Naxalite insurgents against the state, and the economic repercussions of demonetisation announced by PM Narendra Modi on the evening of November 8, 2016.  The latter is deployed as a device to elicit a chuckle and is left cleverly open to audience interpretation depending on their own political position and point of view on the significant financial decision. 

The former, however, fails to become more than a token nod to the oppression of and defiance by the disenfranchised. The rebels seem like marionettes and their leader Lakshmi (Konkona Sen Sharma) doesn’t get to be more than a stony presence. The only significance of this episode is in lending the narrative an important prop — a bomb, supposedly a deliverance from persecution of all kinds — that links up the many strands and brings things to a head in the finale.

From here we move on to the world of Mumbai cops, where Paaji (Kumud Mishra) and Gopal (Arjun Kapoor) spend their time handling criminals like Bhau Naseeruddin Shah), foot soldiers in the gang wars that are part of the law-and-order machinery. They find themselves in a tough spot that only a crooked cop like Pammi (Tabu) can get them out of, but it involves a cost they cannot afford. Elsewhere, Bhau’s daughter Lovely (Radhika Madan) becomes desperate to flee her suffocating family with lover Danish (Shardul Bhardwaj). It’s the big bucks that bring them all together.

Dogs is like a microcosm of infernal, trigger-happy people. Vagabonds, wastrels, corrupt, greedy and needy, they are like hounds fighting for an elusive bone. The film even incorporates the poem  ‘Kutte’, by the iconic Pakistani Urdu writer Faiz Ahmad Faiz, as an anthem of sorts; Faiz uses the metaphor of strays to underscore how human beings reduce themselves to mere dregs. 

This world is defined by drugs, expletives, scatological humour and sex, encounters and shootouts, bodies and endless pools of blood. The violence is more mechanical than gratuitous, the tone is uneven, and the story-telling feels scattered and diffused. And with the juggling of several characters, most are left substantially unformed. Lakshmi and Bhau aren’t just sketchy, but a waste of actors of the calibre of Sen and Shah. Kapoor’s deadpan act leaves his Gopal shorn of a possible vivid viciousness, while Lovely and her lover also remain one-note. 

Other performances are more compelling. Kumud Mishra evokes empathy as the cop who retains heart, mind and conscience despite being caught in a cesspool of crime. The poised Tabu has fun with the wickedness of her character, making ruthless killings charming, brazenly cracking jokes at men, playing to the gallery with aplomb. It’s she who valiantly gives Dogs its good moments — although they are few and far between.