Anek (transl. Many) is an Indian 2022 Hindi-language action thriller film written and directed by Anubhav Sinha who also co-produced it with T-Series. The film focuses on an undercover cop on a mission to gain peace in Northeast India. It stars Ayushmann Khurrana, J.D. Chakravarthy, Andrea Kevichüsa, Manoj Pahwa and Kumud Mishra. Anek was released in worldwide cinemas on 27 May 2022.
Anek movie review: Ayushmann Khurrana and the film stay woolly, being careful to stay in the middle of the while-on-the-one-side, but-also tightrope. Anubhav Sinha dips his toe into relatively unexplored territory, with mixed results.
The North East states, long been dubbed the ‘seven sisters’, a phrase which has fallen into disuse these days, is the focus of Anubhav Sinha’s ‘Anek’. The title is smart, incorporating not only the acronym ‘NE’, but also talking up how this part of India, long a hotbed of insurgency and turmoil, can now be brought within the fold.
Is the film a reality check, or wish fulfilment? Sinha, who has been consistently engaging with the political in his second coming (communal politics in ‘Mulk’, gender politics in ‘Thappad’, caste politics in ‘Article 15’) dips his toe into relatively unexplored territory, with mixed results. Attempting to unravel the complex layers of a region still considered remote and faintly foreign by a large swathe of India, is in and of itself brave, and the director who has also written the movie, takes on the challenge manfully.
But the difficulties of being fully cognizant of the North East’s many-layered facets weigh upon the film: in trying to say it like it is, as well as please the many players which currently train a hawk’s eye on what the movies say and how they say it, it becomes neither this nor that.
480p Hindi
720p Hindi + Telugu + Tamil
