5 Movies Like Adipurush (2023)

Through this action-packed, absolutely crazy ride of a movie, writer-director Atlee and Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan team up in Jawan to question the country’s corruption in multiple fields, including, but not limited to the agricultural sector, the healthcare industry, and the electoral system. They do so through an amped-up, explosion-filled spectacle led by a high-tech Robin Hood and his merry women inmates, who use terrorism in order to pay out loans for poor farmers and other promises that politicians give to their voters. It’s also intertwined with a romance plot that sees the vigilante and the single-parent counterterrorist chief in an unknowing enemies-to-lovers, mistaken identity marriage. It’s a strange film that tries to tackle as many political messages as possible, but it’s also downright entertaining with every plot twist it takes.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Actor: Aaliyah Qureishi, Ashlesha Thakur, Atlee, Bharat Raj, Boxer Dheena, Deepika Padukone, Eijaz Khan, Girija Oak, Jaffer Sadiq, Kenny Basumatary, Leesha Eclairs, Lehar Khan, Mukesh Chhabra, Naresh Gosain, Nayanthara, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Priyamani, Ravindra Vijay, Ridhi Dogra, Sanjay Dutt, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, Sanya Malhotra, Shah Rukh Khan, Smita Tambe, Sunil Grover, Vijay Sethupathi, Viraj Ghelani, Yogi Babu

Director: Atlee

Rating: NR

The concept of Maaveeran is downright brilliant. As the timid comic strip writer is forced to be as brave as the hero he created, there’s something here that encourages its audience to listen to the yearnings already inside them. It allows for some cartoonish comedy that comes across as earnest. However, there's a certain hesitancy in the writing that makes the film’s second half a letdown. The film sticks too long to its protagonist’s cowardice that there’s so little time to wrap everything up. It’s still entertaining till the end, but a better sense of pacing would have kept the first half’s riveting comedy, and would have made a better case for being a hero.

Genre: Action, Drama

Actor: 'Jeeva' Ravi, Aditi Shankar, Balaji Sakthivel, Dhileban, Madhan Kumar Dhakshinamoorthy, Mysskin, Ravi Teja, Saritha, Semmalar Annam, Sivakarthikeyan, Sunil Varma, Suresh Chakravarthy, Vijay Sethupathi, Yogi Babu

Director: Madonne Ashwin

Operating in a similar style and speed as the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time and Uncut Gems, Freestyle gives us a peek into the seedy underbelly of Poland through the eyes of Diego, a smalltime muscian who slides back into his drug dealing ways when he finds himself short on money. On the sensory front, Freestyle is a thrilling experience. Diego charges the film with palpable anxiety, Kraków’s underground community lights it up in dizzying neon, and the local hip-hop scene backs it with exciting new sounds. It’s a technical feat, but stripped of these elements, Freestyle is nothing more than a predictable crime thriller populated with predictable characters, many of whom, by the way, are thrown in at random points in the movie so that it often gets confusing and infuriating to watch. Despite potentially having something to say about the apathy of youth or the glaring discrepancy between social classes, Freestyle seems solely interested in being a slick crime thriller that has its characters run around in circles to save themselves. It looks good and sounds even better, but without anything substantial holding it up, Freestyle fails to relay an authentic sense of relevance and urgency. 

Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Actor: Artur Krajewski, Filip Lipiecki, Hana Nobis, Juliusz Chrząstowski, Krzysztof Zarzecki, Maciej Musiałowski, Michał Balicki, Michał Sikorski, Nel Kaczmarek, Olek Krupa, Patrik Vrbovský, Roman Gancarczyk, Zofia Kowalewska

Director: Maciej Bochniak