‘Kennedy’ movie review: Rahul Bhat powers Anurag Kashyap’s haunting meditation on systemic rot and redemption

Before the curtain rises on Anurag Kashyap’s latest noirish adventure, William Wordsworth’s famous words, “We poets in our youth begin in gladness; but thereof come in the end despondency and madness”, flash on the screen. This struggle between resolution and independence holds for both Kashyap and Kennedy.

Curiously titled after South Indian star Vikram’s real name, who was supposed to work with Kashyap once upon a time, Kennedy employs the underrated Rahul Bhat as a phantom cop, Uday Shetty, roaming in a rotting city.

Officially declared dead years earlier, he now exists as a shadowy hitman for a corrupt police commissioner, Rashid Khan (Mohit Takalkar), whose ‘cut’ has dried up during the COVID wave. Untethered and unseen, Kennedy is equally desperate as his boss and, in a quid pro quo, seeks information on the underworld don who destroyed his family life. Over the years, we have seen encounter specialists becoming a mirror image of the rot they set out to clean. In Kennedy, that figure steps out of the mirror and haunts. Uday’s grim routine crosses paths with an enigmatic woman, Charlie (Sunny Leone). The intersection spirals into a hallucinatory contraption of guilt and revenge.

Set against the eerie backdrop of the pandemic-induced lockdown, the slow-burn simmers over dark nights of relentless violence and moral decadence in Mumbai. The subtle political commentary, wrapped in a heavy atmosphere, exposes how power operates through silence and erasure.

Sunny Leone in ‘Kennedy’
| Photo Credit:
ZEE5

Those who traverse the newsscape will recognise that Kashyap, a keen observer of systemic decay, draws on the Antilla bomb scare of 2021 and weaves a complex web in which real-life cases of alleged corruption and extortion segue into fiction. It critiques how the politician-corporate nexus, intertwined with police and underworld elements are deeply entrenched in a rotten power structure where corruption thrives unchecked, even during crises. Though the film has been waiting in the wings for a while, the point it’s trying to make remains relevant. In fact, with the advantage of hindsight, it is easier to join the dots now.

Cinematographer Sylvester Fonesca’s gaze is at once intrusive and objective, and helps Kashyap use the pandemic’s isolation to accentuate themes of alienation and loss. The storytelling prioritises mood over momentum. The punches don’t bleed; they generate the lingering pain of a contusion. Dotted with masked characters and deserted streets, the lighting and production design turn the metropolis into a sprawling yet claustrophobic trap.

Cast in a role that appears convoluted, Rahul makes the character’s rage and existential crisis palpable. Anchoring a screenplay that feels at times fragmented, he generates both menace and vulnerability, sometimes in a single frame, to help us navigate the emotional architecture of the writing. Sunny subverts expectations as she plays a desperate woman, but her much-publicised nervous laugh, a defence mechanism to survive the monstrous turn of events, doesn’t always fit the film’s texture.

A still from the film
| Photo Credit:
ZEE5

There are passages where Kennedy gives the impression that the arthouse tilt is a deliberate effort to say what is considered most politically incorrect without ruffling feathers. The scars of censorship can be felt in the language. The polish on the subversion is not uniform, and the role of editing in keeping us guessing is not seamless. Like the name of his new production house, Kashyap’s films these days are good and bad without a conjunction. It is like Kennedy flows into Nischanchi. Both hold the gun with an unmistakable swagger. While the latter flatters to deceive, the former almost finds its target.

Kennedy is streaming on Zee5.