Bandar Review: Anurag Kashyap’s Bobby Deol Starrer Is Gripping, Uneasy And Darkly Funny | Reviews News

Last Updated:June 05, 2026, 10:27 IST

Bandar review: Bobby Deol leads Anurag Kashyap’s gritty drama about a rape accusation, prison life and the psychological cost of public ruin.

Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar, starring Bobby Deol, Sapna Pabbi, Sanya Malhotra and Saba Azad, is a gritty and uneasy drama that explores accusation, social fallout and life inside an undertrial prison.

Over the years, Anurag Kashyap has acquired the restless temperament of a filmmaker who refuses to let a genre remain in its original shape. He picks it up, abrades its surface, contorts its bones, stains it with unease and turns it into something that is, more often than not, rounded, provocative and occasionally path-breaking. Whether it was the sci-fi mystery architecture of Dobaaraa or the gritty, almost graphic-novel-like world of Kennedy, set amid the feverish dread of the pandemic, Kashyap has kept reinventing his cinematic idiom while making stories that do not merely entertain, but also prod the viewer in the ribs. His latest outing, Bandar, starring Bobby Deol, Sapna Pabbi, Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad and a wide ensemble of talented actors, is another intriguing accretion to that journey. The film refracts the MeToo movement through a more disquieting prism, examining the social, legal and psychological fallout of being accused of rape, irrespective of guilt or innocence. It is a mixed bag, coruscating at times with brilliance, and at other times, feeling slightly contrived around the peripheries.

The film opens with Samar Mehra, played by Bobby Deol, a television star who was once celebrated but has now been quietly jettisoned by the same industry that once fed on his aura. He is no longer the man whose name could make rooms turn. Now, he takes up random gigs while struggling to reclaim a glory that has slowly evaporated. He has pending EMIs, he is falling behind on paying his house help, and a thick film of despondence seems permanently lacquered on his face. But everything in Samar’s life is not dipped in grey. He is dating Khushi, played by Saba Azad, and although the age gap between them is evident, they appear to have been together for a while. In one scene, the two bicker when Samar gets jealous about Khushi meeting a male friend, revealing both intimacy and insecurity in the same breath.

But Samar’s life begins to splinter one evening when a couple of policemen arrive at his door and escort him to the police station. There, he is confronted with a precarious and damning situation. A woman named Gayatri, played by Sapna Pabbi, whom Samar had met through a dating app and slept with once, has accused him of rape and registered a case under Section 376.

Still unable to process the enormity of what has happened, Samar gets into a quarrel with one of the inspectors as the latter reads out his explicit chats with the accuser. This gives the film one of its funniest stretches, where the cop uses the word “banjo” as a substitute for a similar-sounding cuss word with a deadpan solemnity that makes the moment even more hilarious. During the interrogation, the same cop offers Samar the option of paying Rs 20 lakh to save himself, but Samar refuses outright, claiming that he is innocent, that he has done nothing wrong, and that he wants a lawyer. His request is not immediately addressed. The next day, Suhani, played by Sanya Malhotra, Samar’s sister, arrives at the jail with a lawyer. Samar pleads with her to get him out of this mess while trying to convince a worried and conflicted sister that he is innocent.

Samar remains hopeful until the judge rejects his bail and sends him to 15 days of judicial custody. That is where his nightmare truly begins, as he is booked into a shabby, suffocating and wildly overcrowded undertrial prison.

As Samar tries to steady himself in those horrible and despicable living conditions, his lawyer and sister continue to support him from outside, rummaging for any detail that might help his case and arranging monetary help wherever required. Inside, Samar is forced to navigate the choppy waters of the undertrial prison. He is advised not to reveal that he is in jail under Section 376, which concerns rape, blackmail and extortion, and instead say that he is in for Section 302, murder, so that he does not get sexually assaulted by other inmates who do not look kindly upon rapists.

The prison setup is one of the most fascinating and vital aspects of Bandar. It is overcrowded, its toilets are overflowing, cockroaches move around with the entitlement of permanent residents, the food is bug-infested, and the air itself seems to have gone stale. There are zany, over-the-top characters, and naturally, there are factions. One group consists of men accused of rape, while the larger and more dominant faction is led by Lijo, played by Indrajith Sukumaran. His group is a strange cocktail of inmates, ranging from drug mules to accused murderers. Samar drifts between these two worlds, silently negotiating with the absurdity of his condition, trying to remain hopeful even as his life begins to collapse brick by brick. As Lijo tells him in one scene, the undertrial prison is like a seven-star hotel. If one wants anything done, one must grease some palms. Nothing comes as charity.

At the centre of this storm is Gayatri Anand, played by Sapna Pabbi, the woman who met Samar on a dating app. While she falls intensely for him, Samar does not mirror those emotions. Gayatri comes across as anxiously attached, almost obsessively drawn to him, as she repeatedly visits his flat unannounced. Sometimes, she brings food cooked for him. At other times, she tries to fix the interiors of his house because she believes there is “negative” energy there. Samar initially indulges her after their one sexual encounter, but slowly begins to distance himself as he realises that her attachment is unhealthy. He does not directly ask her to stay away, but he starts seeing Khushi around the same time. One day, Gayatri spots Samar with Khushi while stalking him and confronts him face to face. Samar sternly asks her to stay away or he will call the police. That moment triggers her, and from there, the machinery of the film begins to grind forward. Whether Samar manages to extricate himself from this mess or not is something one must sit through the film to discover.

Like most Anurag Kashyap films, Bandar begins with a rather exemplary tonal grip. There is unease from the very first stretch, a kind of raw grittiness that seeps in through Samar’s ordinary flat, his conversations with the house help, and the quiet sadness that seems to have petrified on his face after years of fading stardom and lack of worthwhile opportunities. The stress on his visage is unmistakable. The noir-like treatment makes it clear that this film is not walking toward a bright, comforting destination. The blue-tinted colour grading and the stylistic choices become part of its very bloodstream.

The comedic moments also emerge naturally and do not feel forcibly grafted into the narrative. The interrogation sequence, in particular, is a riot. The exchange around dating apps, the inspector trying to understand swiping left and right, the way he reads the explicit chat between Samar and Gayatri, and the way he talks about the picture of his penis that Samar had sent her, all of it is timed well enough to genuinely draw laughter.

There are also moments that feel too lived-in to be dismissed as mere writing. For instance, when Samar is being taken to the police station, sandwiched between two cops, one of them suddenly pulls out his phone and video calls his wife to show her who he is sitting with. He pushes the phone repeatedly towards Samar’s face so his wife can see him clearly, and what makes the moment funnier is that she does not even recognise him. It is the kind of absurdity that feels culled from real life, where humiliation and comedy often sit on the same broken chair.

What works most in favour of Bandar is the grittiness and realism with which the undertrial prison has been portrayed. The film captures the plight of people trapped in limbo, sometimes for years and sometimes for what feels like eternity. One might expect the film to transform into a courtroom drama, but Kashyap is more interested in the cost and consequences of being falsely implicated, and in the aftermath that unfolds once a man’s life begins spiralling in just a handful of days. Samar is gradually reduced to a helpless, insignificant inmate number. He tries to salvage his relationship with Khushi, pleads with his sister to get him out, and slowly sinks into despair and reluctant acceptance. That descent is portrayed with a bruising sense of inevitability.

Technically too, Bandar performs exceptionally well in creating an almost claustrophobic prison complex, packed with all kinds of people, leaving the viewer to decipher the morality of every character Samar meets. There is Lijo, whose every favour comes with a price tag, and then there is a former security guard who claims he was falsely accused of rape, only to casually say in the next breath that women are bound to get raped if they wear short clothes. Even Samar himself is not scrubbed clean of moral ambiguity. While the film makes it clear that he did not rape Gayatri, it does not absolve him of his own blemishes. His gaze towards a young female neighbour, particularly the way he zooms into her photograph while browsing her social media profile, quietly reveals that he is not entirely free of fallibility. He may not be guilty of the crime he is accused of, but he is not presented as a spotless man either. Kashyap does not underline these contradictions. He lets them fester in the open. The crash zooms in certain sequences and the background score elevate the mood further. Amit Trivedi’s music is decent and satisfactory. A song like “Pinjara” works because it weaves itself into the narrative quite naturally, while “Ram Siya Ram” by Shivahari Varma plays inconspicuously on the jail speaker every morning. Against the bleakness of the prison, the song carries a strange, almost cruel hope. The dichotomy is beautiful.

On the acting front, Bobby Deol does a good job, especially in scenes that require intensity on his face. However, he is inconsistent in the scenes where he has to cry. Sapna Pabbi as Gayatri does an exceptional job of playing a woman obsessed with Samar, someone who appears unstable, eerie and emotionally untethered. Saba Azad as Khushi brings a contrasting energy to Bobby Deol’s character and shines in all her scenes. Sanya Malhotra as Suhani Mehra also plays her part well, irrespective of how brief her role is. Indrajith Sukumaran as Lijo is another actor who leaves a tremendous impact with his portrayal. Jitendra Joshi’s performance as Deore, the inspector in the interrogation scene, is applause-worthy. Other actors such as Raj B Shetty, Aamir Aziz, Sukant Goel, Ankush Gedam and Aurobindo Bhattacharjee also play their parts effectively. And if one manages to spot him, Anurag Kashyap’s son-in-law Shane Gregoire also appears in a small role that works as comic relief.

However, Bandar is far from perfect. It is not a film that will appeal to everyone, primarily because it tries to cater to both indie and artsy cinema lovers as well as a full-fledged commercial audience. In trying to serve both, the film occasionally develops a sense of dissonance in its treatment. It often behaves like a slow-burner, and that might test the viewer’s patience. Even the climax may leave some feeling less than satisfied. Kashyap has previously delivered effective open-ended endings, the most recent example being Kennedy, but the way Bandar concludes feels sudden, erratic and not entirely fulfilling.

To sum it up, Bandar is a decent film that entertains and makes you ponder, much like many of Anurag Kashyap’s works. It is gripping, engaging and, most importantly, feels real. That realism is enough to keep you invested in the story, provided you are willing to let the narrative simmer and have the patience to discern the artistic choices embedded within it. Bandar may not be Kashyap at his sharpest, but it still carries enough bite to make it a decent watch.

About the Author

Yatamanyu Narain

Yatamanyu Narain is a Sub-Editor at News18.com with a passion for all things entertainment. Whether he’s breaking the latest Bollywood news or chatting with rising stars in the OTT world, he’s always …Read More