OTT Review: Kennedy - Long Day’s Journey into Night
There’s a Bade Papa who needs to be threatened enough so a police officer can make up the deficit in his weekly collections thanks to Covid. There is another police officer, Uday Shetty (Rahul Bhat), who has supposedly been dead for six years but does all the shootouts to eliminate inconvenient people. Shot during Covid and screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, it was not theatrically released, and one can see why. It is an unusually honest take on Mumbai’s power structure and the role of its much-feted police force.
Bhat is the world-weary assassin with expressive eyes. There are nice touches such as his love for Tchaikovsky and HMT watches. Sunny Leone is exquisite looking and content to be his long-distance observer and friend. There are other touches such as Varun Grover as a passenger in Uday Shetty’s ranting against Covid and a shootout scene where a mask-wearing citizen is being harassed by devotees of thali-bajao. Shot largely at night, Mumbai has never looked so beautiful or feral. This is Kashyap at his philosophical best.