Shobhinaw Satyaa stares into the middle distance during the film's second act with an intensity that almost makes you forget the scene is blocked with all the grace of a high school play. It is a quiet moment, save for the hum of a flickering tube light that seems to have been mixed just a little too loud in the final cut. You start to wonder if the sound editor just left the ambient buzz in by accident or if it is meant to represent his internal chaos. Then the music swells, heavy on the synthesized strings, and the tension dissolves into the kind of melodrama that has defined Hindi movies for decades.

The direction here is constantly fighting its own scale. There is a clear ambition to tap into the visceral, grounded grit we saw in Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, yet the screenplay keeps tethering the narrative to structural tropes that feel better suited for television. Every time the story threatens to go off-road into something genuinely unpredictable, a character will pop up to deliver a monologue that explains exactly what we should be feeling. It is a shame because the camera work by the DOP has this wonderful, oily texture during the night sequences that deserved a more subtle script to play with.

Vihaan Shedge enters the frame with a kind of jittery energy that keeps the viewer guessing. He doesn’t play the role so much as he occupies the space, forcing his co-stars to react to his erratic movements rather than the dialogue itself. When he shares the screen with Chandan Anand, the dynamic shifts completely. Anand carries the weight of a seasoned performer, grounding the more fantastical elements of the plot in a weary, lived-in cynicism. If I’m honest, I found his presence the most compelling part of the film, even if his wardrobe occasionally looks like he walked off the set of a different production entirely.

The cinematography manages to capture the claustrophobia of the urban setting without resorting to the usual shaky-cam tropes that have plagued so many recent Bollywood films. Instead, there is a patient, hovering quality to the lens. It lingers on dust motes and cracked paint long after the dialogue has finished, creating a visual rhythm that almost succeeds in masking the pacing issues of the second hour. The problem is that the transition between these observant, still shots and the frantic, choppy editing of the action beats creates a jarring sensation that never really settles down.

Then there is the soundtrack, which refuses to let the audience breathe. It is a constant wall of sound. Every emotional beat is underscored by a heavy percussion loop or a rising vocal refrain that feels like it was pasted on during the final days of post-production. It’s a small thing but it bugged me how the same four-note motif kept cropping up every time someone opened a door, as if the film didn't trust us to understand the significance of a simple entrance. Some of these cues are so loud they actually drown out the lines delivered by the supporting cast, which is particularly noticeable during the outdoor confrontation scenes.

Hanuman Ansh attempts to balance mythological archetypes with the harsh reality of modern crime. It works when it focuses on the internal degradation of its central figures, mapping the loss of innocence onto a city that clearly doesn't care about their survival. There is a coldness to the world-building that I appreciated. It avoids the neon-soaked sentimentality that often creeps into these types of stories, opting instead for a palette of greys and deep browns. Yet the thematic backbone occasionally snaps under the pressure of trying to say too much at once.

There is a recurring visual motif involving broken mirrors that I suspect the director thought was very clever, though it ends up feeling like a heavy-handed metaphor for fractured identity by the fifth or sixth time we see it. It is one of those directorial flourishes that works on paper but feels redundant in motion. I found myself wishing they had cut two of those shots and used the extra time to let the characters actually speak to one another without a looming threat hanging over them.

The pacing of the third act feels like a different film entirely. Everything accelerates into a series of collisions that are edited with such ferocity that you lose track of who is holding the weapon and why they are fighting in the first place. It is a common flaw in many Hindi movies, this urge to empty the narrative clip in the final twenty minutes. We go from a slow-burn study of motive to a chaotic shootout that lacks the geographic clarity needed to make the stakes feel real. You are watching a spectacle, but you are not feeling the impact.

Despite these frustrations, the performances keep you glued to the screen. Satyaa, Shedge, and Anand are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. They elevate scenes that might otherwise collapse into pure cliché, finding small pockets of vulnerability in characters written with thick, permanent-marker strokes. When the film lets them sit in silence, it hits a frequency that feels authentic and dangerous. It is only when the plot mechanics kick back into gear that the magic starts to leak out of the edges.

I left the theater thinking about the one moment where the sound drops out completely. It was a fleeting, accidental grace note in an otherwise over-produced soundscape. If the movie had trusted that kind of restraint for even half the runtime, it might have been a different animal. As it stands, it is a piece of work that is wrestling with its own identity, stuck between the desire to be a gritty character piece and the commercial pressure to be a loud, kinetic action spectacle. The effort is visible, the commitment is obvious, and the result is a tangled, fascinating, flawed experiment.

The edit on the final sequence, where the camera holds on the empty street for five seconds too long after the characters have left, is a choice I still can’t decide on. Maybe it was an attempt to show the indifference of the location to the violence that just transpired. Maybe it was just a lazy cut that missed the timing to jump to the credits. Either way, it left me staring at a cracked pavement, wondering if anyone else in the audience was as tired as I was.