There is a specific kind of sound a Royal Enfield makes when the engine is slightly cold and the rider forgets to feather the choke, a dry, coughing rattle that Tarun Dudeja captures with absolute fidelity in the opening reels of Dhak Dhak, though if I am honest, the sound mixing on the gear shifts throughout the first act is a bit tinny and distracting. Hindi films have long had a complicated relationship with the open road, usually treating asphalt as a metaphor for escape or redemption while rarely bothering to show how much your lower back hurts after four hours hunched over a heavy machine on a poorly paved national highway. This is a movie about four women riding motorcycles from Delhi to Khardung La, which sounds like the pitch for a corporate retreat sponsored by an oil company, yet the execution thankfully avoids the glossy, drone-heavy aesthetic of modern travel vlogs in favor of something much dustier and more grounded.

Fatima Sana Shaikh plays Mahi, a Delhi girl whose entire existence is mediated through the small screen of her smartphone where she records beauty tutorials and lip-syncs for an invisible audience, bringing a frantic, slightly desperate energy to the role that prevents her from becoming a simple symbol of modern digital alienation. She shares the frame with Ratna Pathak Shah as Manjari, a widowed grandmother from a traditional household who decides to mount a bike simply because she is tired of asking permission to use the living room television, and their dynamic doesn't rely on easy intergenerational bonding or neat little lessons about mutual understanding. When they argue at a roadside dhaba over the price of parathas, the scene breathes with a genuine awkwardness, two actors finding their footing without the safety net of a polished script that knows how to resolve every emotional beat in three minutes flat. Sanjana Sanghi and Dia Mirza round out the quartet as a disillusioned flight attendant and a mechanics-savvy mother hiding a terminal illness, bringing a heavy, somewhat melodramatic weight to the proceedings that occasionally threatens to capsize the lighter comedic moments.

Tarun Dudeja directs with a workmanlike efficiency that occasionally borders on television commercial territory, particularly when the sunlight hits the handlebars just right and the background score swells with acoustic guitars, reminding one of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara minus the budget for chartered yachts and deep-sea diving gear. The screenplay, co-written by Parixit Joshi and Saurabh Bhave, struggles to give all four characters equal weight, often sidelining Sanghi for long stretches while pushing Shaikh into emotional territory she doesn't quite have the range to navigate without sliding into caricature. Yet there are smaller moments, like a quiet scene in a dingy motel room where the women share a tube of pain relief ointment and talk about snoring, that feel lived-in and real, the kind of texture you rarely get in mainstream Hindi movies where female friendship is usually reduced to shopping trips or tearful matchmaking sessions. The cinematography by Satyajit Sourabh alternates between breathtaking wide shots of mountain passes that look like postcards from a tourism board and claustrophobic close-ups inside dusty helmets where every bead of sweat is magnified under the harsh Himalayan sun.

It is worth noting that Benedict Garrett shows up in a bizarre, completely superfluous cameo as a friendly foreign tourist who helps them fix a flat tire near Manali, a narrative speed bump that feels entirely manufactured to remind the audience that the world outside India finds these women charming and liberated. That small misstep aside, the film works best when it stays small, when it focuses on the sheer physical exhaustion of wrestling a four-hundred-pound motorcycle through a patch of mud or dealing with mechanics who refuse to take women seriously unless they have a male relative standing behind them nodding along. Pathak Shah is the anchor here, delivering lines with a dry, matter-of-fact delivery that cuts through the more earnest, motivational-poster dialogue written for the younger leads. Her performance reminds you of her work in Lipstick Under My Burkha, though here the rebellion is quieter, less about breaking systemic barriers and more about the simple right to feel the wind on your face without a husband or a son vetting the itinerary.

The soundtrack relies far too heavily on driving, percussive anthems that cue up whenever a character looks determinedly into the distance, a sonic crutch that Bollywood movies have leaned on since the nineties to manufacture emotion where the dialogue falls short. Despite these predictable mechanical flaws, the movie possesses a stubborn, unpretentious charm that makes it hard to dismiss even when the plotting gets clumsy and the emotional resolutions arrive with the speed of a high-speed collision. These actors are working hard to sell a premise that could have easily curdled into condescending uplift, finding rough edges in characters who might otherwise have been sanded down into bland archetypes for the sake of mass appeal. The road to Khardung La is long and full of potholes, and while this film hits its fair share of them, it manages to stay upright until the very end.