There is a specific kind of sweat that belongs entirely to the Deol family in Indian cinema, something greasier and more frantic than what you get from most Bollywood leads who usually manage to keep their hair in place even while taking a punch. In Apne, that sweat is everywhere from the very first reel, coating Dharmendra’s temples as he paces a dusty training camp that looks like it was constructed out of leftover corrugated tin and pure stubbornness. If I am honest, the opening thirty minutes drag in a way that makes you check your watch twice, struggling through a plodding setup that tries to ground a ridiculous sporting disgrace in the hyper-earnest world of family honor.

Director Anil Sharma has never met a dramatic beat he couldn't hit with a sledgehammer when a tack hammer would do just fine, orchestrating scenes with the subtlety of a freight train derailment in a quiet suburb. He directs every emotional confrontation as though the projection booth might catch fire if the actors drop below a shout, pushing the cast toward operatic lunges that leave little room for air. The screenplay, credited to Shaktiman Talwar, takes the classic boxing redemption arc—think something closer to The Fighter than Rocky—and strips it of any gritty texture, replacing it instead with melodramatic monologues about fallen pride and ancestral sweat.

Yet there is a bizarre, stubborn magnetism to watching Dharmendra share the screen with his actual flesh and blood, Sunny and Bobby, dragging their real family history into the glaring lights of a studio floor. Dharmendra plays Baldev Singh, a disgraced former Olympic boxer who was stripped of his medal under dubious circumstances and has spent decades nursing that festering wound like a bad tooth. When he decides to channel his unfulfilled ambitions into his sons, the movie shifts gears from a slow-moving family drama into an aggressive showcase of paternal manipulation disguised as love, which is far more interesting than the filmmakers probably intended.

Sunny Deol plays Angad, the older son who carries the physical burden of the family name with his characteristic stoicism, his shoulders hunched under the weight of expectations that were never his to bear in the first place. When Sunny does his trademark roar—that hoarse, trembling bellow that has echoed through Hindi films for decades—it still carries a weird, primal force that cuts through the surrounding noise. Bobby Deol plays Karan, the younger brother drafted into the ring to save the family from financial ruin, bringing a moody, brooding energy that mostly consists of staring intensely at the floorboards while wearing badly tailored leather jackets.

The women in the cast are mostly sidelined by a script that views domestic life as little more than a staging ground for male angst, leaving Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif to do the heavy lifting of looking concerned near doorways. Shilpa gets a few decent moments as the fiercely loyal wife trying to keep the household from fracturing under the pressure of the patriarch's bruised ego, but Katrina is stranded in a thankless role as Bobby's supportive girlfriend who exists solely to smile encouragingly during montages. It is a small thing, but it bugged me how often the female characters are physically pushed to the outer edges of the frame whenever the men start yelling about honor and boxing gloves.

The cinematography by Kabir Lal leans heavily into desaturated blues and dusty golden hour hues that make every gym look like it's located inside a permanent sandstorm, though the camera work gets genuinely sloppy during the fight sequences. Instead of tracking the choreography with any spatial clarity, the editing room relies on a dizzying blur of rapid-fire cuts and speed ramps that obscure who is actually landing the punches, making the climactic bouts look like a collection of still photographs shaken in a box. Himesh Reshammiya’s soundtrack fares a bit better, even if the title track blares through the speakers with such frequency during the second half that you start to feel personally harassed by the brass section.

What saves the film from collapsing entirely under its own ponderous weight is the genuine, frayed bond visible beneath the strained dialogue, a palpable discomfort that hints at real paternal friction playing out in public. When Dharmendra scolds his sons, you get the distinct impression that he isn't entirely acting, that the lines between the fictional characters and their actual familial hierarchy have blurred into something messy and unresolved. Hindi movies have long relied on the shorthand of blood ties to manufacture instant emotion, but Apne actually squeezes something resembling authentic pain out of the central dynamic, mostly because the Deols look genuinely exhausted by the time the credits finally roll.

There are long stretches where the pacing completely stalls, bogged down by redundant scenes of men crying in empty parking lots and rehashing grudges that should have been settled twenty minutes prior. Sharma refuses to let a single dramatic beat pass without underlining it twice in red ink, robbing the narrative of any narrative surprise and turning the entire enterprise into a predictable march toward a ring that nobody doubted they would eventually enter and win. But amidst all the shouting and the repetitive training montages, there remains a strange, bruised sincerity that keeps you watching, a refusal to coast entirely on nostalgia even when the script offers nothing else to hold onto.

It is not a good film by any standard metric of script structure or visual restraint, often tripping over its own grand ambitions and tumbling into sheer absurdity during the final round in the ring. Yet dismissing it entirely feels too easy, missing the weird, compelling spectacle of aging patriarchs and their famous offspring working out their collective neuroses in front of a live audience. You leave the theater with a ringing in your ears and a slight headache from the relentless brass arrangements, wondering why you just spent nearly three hours watching people punch each other for the sake of a bronze medal that lost its shine long ago.