That mustard-yellow naval uniform sits on Akshay Kumar with a tightness that feels almost deliberately uncomfortable, like the wardrobe department wanted every single person in the theater to notice the starch before they noticed the man inside it. Rustom, if I'm honest, spends an awful lot of its first hour just letting its leading man stand in doorways looking stoic while the camera swoops around him as though it's trying to find an angle where he isn't entirely made of granite. It is a courtroom drama wrapped in a 1950s Bombay nostalgia trip, though the streets often feel too clean and the studio sets smell faintly of fresh paint. The Nanavati case has been adapted and fictionalized so many times on stage and screen that Tinu Suresh Desai’s version has to work overtime just to keep people from nodding off during the exposition dumps, which arrive via men in sharp suits pointing wooden sticks at chalkboards.

Desai directs with the kind of workmanlike efficiency that belongs on television, meaning the camera rarely takes a risk when it can just cut from a medium shot of a prosecutor sneering to a close-up of a judge adjusting his glasses. The screenplay by Vipul K. Rawal tries to juggle maritime espionage, marital betrayal, and the rigid moral codes of the Indian Navy all at once, resulting in a narrative that stretches logic thin whenever it needs to speed up the trial. There's an editor's tic in the courtroom scenes where reaction shots of Esha Gupta's fiercely ambitious sister of the dead man linger for two or three frames too long after the dialogue has already moved on, killing the momentum of an otherwise sharp cross-examination. Montasir Rishad shows up briefly in the periphery, lending the proceedings a minor flavor of bureaucratic anxiety that doesn't quite go anywhere before the script forgets he exists. Arjan Bajwa plays the philandering friend with a slicked-back desperation that makes you wonder how anyone in their right mind trusted him with a martini glass, let alone a navy wife.

Akshay Kumar is doing that thing where he plays the silent, wronged patriot who could probably kill a man with a penknife while reciting poetry, a performance that feels practically recycled from Baby without the tactical vest. He doesn't raise his voice even when the prosecution is practically screaming for his head on a platter, choosing instead to narrow his eyes and stare into the middle distance with the weary patience of a saint who missed his morning train. Ileana D'Cruz has the much harder job of playing the weeping, guilt-ridden wife who has to convey remorse entirely through damp eyelashes and trembling lower lips, and while she gives it an honest go, the dialogue she's handed keeps reducing her to a walking apology letter. Esha Gupta, on the other hand, seems to be acting in an entirely different movie, strutting into courtrooms like she's starring in a glamorous noir thriller while everyone else is doing historical reenactment. When she delivers her lines with that icy, venomous drawl, you half expect her to pull out a cigarette holder and ask for a light, which actually livens up the proceedings whenever the courtroom starts feeling too much like a lecture hall.

The cinematography by Santosh Thundiyil relies heavily on a golden-brown filter that makes every exterior shot look like it was dipped in warm tea, which works for the period aesthetic until you notice how artificial the lighting looks on the painted backdrop skies of the harbor. Then there is the background score, which feels the need to cue up a swelling orchestral swell every single time Akshay Kumar adjusts his commander's cap, treating the audience like they need a musical shove to understand who the hero is. It's a small thing that bugged me through the entire second half, this relentless habit of underlining every emotional beat with the exact same brassy chord progression until the sound design becomes a form of white noise. Hindi films have long had a complicated relationship with subtlety, and this production wears its melodrama like a cheap suit, loud and unmissable.

Beneath the courtroom theatrics and the melodrama of honor codes, the film wants to be an examination of how public opinion can be swayed by tabloid journalism and how easily a crowd can turn a cold-blooded killer into a folk hero. That angle feels strangely modern in an era where social media trials dictate real-world justice, though the movie never quite trusts the audience to sit with the moral ambiguity of a vigilante in a crisp uniform. Instead, it keeps leaning back on the star power of its lead to paper over the cracks in the legal arguments, ensuring that nobody in the theater actually has to feel bad about rooting for a premeditated execution. Comparisons to something like K. Ananthapadmanabhan's simpler procedural beats or even older noir exercises in Hindi cinema reveal just how much this version relies on star persona rather than narrative grit to keep the engine humming.

When the verdict finally comes down, there is no grand catharsis, just a neat little wrap-up that feels less earned than it was negotiated by a committee worried about box office fallout. The closing arguments drone on about duty to the nation and the sanctity of marriage until the courtroom dissolves into a polite murmur of approval, leaving you with the strange sensation that you've just watched a very expensive, very long public service announcement for the armed forces. It's not the worst way to spend two and a half hours if you like your historical scandals dressed up in sharp tailoring and served with a side of patriotic righteousness, but it leaves you wishing someone had just let the characters be messy human beings instead of symbols on a chessboard.