The sound design during the third act fistfight in Commando has this wet, heavy thud that I swear was recycled directly from a 2004 straight-to-video Steven Seagal picture, and if I am being honest, it sort of ruined the immersion for me every single time a rib supposedly cracked. Not great, not bad, just there, rattling around in a sound mix that otherwise strains for some kind of brutal kinetic poetry.

Director Dilip Ghosh wants so badly to drag the generic Indian action movie into the punishingly physical, wire-free territory of The Raid, and for about twenty minutes right around the midpoint, he almost pulls it off through sheer brute willpower. The screenplay by Jatin Wagle and Sukesh Kumar Motwani doesn't offer much beyond the standard-issue rogue soldier protecting an innocent woman from a local politician who owns the police and the mountains and probably the weather, but nobody really came here for Mamet-level dialogue anyway. Characters exist to throw punches, get thrown through bamboo fences, and occasionally deliver lines about patriotism with a straight face while blood drips from a shaved eyebrow.

Vidyut Jammwal moves through these spaces with a terrifying, frictionless grace that makes you wonder what kind of machinery is hidden underneath his skin, launching into Kalaripayattu stances with zero visible effort or hesitation. He doesn't have much of a range beyond stoic vengeance, though he manages a couple of genuinely unsettling glares when the script remembers his character is supposed to be psychologically damaged from his time behind enemy lines. Pooja Chopra spends most of the running time screaming in a very high register while being dragged across wet rocks and muddy ravines, which feels less like a character arc and more like a punishment for signing the contract.

Then there is Jaideep Ahlawat, playing a villain named Amritkanth who spends half his scenes chewing on betel nut and barking orders at subordinates who are clearly terrified of him for real. Ahlawat brings this greasy, feral intensity to the antagonist role that elevates every single scene he is in, even when the camera lingers a beat too long on his smug facial expressions after a monologue about local land rights. It is a small thing, but that editing choice repeats four or five times across the first hour, dragging down the momentum just as the chase sequences are starting to build some actual sweat.

The cinematography by Sejal Shah leans heavily into sun-drenched yellows and murky forest greens that occasionally turn the fight choreography into a muddy blur where you cannot quite tell whose arm is breaking. Yet the long take during the forest ambush sequence deserves some kind of medal for spatial clarity alone, tracking Jammwal as he dismantles six guys with switchblades and heavy rocks without a single noticeable cut to hide a stunt double's face. The soundtrack, composed by Mannan Shaah, hits you over the head with aggressive electronic percussion that sounds like a lawnmower stuck in a blender, but it pairs decently well with the shots of men flying through wooden huts.

What makes the movie interesting beneath all the bruised ribs and tumbling vehicles is its weirdly archaic obsession with the lone, unacknowledged warrior operating outside the corrupt machinery of the state. Hindi films have spent decades romanticizing the rogue cop or the dishonored soldier, but here that archetype is pushed into something almost pathological, where the hero doesn't even want a medal or an apology from his superiors. He just wants to walk through the jungle and break collarbones in silence. There is no grand philosophical commentary on geopolitics or rural exploitation, just a very narrow, very violent focus on the physical mechanics of survival against impossible odds.

Watching Jammwal execute a backflip off a concrete pillar right into a neck snap makes you forget about the clunky exposition dumps delivered by supporting actors who clearly had their lines dubbed in a tiny concrete booth three weeks after principal photography wrapped. The sound mixing on those dubbed lines is atrocious, floating slightly out of sync with the actors' jaws like an old martial arts import from the seventies bought on VHS at a flea market. It breaks the spell, dragging you out of the gritty fantasy and reminding you that you are just sitting in a room watching people pretend to murder each other.

You can see the seams everywhere, from the obvious crash mats hidden beneath the dirt to the way the sun shifts violently between angles during a continuous dialogue scene in the mountains. But there is a stubborn, unpolished honesty to the way the action is staged that separates it from the slick, CGI-choked spectacles currently dominating contemporary mainstream cinema. It lacks discipline, it trips over its own plot holes every ten minutes, and the romance subplot feels like it was filmed in a completely different movie. Still, when Jammwal catches a flying machete by the blade with his bare palm and twists it out of an attacker's grip, you stop checking your watch.