Feb 22, 2026 7:48pm IST
‘Kennedy’ Review: Anurag Kashyap’s Neo-Noir Film Turns Locked-Down Mumbai Into A Haunting Theatre Of Violence
The lockdown had its fair share of relatable stories, but “Kennedy,” a stylized neo-noir crime story directed by Anurag Kashyap, ups the ante and shows the city of Mumbai at its unfiltered best, warts and all. The film plays out mostly in the shadows and in the dark of night, as a masked hitman for hire does his dirty deeds with police sanction.
Set somewhere towards the end of the lockdown, “Kennedy” follows the exploits of Uday Shetty (Rahul Bhat), a former encounter cop in hiding, working at the say-so of his superior, police commissioner Rasheed Khan (Mohit Takalkar). Shetty takes on the name Kennedy as he moonlights as a chauffeur with seemingly high-end clients.
We quickly learn that Shetty fancies himself as a vigilante while Khan fancies himself as a behind-the-scenes string-puller. He sees his job as a means to an end: the recovery of money he paid to get to where he is. Early on, Shetty kills a man in a dark alley getting a handjob from his girlfriend as a message to his uncle, Saleem Kattawala (Aamir Dalvi). There’s bad blood between the two and that mutual hatred festers just below the surface for the better half of the film.
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Some would call Shetty efficient to the point that he is good at what he does (mostly), at taking orders (mostly), not asking too many questions and at finishing the job. He has little time for emotion and his hardened, haunted face barely betrays any. He leaves his thoughts for internal monologues and imagined conversations.
Somewhere in this mix is an eternally tottering and tipsy Charlie (played by Sunny Leone), who is drowning her bottled-up grief in a hip-flask, sip by interminable sip. Her nervous laugh veils a pain she doesn’t share and when she does, it’s met with a deadpan, almost frigid response. All through the film, she ends up a plaything for the rich and influential, living each day as if it were her last.
Bhat as Kennedy/Uday Shetty is something of an anomaly in the system. And we aren’t just talking about the character here, Bhat’s restrained performance is a masterclass in portraying a haunted, dead-inside, hollow character with a wonky moral compass, with minimal dialogues. Most of what he does is conveyed through the measured language of murder, but also through almost endless silences.
Kashyap keeps a steady hand on the proceedings, letting the story flow at a pace he’s familiar with. There’s little to suggest indulgence on his part, save for Aamir Aziz’s spoken-word performances (while lyrically solid) that seem a little out-of-place in this tale.
Scorer Ashish S Narula deserves top marks for filling the spaces punctuated by long-drawn gunshot and stabbing sequences and those silences I mentioned earlier, with some soothing music that feels contrary but is almost apt to the situations playing out.
One could fault Kashyap for going a little Sofia Coppola in some pivotal scenes, as if trying to compensate for interjecting Shetty’s loneliness with (mild spoiler alert, in case it isn’t apparent to you) conversations with the ghosts of those he’s murdered. But that’s a choice he ventured, I imagine.
This unmasked, unsanitised view of a crumbling law-and-order machinery and the goings-on of what happens in the corridors of power and the collateral damage and the fallout thereof, brings a bit of visual poetry to violence. And does so, without failing to remind you of the consequences of your actions.
While the film wasn’t theatrically released in India, it premiered on Feb. 20, 2026 and is currently streaming on ZEE5.
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