Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Anurag Kashyap, Sonam Kapoor, Harshvardhan Kapoor, Yogita Bihani

Call it what you want-a meta film, a mockumentary or even just a black comedy thriller, the central conceit in AK vs AK (streaming on Netflix) is pretty ingenious. If you’ve watched the promos, you would know the film has, among a handful of other Bollywood celebrities, ace director Anurag Kashyap and star actor Anil Kapoor playing themselves on screen. Woven around this milieu is a fictional story that unfolds over the course of a night in Mumbai.

The story opens with an audience interaction session at a film festival and the 2 AKs are on stage. It becomes apparent that Anurag holds a grudge against Anil after all these years, as the latter had refused to star in Allwyn Kalicharan, which was to be Anurag’s debut film in 2003, effectively resulting in its shelving. Minor insult trading soon escalates to an unmanageable on-stage spat and the evening ends on a sour note.

Cut to a few days later, and Anurag has now conceived a rather devious plan to get one over Anil. He’s had his daughter (Sonam Kapoor playing herself) abducted on Christmas eve and openly challenges Anil to find and save her if he can before sunrise. Anurag would also be filming these events in real time and making a movie out of the rushes.

This quirky set up promises a thoroughly entertaining fare and AK vs AK doesn’t disappoint. But for a meta-film helmed by Vikram Motwane, and heavily influenced by Anurag Kashyap (he’s also written the dialogues), merely glorifying its outwardly façade would be tantamount to scratching the surface. The film is filled with subtext and let’s talk a bit about that first.

An early scene sets the tone. A fan asks, what’s more important for a film, the actor or the director? Ask a cinephile and he’ll answer this in a heartbeat. While Bollywood has long been dominated by larger than life stars imposing formulaic burdens on directors, there are a few filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and Vikram Motwane who’ve tried to break out of this mold, albeit with sketchy commercial results. “Uska ek bhi film box office mein hit nahi bana”, is a rhetoric about Anurag’s films you hear often during AK vs AK, further underscoring this fact. Motwane’s last outing was the vigilante film Bhavesh Joshi (coincidentally starring Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvardhan Kapoor), and it wouldn’t be a stretch to call Anurag Kashyap and Vikram Motwane vigilantes in their cinematic journeys. AK vs AK plays this subtext brilliantly by pitting Anurag against Anil (who sportingly represents the ‘stars’), and the denouement will definitely leave you with hard-hitting questions.

There is more subtext littered throughout AK vs AK if you know where to look. There’s sly commentary on nepotism and a powerful take on today’s ‘Instagram’ culture. The latter especially is conveyed strikingly through a set of scenes where Anil is hounded (and at times passively coerced) for selfies as he’s scrambling for clues to locate Sonam. This was eerily reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s now legendary take on the paparazzi culture in his Italian masterwork La Dolce Vita.

But subtexts apart, AK vs AK is genuinely thrilling and funny. There’s always suspense and there’s a terrific twist at the end. The jokes are rib tickling, be it slapstick ones like Anurag receiving a cake at a film set and the scene where Anil tries calling Sonam on her phone from his vanity van, or meta ones like a couple of hilarious Bhavesh Joshi references in Harsh Kapoor’s cameo and the proverbial Anurag Kashyap/Basu name mix up! Shot mostly docu style, Anurag Kashyap’s mere lingering presence at the edge of every frame, as he observes and reacts to Anil’s predicament, is in itself enough to crack you up. Since the film’s story plays out over Christmas eve and dawn, it was fitting that its release coincided with these festive dates. For film buffs especially, AK vs AK is a season’s gift that just keeps giving!

Overall rating: 3.5/5