Anek review: This well-meaning political thriller only works in parts

Anubhav Sinha’s Anek (2022) raises several pertinent points about the cost of peace and if it can be truly achieved in today’s times. Set in the Northeast, Anek follows an undercover police officer, Joshua (Ayushmann Khurrana), who is stationed in the area under his boss Abrar (Manoj Pahwa) to survey the situation ahead of a crucial peace accord between militant leader Tiger Sangha and the Indian government.

However, the much-lauded peace accord is threatened by the emergence of a rebel group, Johnson, that has the support of locals. With Abrar pushing to get the accord lined up at any cost, with pressure from the top, Joshua is torn between his responsibilities and his desire to do the right thing by the people.

Stuck in the middle of all this is Aido (Andrea Kevichusa), an aspiring boxer who wants to represent India, whose schoolteacher father Wangnao (Mipham Otsal) has his own covert connections.

The action thriller, written by Sinha, Sima Agarwal and Yash Keswani, packs in a lot of details and the film requires you to play close attention to the events unfolding on screen. But this can get taxing after a while as much information is flung at you fast and has to be processed as the screenplay hurtles along.

Eventually, the film demonstrates that relationships and motives cannot be trusted, as everyone has their own agendas to serve. But Sinha has to be commended for tackling a highly relevant topic of conversation: what does it mean to be Indian?

The characters debate this often in the film, asking why we are never just identified as Indians and have to be broken down further by state and language. At one point, Joshua seemingly breaks the fourth wall to question this.

Through the characters of the teenage boy Niko (Thejasevor Belho) and his mother Emma (Sheila Devi) who helps Joshua, Anek depicts that in the larger picture, it’s often the innocent who is caught in the crossfire. The storyline following Niko felt the strongest for me in the film.

The feature reunites key actors from Sinha’s terrific Article 15 (2019) — Khurrana, Pahwa, Kumud Mishra as an image-conscious politician and Sushil Pandey as Joshua’s right-hand man in the region. They all illustrate their characters and contradictions in a relatable manner.

Pahwa is particularly good as a Kashmiri officer who can relate to the situation but has to do his job. Mishra gets the line of the film, when he lets slip that if an impending surgical strike goes well, they can even plan a film on it.

It’s even good to see Satya (1998) actor JD Chakraverthy in a Hindi film after all this time. He plays Joshua's colleague who has been sent by Abrar to keep an eye on him.

Andrea Kevichusa as the naive Aido is refreshing, but ultimately she ends up getting clichéd subplots questioning her identity and drive, alongside the larger political drama. Moreover, the supposed connection between her and Joshua is never fully realized and feels forced.

Technically, the film checks all the boxes, with thrilling action sequences by Stefan Richter and Riyaz Habib and taut cinematography by Ewan Mulligan. But while the film is well-meaning and challenges the status quo, the narrative is often clunky and hard to follow.

Anek is being released today in theatres.