Nishaanchi Review | A Small-Town Masala Carnival From Kashyap’s Filmy Heart

Kashyap is more a cinephile than a filmmaker, and his films wear that obsession almost too openly. When Bombay Velvet (2015) released, it was styled as his cinematic postcard to Scorsese, Tarantino, and the gangster canon at large. Was this an earnest homage or sheer indulgence? Audiences didn’t quite know, critics circled around the same question. For Kashyap, though, the assignment was clear: to mould Bombay’s underbelly into the grammar of the films he grew up worshipping. Whether it is Gangs Of Wasseypur I & II (2012), Ugly (2013), Black Friday (2004) or Gulaal (2009), what underpins a substantial amount of Kashyap’s directorial work is tracing the underbelly of crime and politics against the backdrop of a city that shuffles fates, truths and loyalties. 

With Nishaanchi (2025), Kashyap returns to home turf—paying tribute to legends like Salim-Javed, Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar, borrowing the grandeur of films like Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975) and Zanjeer (1973) amongst many. Wild, witty, and unapologetically loud, Nishaanchi opens with the song Filam Dekho. The song hits anyone who forgot how much fun cinema can be like a Molotov of mischief. The chant resembles a nukkad naatak’s sound and energy, persuading audiences back into the cinema halls. While Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) earned its reputation as a gaali-galoch galore, Nishaanchi’s language thrives on its Kanpuriya Kantaap in the most respectfully disrespectful way possible. Hinglish collides with Bhojpuri in songs like Pigeon Kabootar, as Western and Indian gangster tropes tumble into UP hinterlands, and the result is riotous, clever, and unmistakably Kashyap.

At the core of Nishaanchi lies the story of twin brothers, Babloo and Dabloo, both played by Aaishvary Thackeray in his debut, who mirror two starkly different temperaments—one cautious, the other combustible. They stand apart in temperament, bound by conflicting ideas of love, loyalty and violence, yet drawn together by their desire for Rinku (Vedika Pinto), a free-spirited dancer. The trailer opens with the taunt, “How can one live a life without Bollywood?” and cheekily brands Kashyap as a “hopeless” director—underneath the humour, it’s painfully true. In a sea of re-releases, sequels and adaptions, comes Nishaanchi—an attempt at reviving the small-town refreshing Bollywood masala film spirit that the audiences are perhaps craving.

Manjiri (Monika Panwar) and Pehelwaan Jabardast (Vineet Kumar Singh) are athletes. Manjiri, a sharpshooter, leans slightly toward Babloo, while Jabardast is left to tend to Dabloo. Babloo takes on the brash mantle of revolutionary and avenger, channeling his father’s legacy, whereas Dabloo remains steady, morally anchored, tending to his mother as Babloo serves his juvenile sentence. Their world shifts when Babloo returns—muscular, long-haired, mustached, and larger than life—casting a shadow Dabloo both admires and subtly measures against. Rinku is a talented dancer trained by her father who lives in their family estate, which is endangered by corporate redevelopment. Unlike the two brothers, she’s quite layered and holds her contrasts quite well—a graceful kathak dancer and a raunchy one. Her persona is reflected through Jhule Jhule Palna introducing her as sensitive at heart, but also with the bravado of a hawk. Babloo falls for Rinku and secretly, so does Dabloo.

With the couple ‘Babloo Nishaanchi’ and ‘Rangeeli Rinku’ along with (just) Dabloo—their trio becomes the new Kashyap “gang” as they attempt robberies. In the trailer, Dabloo fumbles through a written threat like a schoolboy caught cheating, his nerves so frayed he can’t even manage a jewellery shop stick-up. He walks in, only to retreat with nothing but cold feet. All of these robberies are comically unserious, recalling a world that is familiar with Gangs Of Wasseypur but wants more—where crime feels both dangerous and laughably bureaucratic. 

The brothers emerge as embodiments of two masculinities men are boxed into, when it comes to love and leadership: “alpha or beta.” Kashyap casts them as yin and yang, oscillating between impulse and restraint, chaos and order. Babloo is hot-headed, passionate and reckless—his heart always on his sleeve; whereas Dabloo is grounded, soft, guarding his intentions. Although Kashyap reminds us that people aren’t black and white—under pressure, Dabloo bends the rules, even channeling his brother’s bravado over the phone to rescue Rinku. Manjiri mentions that the brave man commands no fear, but the timid man should be watched closely. Kashyap seizes this idea, twisting it into a dark inquiry: what happens when the perpetually belittled, sidelined, and emasculated brother finally strikes back to reclaim his identity?

The film also brings Kumud Mishra as Ambika Prasad, Babloo and Dabloo’s uncle, whose camouflaged intentions raise questions. Despite calling them “his boys”, he pushes Babloo into a life of crime and aggression. While Manjiri remains skeptical of Prasad, Babloo’s proximity to Prasad inevitably guides him. Babloo and Dabloo’s affinities for Rinku differ as well. One heart plunges headfirst into desire, tumbling through lust until it discovers love, while the other hovers at a distance, sanctified and restrained, a quiet devotion that never crosses the line, always observing, always aching. There’s a tension in this proximity too—their lives brush against one another, intimate yet divided, as if the universe delights in teasing what cannot be claimed.

The cinematography by Sylvester Fonseca slices through Lucknow as Kashyap’s lived-in Kanpur, across the narrow lanes, overhanging-balconies, shady bars, vibrant fairs, electric cables and pigeons flying about. A particular scene really stands out—in the local bar, with masterful hovering camera movement, Fonseca captures Babloo’s shootout sequence and Rinku’s confrontation, all temporally cross-cut by Aarti Bajaj herself. Bajaj’s comic-book style title sequence too, gives the world of Nishaanchi much more flair and character. Beyond the gang wars and tangled love, the film is a meditation on power, decay, and the brittle architecture of masculinity. The personal bleeds into the political—and yes, the national, as the song Dear Country is a reminder that family feuds mirror the fractures of a larger society. With powerful performances by Aaishvary Thackeray, Vedika Pinto, Monika Panwar, Kumud Mishra and Vineet Kumar Singh—Nishaanchi packs a powerful masaaledaar punch in its 175-minute runtime.

As Kashyap unveils a much-similar two-part film concept like Wasseypur, this love triangle preludes a ticking time-bomb. The film grapples with who these characters will become, upon learning the truth about each other’s shifting loyalties. In this web of influence, love, and inherited temperament, the story asks who truly commands destiny. Love blossoms and shatters alongside massacres, laughter punctuates brutality, and Bollywood songs play in sync with the hail of flying bullets. Kashyap constructs a world where violence is inherited, where revenge is passed down like heirlooms, and where the appetite for power corrodes every bond. 

The butt of the joke is also that Kashyap’s films are often recalled as “underrated gems” and celebrated much later because the gamble was unfair from the start. To assume theatre audiences will share his cinephilia is to place weight on a fragile scale—one that tips long before the work secures its ground. Whether this might be Nishaanchi’s greatest strength or weakness, only time will tell. The final takeaway for Nishaanchi is that even while Kashyap so desperately set out to carve a world distinct from Wasseypur, the DNA of his earlier films is unmistakable. The small-town feuds, borderline problematic stalking, paisa-wasool item songs, and over-the-top shootouts return like a familiar sensibility he cannot resist. The film’s themes are gritty, exhilarating and at times genuinely entertaining, yet they rarely feel like fresh discoveries—they’re filtered through the lens of a director shaped by decades of underbelly epics and noir experiments. Allegedly written in 2016, after Wasseypur and Bombay Velvet, the film carries his signature genre imprint, and it’s not a bad thing at all. Nishaanchi may stumble in originality, but it is earnest, infused with Kashyap’s cinephilia and his persistently “hopeless” desire to remind audiences that cinema can still be wild, messy, and fun, even when rooted in a familiar terrain.