Kennedy Review | A Rough Cop, A Restless City, And A System That Eats Its Own

There is something grimly poetic about how Kennedy opens. A man peels an apple with surgical calm. The peel falls in one unbroken spiral. He smokes and waits while silence does most of the talking.

Directed by Anurag Kashyap, Kennedy unfolds in a COVID-stricken Mumbai where the streets have paused, but corruption has clearly not. The city never sleeps, but its conscience might have.

Rahul Bhat plays Uday Shetty, a cop presumed dead, now reborn as Kennedy, an insomniac 'moral' hitman working in the shadows. Bhat doesn't overplay him—rather, he carries the role on his shoulders, in the way he stands too still, in the pauses before he speaks. There's violence in him, yes, but also exhaustion. You keep wondering: Is this man angry, or just done with the system? 

The killings he carries out often feel meaningless on the surface. People are eliminated efficiently and ruthlessly, almost casually. But the film keeps nudging you to look deeper until you have all the answers. There is always a motive, even if it's buried under layers of dirty politics and backroom deals. This is a world where heroes who once served the system are quietly repurposed by it and discarded just as quickly. One mistake and you're out without a second thought, like an ant fallen in a glass of hot milk: no badge, no identity, no place to return to.

Kashyap roots the story in a recognisable political reality. Pandemic profiteering, institutional rot, powerful men protecting other powerful men—it all feels uncomfortably close to home. The portrayal of backroom power brokers, including the looming presence of "Bade Papa," or the people who run the country, hits hard because it doesn't feel exaggerated. The film's showcase of dirty politics is blunt—sometimes almost too blunt—which again constantly keeps reminding us that we are watching a Kashyap film.

There's also magic realism sprinkled through the narrative. Kennedy sees the dead. Or thinks he does. Is it guilt? Is he blaming himself for something we haven't fully grasped? The film circles that question but never hands us a neat answer. Uday is a man who cannot read the room, maybe cannot even read himself. His insomnia feels less like a condition and more like a punishment.

The female protagonist in the film is Sunny Leone, who plays Charlie, a woman shrouded in mystery. She drifts into Kennedy's orbit with a smile that doesn't quite reveal what she's thinking. There's definite potential in her character, flashes of intrigue, vulnerability, even danger. But just when you expect depth, the script holds back. You're left asking: Who is she really? The film sadly uses her as a showpiece and treats her as a side character, even though there was scope for building her character arc.

The pacing is deliberately slow—almost stubbornly—so in some scenes, you become impatient. The plot unfolds in measured steps, occasionally getting tangled in its own complexity. There are moments where exposition feels heavy. But whenever Kashyap focuses on action scenes, the film comes alive. A chase near the end, where the police are running after one of their own officers, is especially strong; it feels tense and a little ironic. The scene clearly shows how a broken system can turn against its own people.

Dark humour threads through the bleakness. Some dialogues land with a wicked grin. A few scenes involving pandemic paranoia and casual brutality are staged with an operatic flair. Kashyap still knows how to make violence look disturbingly beautiful. The music, too, adds texture, giving Kennedy's inner chaos a rhythm.

Is this Kashyap at his best? Not really. The film doesn't grip you the way his earlier crime stories did. But it has mood, it has punch, and, most of all, Bhat, who keeps you invested even when the story slows.

Kennedy is flawed, dark, and charged with politics. It doesn't always hold together perfectly, but it stays with you. 

Kennedy is currently streaming on Zee5.