Okay, but can we talk about Saif Ali Khan for a second? Because my brain is just… gone. It’s 11:47 PM and I just finished Tanhaji on Disney+ Hotstar and I feel like I just chugged three Red Bulls and got into a fistfight with a history textbook. A really, really pretty history textbook.
Seriously. Ajay Devgn is fine, he’s doing his Ajay Devgn thing, you know, the growly voice, the intense stare, the walk that looks like he’s permanently fighting a strong headwind. He’s the rock, the unsung warrior, the whole deal. And Kajol is there, being awesome for like, fifteen minutes total, and she steals every scene she’s in because of course she does. But Saif? Udaybhan Rathod? He’s not a villain, he’s a force of nature. He’s a peacock dipped in poison and set on fire. I was literally leaning so far forward on my couch, my knees are bruised from hitting the coffee table. My heart was pounding.
And the VFX. Oh god, the VFX. It’s like they had a budget of a trillion dollars and a mandate to make every single spear fly in slow motion while a character did a backflip. There’s this one moment, Tanhaji is climbing the fort with these weird claw things, and it’s so CGI-heavy it looks like a cutscene from a PS4 game. And I was here for it. I ate it up. But now that I’m typing this… was it actually kind of dumb? I don't know. The part of me that was watching at 1 AM was like “YESSSS, FLYING SWORDS!” but the part of me that’s awake now is like… “That was a lot.” A whole lot.
Honestly, the whole thing is just an excuse for two and a half hours of non-stop, beautifully choreographed chaos. The final fight. My god. The final fight. I had my hands over my mouth for half of it. It’s not just a sword fight, it’s a ballet of rage. There’s this one specific shot that’s just burned into my retinas. Udaybhan, twirling his sword, not even looking at Tanhaji, just this look of pure, unadulterated arrogance on his face. The way the light catches the armor. It’s so extra. So ridiculously, wonderfully extra. It’s the kind of villain performance that makes you kind of root for him, just a little bit. He’s having so much fun being evil.
It’s weird, watching something like this at home. Thank god I was on my couch, honestly. I had to pause it three times. Once to let my dog out, once because my mom called to ask if I’d eaten, and once just to catch my breath after that first big battle on the cliffside. You can’t do that in a cinema. In a cinema you’re just trapped in the intensity. Here, I could go make a sandwich, come back, and immediately be thrown back into a 17th-century war zone. The whiplash is real. It makes the whole experience feel more… personal? Or maybe just more broken up. I don’t know.
That fight scene, the one with the chains, it reminded me of something. When I was a kid, maybe ten, my cousin and I found these old, rusty chains in my grandpa’s garage. We spent the entire afternoon pretending to be gladiators, swinging them around, making whoosh sounds. We felt so cool. So dangerous. My cousin, he got a little too into it, wrapped the chain around his leg and fell flat on his face. Scraped his whole chin. He was crying but also trying to act tough. I remember my grandma yelling at us in Marathi, something about breaking our necks. That memory has nothing to do with Tanhaji, but watching those guys swing their weapons around, that’s all I could think about. The difference between playing at being a warrior and… well, this.
And the patriotism is just cranked up to 11, which is fine, that’s the point of the movie. It’s a national epic. It’s supposed to make you feel things. And I did feel things! I felt the adrenaline, the sheer scale of it all. But did I feel a deep, historical connection? Or was I just marveling at the way Saif Ali Khan’s cape flowed when he walked? Probably the latter. Does that make me a bad movie lover? I thought I loved the grand speeches about Swaraj, but now that I’m typing this… was I just waiting for the next fight scene to start? Maybe.
Whatever. My brain is fried. It’s loud, it’s bombastic, it’s historically… flexible. But it’s also just so damn entertaining. Saif’s performance alone is worth the price of the subscription. It’s a fever dream of a movie, and I think I had a fever while watching it.
Okay. I’m done. My thoughts are a mess.
8/10. Solid
-ishaan