Making a swag-heavy, trigger-happy gangster saga in 2025 within mainstream cinema is tricky business, considering we're routinely assaulted by them on all fronts - the big screen (Thug Life, Animal, Pushpa) and small (Mirzapur, Bambai Meri Jaan, Jamtaara).
The hope, then, is that any filmmaker wading into the oversaturated genre would have something new to offer. In 2025 maybe that’s too much to ask - so I’ll even take a film that’s able to slickly repackage the same old elements and give a formula done well.
Unfortunately, writer-director Pulkit (Dedh Bheega Zameen, Bhakshak) isn’t quite able to rise to the occasion and deliver the goods.
Sincere and competent as it is, his Maalik is a rehash of familiar gangster tropes without enough flare or emotional heft to provide a satisfying meal, let alone a distinctive one. If the modern masala gangster saga exists on the swag-to-tragedy spectrum, Maalik feels lacking on both ends.
A Gangster Saga We’ve Seen Before
The plot, characters, and ideas here feel overly familiar. The lawless UP gangland setting, for one — this time it’s Allahabad in the early ’90s.
The reigning don in town is Deepak, better known as Maalik, with Rajkummar Rao clearly having fun leaning into the testosterone zone - or should we say testosterzone, which seems to be the flavour of the season.
Maalik is already the top dog in town. This isn’t a rise and fall story as much as it is a reign and fall story - barring a brief flashback sequence early on which briskly covers his bloody origins and how his first kill earned him the title of Maalik.
Despite the solid Mukesh Chhabra-assembled ensemble, Deepak AKA Maalik is surrounded by characters who don’t exactly leap off the page because they’re all based on archetypes and tropes. The wife and parents who want him to surrender.
The loyal best friend and right hand (a scene-stealing Anshuman Pushkar). The hotheaded rival who’s desperate to bring him down (Saurabh Sachdeva). The politicians (Saurabh Shukla and Swanand Kirkire) who helped him rise and rise for their own personal gain before realising they can no longer control the monster of their own making: “ek gunda ko khatam karne ke liye doosre gunde ko khada karna padega” (To take down one goon, you have to raise another).
It’s an idea we saw explored earlier this year in Netflix’s similarly tropey yet satisfying gangster series Khakee: The Bengal Chapter.
There’s also the templated, loose cannon, encounter-enthusiast cop hired to clean up the streets, whatever the cost (played by Prosenjit, who also starred in Khakee: The Bengal Chapter).
All the Ingredients, None of the Spice
At a punishing, close-to-three-hour run time, Maalik from producers Kumar Taurani and Jay Shewakramani, packs in a whole lot of plot.
There’s no shortage of characters to juggle or narrative ground to cover here, from writers Jyotsana Nath and Pulkit. It’s why this story feels better suited to a series rather than a feature, allowing for more breathing room to explore these characters and their journeys.
Several promising subplots are merely skimmed over — Maalik’s early years and rise through the ranks, the scale of his criminal empire, or the way his political ambitions keep clashing with his violent tendencies.
Pulkit’s handle on these elements isn’t poor so much as perfectly functional. We get solid shootouts, serviceable showdowns, and perfectly adequate hand-to-hand combat sequences.
On the big screen, what we’ve come to expect and look forward to from this genre is hyper-stylised attitude, action, and scale. And that’s where Pulkit seems to struggle.
I walked out of Maalik with a renewed appreciation for the visual language of swag and how the finest masala filmmakers (Atlee, Lokesh Kanagaraj, Sukumar, Vivek Athreya) are able to present stardom and play with outsized figures. The way background score, slow-motion sequences, and cinematography come together to become greater than the sum of their parts — crafting moments that have us jumping out of our seats.
There’s little to fault but nothing to fawn over either. In terms of the craft, there’s much to appreciate, but little to enjoy. I like the film's restraint, its patience and its aversion to hyper-cutting. Pulkit and his team aren’t afraid to let silence speak, rather than drown us in background score.
He trusts his actors and the material to bring the thrills — though whether the material delivers is another matter.
An Uneven Ride
In the absence of the kind of thunderous style that brings this genre to life on the big screen, what we’re left with is an uneven and ultimately tiring ride. Even when we do get “high points,” they’re immediately followed - and deflated - by long stretches of narrative feet-dragging.
A massive shootout sequence, in which Maalik brutally murders his old mentor, for example, is followed almost instantly by an overlong detour featuring him spending time with his wife (Manushi Chhillar). In trying to balance both quiet and chaos, the film manages to achieve neither.
Then there’s the matter of the film’s refusal to end. Maalik has what feels like four endings in its final stretch, each one stubbornly dragging on past the point of impact. This includes a pointless twist that doesn’t seem to add anything.
As Maalik, Rajkummar Rao relishes the dialoguebaazi and uncontainable arrogance of Maalik, the man who begins to believe in his own legend, and for whom cockiness is a superpower.
Watch the joy he feels when he sees how men - cops, judges and fellow criminals - quiver and shrivel in his presence. But a strong case could be made that, within this world, setting and genre, Anshuman Pushkar has more presence and unhinged attitude, as we've seen in Netflix's Jamtaara. I couldn’t help but wonder what his take on the lead character might be.
What we’re left with is a muted gangster flick - one that constantly simmers but never quite takes off. One that struggles with both style (not enough) and substance (too much for a single film).
As the credits rolled I half expected the screen to fade to black with those familiar words appearing on screen: “Season 2 coming soon”.
Maalik releases in theatres on July 11th.
(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)