When you think about superheroes and villains, you are instantly reminded of big Hollywood blockbusters. But among the gems nestled on Netflix’s virtual shelves is the gripping Indian vigilante film, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero. And now is the perfect time to watch it because it leaves Netflix this week.
Bhavesh Joshi Superhero isn’t your typical run-of-the-mill superhero flick. Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, the film delves into the life of three friends—Siku (Harshvardhan Kapoor), Bhavesh (Priyanshu Painyuli), and Rajat (Ashish Verma)— friends who come together and bond over their shared passion for justice.
The film blends gritty realism with the classic superhero ethos, delivering a story that’s as compelling as it is socially relevant.
What is Bhavesh Joshi Superhero About?
At its core, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero explores the regular person’s struggle against the pervasive corruption and moral decay that can infiltrate society. Set in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai, the film resonates with a generation that seeks change and is willing to challenge the status quo.
As our lead trio confronts the city’s dark underbelly of the water mafia, their journey is not just about seeking justice but also about transforming ordinary people into extraordinary symbols of resistance. The film takes a seemingly trivial tale of petty crime and uses it to expose the nexus between authority figures and the criminals they are meant to protect us from. Bhavesh Joshi Superhero is also a story about the common folk’s helplessness in the face of rampant greed.
Before long, the three friends decide to take matters into their own hands, transforming themselves into masked vigilantes. The film taps into the rebellious spirit of youth that slowly simmers as we grow older, get jobs and accept the corruption around us.
In a world devoid of capes and superpowers, they become the heroes their society desperately needs, sparking a tale of revenge, redemption, and self-discovery that has a lot of heart despite being a small-budget endeavour.
While speaking about the film and its treatment of the city the story unfurls in, Motwane had noted, “This city is funny – on the one hand, there’s this love for the city because it’s your birthplace and it is where you grew up and so on, and on the other hand, there’s this huge cynicism where you’re wondering and lamenting about what is happening to it. At the end of the day, it all comes down to one question: who does the city belong to? It has become everyone’s bastard child, in a way.”
Motwane also mentioned how the vigilante genre is still fantasy, a hopeful kind at that, because, at the end of the day, we all want to be rescued by a knight in shining armour. “Sometimes the easier thing to do is to take a stick or a gun and just solve the problem,” he said. “It is the dream of every single writer of the vigilante film, whether it is Bob Kane with Batman or Salim-Javed with Amitabh Bachchan. The vigilante is a dream, a fantasy, about having someone who is going to do the right thing. That’s not a solution in the real world at all. In the real world, you need a justice system. It is because the justice system is broken that you have vigilantes in the first place. [There is the belief] that when everything is broken, one man will come to fix it.”
We suggest you dive in soon with its imminent departure from Netflix’s catalogue on August 17th.
