Monsoon sets in Mumbai with a bang. Rain drops ram the streets in desperation. The relief easily drifts into panic. Sea of umbrellas everywhere but one amongst them at a local station stands out. Wading through the downpour, its red colour drips with a warning. The person holding it exhibits a stone-cold demeanour, as she looks for an old man in the bustling chaos of the train at rush hour. She moves through the crowd inconspicuously and readies her umbrella, which secretly hides a gun as a trigger appears on its handle. She takes a muffled shot and disappears into the ensuing chaos.

The opening scene in Huma Qureshi’s Baby Do Die Do bears an uncanny resemblance to the real horrific killing of a young man in the local train recently, which laid bare the brutality that some people in the city carry within. An argument can escalate soon into homicide and there would be no one coming to rescue. Baby Karmarkar (Qureshi) carries a similar violence in her heart, that rises from the clutches of a city that failed her when she witnessed the death of her twin sister as a child. The city has turned her into a sociopath

The film however, doesn’t always treat the violence with gravity. Its tone is not always sharp and cynical even as it aims to critique the cornerstones of wealth and power on occasions by establishing the link between the builder lobby and mafia. Director Nachiket Samant largely uses the noir as part of the design element, lending a pulpy, comic-bookish layer to the narrative while the thematic undercurrents don’t really get time to marinate. As a result, the rainy undercurrents, moody lighting and dark humour gets dissolved just into style rather than adding complexity to the narrative.

That being said, there’s more heart in Baby Do Die Do than the combined range of some of the other monotonous films that have come out in recent times. Its disregard for template is quite reassuring as it also aims to subvert genre cliches with a touch of quirk. The film doesn’t forget to have fun while juggling along with the grimness, as seen in an inventive item song which is inserted when Manu (a brilliant Marudhar Shekhawat), an associate of Baby, is tasked with an assassination that takes him to a gay pub in Andheri East. Saqib Saleem (also producer) makes a guest appearance as a sexy, ripped dancer, grooving seductively to a song with the hook line ‘Alpha Q’ repeated all along, creating an edgy innuendo. The gaze is empowering, building a sense of liberation to Saqib’s character, who controls his body and its movements. Rather than being an object of desire, he becomes its subject, withholding the capacity to flirt with anyone he wants, without crossing a boundary. Even the onlookers carry a sense of respect in their eyes as the camera doesn’t become a medium to represent lecherous gazes.

A still from the film
| Photo Credit:
Saleem Siblings/Youtube

All of this inherent loudness compliments the muted worries of Baby, who cannot hear and speak. It is delightful to see her first tryst with love unfold like a silent film as Siddhu (Rachit Singh), a likeable Sikh music teacher is smitten by her beauty. Their love story starts in a bus and later blooms in a cramped apartment, as there’s again a gender reversal at play, with Baby incorporating toughness as Siddhu stays dipped in vulnerabilities. There’s still a lot more to them that remains unexplored as the film has to fixate on the central conflict of Baby’s vengeance, which remains its weakest and most predictable link.

It is only when it digresses from the way that the film shows beguiling promise. Whether it is in smaller sketchy moments like when a character with vitiligo is called black and white in a humourous scene or the dwarf gangster Lucky (Arun Kushwah) immortalised by his brother, Zafar Katkar (Sikandar Kher) by putting his name on the tallest building in the city. The film also allows these dreaded gangster’s tiny moments to breathe, reflecting a common link between all the characters, born and raised on the same soil of Mumbai. Zafar gets into reverie during a violent hold up in a shanty when the distinct smell in the air takes him back to his childhood. He sniffs a blanket and talks of living in the underbellies and wanting to escape that netherworld as others seem to sympathise to his sentiments. All of them become Mumbaikars in that one moment before mayhem, disarmed of other identities when put in a space of mutual co-existence, rooting for the common concerns of roti, kapda and makaan. It is also short-lived for time has shaped each of them differently and they must react to the version that the city has forced them to be in the present.

Huma Qureshi and Chunky Panday in the film
| Photo Credit:
Saleem Siblings/Youtube

Kher inhabits this dichotomy with urgency, lending an astounding tragic-comic quality to his screen presence. He is a treat to watch but the screenplay just stops short of taking him to murkier territories while resorting to familiar, convenient turns to reach the resolution. Even Huma remains impressive as she stays silent for the most part and uses her face to translate Baby’s emotional turmoil. The real surprise in the mix comes from the restrained act put on by Chunky Panday, who represents the helpless middle-class Mumbaikar with remarkable honesty.

These are all characters that become much more superior than the immediate storyline which Baby Do Die Do struggles to run along with. Their dreams feel palpable, their anger unresolvable and their beauty merging with the soul of the city. On occasions, their collective aspirations represent the charms of Bombay films of the 70s and 80s by Sai Paranjpye and Basu Chatterjee. Even the twin sisters retribution tale seems to be a reworked ode to older Hindi movies. It is an aesthetic that is hurriedly disappearing from other contemporary city films.

So, although Baby Do Die Do imagines Mumbai as a cyberpunk landscape, it actually prospers while recollecting the unassuming everyday pulse of the metropolis, whether it is in the tale of a shoe polisher, who suffocated to his death on an overcrowded bridge, a peon in the High Court, who got killed by mistake and the mother whose sanity was taken away by the city’s violence. Then, in the compounding mess created by the bigger folks Murjhani and Bhambhani, it is important, like Baby, to be zara hatke, zara bachke. It is after all, Bambai meri jaan.

Baby Do Die Do is currently running in theatres

Published – July 03, 2026 03:10 pm IST

Cut to a seedy alley behind a Chinese restaurant in Rome: A dozen mobsters menace a slight young man who suddenly pulls out a pair of nunchucks. He swings the traditional stick-and-chain weapons and makes quick work of his enemies, who fall one by one, groaning in pain.

The comedic, legendary action scene is from the 1972 film “The Way of the Dragon,” written, directed and starring Bruce Lee. The martial arts star was a trailblazer, allowing Asian Americans to see themselves represented in a strong, positive light on-screen.

And now he has secured a place in California history, becoming the first Chinese American in state history to have a day designated in his honor.

Lee was born in 1940 in San Francisco. His mother was of European descent and his father was a Cantonese opera star who was on tour in the city, affording his son birthright citizenship.

Lee grew up in Hong Kong, where he followed his father’s path as a performer, acting in more than a dozen films as a child and studying the close-quarters southern Chinese martial art Wing Chun.

On May 17, 1959, an 18-year-old Lee returned to San Francisco and eventually made his way to Hollywood. He went on to influence an industry that was at the time bereft of Asian American talent, and helped to popularize the genre of martial arts films and ignite Western interest in Hong Kong action cinema.

In recognition of his contributions, state Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill designating May 17 as “Bruce Lee Day” in California. The bill, signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, encourages schools and communities to honor Lee’s life and cultural impact.

Haney has described Lee as a “symbol of pride, resilience and possibility for generations who rarely saw themselves reflected with strength and dignity.”

Lee, who saw himself not only as an actor but also as a poet and philosopher, encountered repeated barriers. Up for the main role in the 1970s television series “Kung Fu,” for example, he was rejected in favor of white actor David Carradine.

In 2020, filmmaker Bao Nguyen sought to show how Lee dispelled anti-Asian sentiment and long-held stereotypes of emasculated Asian men in his ESPN documentary “Be Water.”

“The Asian male was the face of the enemy to many Americans,” Nguyen told The Times in 2020. “It was this vicious cycle of society reflecting media and culture, and media and culture reflecting society. There had to be some kind of intervention there and Bruce, in a way, was that intervention. He was the hero that we hadn’t seen before.”

Lee learned much about the systemic oppression that Black Americans faced from his first student, Jesse Glover, who had been a victim of police brutality.

And scholars have pointed out that, although his films had far-from-perfect politics, they touched on themes of fighting oppression. The 1971 movie “The Big Boss” showed Lee battling alongside laborers. “Fist of Fury” saw him opposing Japanese colonialism and discrimination.

Lee died young in 1973, at age 32 — before he was able to witness the full extent of his stardom. He died just one month before the release of “Enter the Dragon,” which was a box-office sensation and is considered a masterpiece of martial arts filmmaking.

Starring: Kansas Bowling, Jessa Jupiter Flux and Julie Kashmanian
Directed by: Jason Zink
Rated: NR
Running Time: 80 minutes

Our Score: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

The found footage serial killer subgenre is surprisingly crowded with films like “Man Bites Dog,” “Maniac,” and the “Creep” franchise. So while it can be difficult to stand out, 2025’s “Looky-loo” and now “looky-loo: PART II” carve out their own identity by trapping us with very little dialogue and a killer who sees the camera as a creative tool rather than a simple recording device.

For the uninitiated (like I was a month ago), “Looky-loo” follows an aspiring filmmaker whose obsession with cameras evolves into voyeurism, stalking, and eventually murder. Not just one murder, either. He begins staging his victims like actors preparing for a scene, finding as much satisfaction in the production as the killing itself. That’s important because “PART II” picks up almost immediately afterward, with the killer seemingly releasing “Looky-loo” to the public like a drive-in snuff film. He even scrawls “PART II” in blood across a refrigerator, as if he’s proudly unveiling the title card for his next masterpiece.

My perspective may be slightly skewed because I watched both films within a 36-hour span. I never really had time to sit with the first film before diving into the sequel. While I think the original is a solid exercise in restraint, “PART II” noticeably improves on many of its quieter shortcomings. The first film feels a bit like “In a Violent Nature.” Instead of marinating in dense forests and ambient sound, “Looky-loo” lingers in sweaty breathing, uncomfortable silence, and victims blissfully unaware that a killer is standing in the closet. I think it works, but I can also understand why some viewers find it painfully slow.

“PART II” replaces much of that restraint with confidence. The killer stomps upstairs without hesitation, casually raids victims’ refrigerators, drinks their beverages, and only occasionally bothers wearing gloves, as if DNA evidence simply stopped existing. None of these moments feel like plot holes. They’re deliberate choices that suggest someone who either no longer fears getting caught or genuinely believes he’s untouchable. It’s difficult to know which because the film still reveals remarkably little about who he actually is.

What we do learn is perhaps the most interesting development of the sequel. I think our killer is creating incel art. The first film hints at it, but “PART II” pushes the idea much further. While he expands his victims to include men, the murders aren’t treated equally. The men often become victims of blunt rage. The women become productions. They’re staged, framed, and lingered upon with a disturbing artistic obsession. Even more revealing is his growing fixation on female artists. It’s almost as if he can’t tolerate the idea that women might be more creative, more fulfilled, or more talented than he is. The murders begin feeling less like random acts of violence and more like warped attempts to prove he’s the only true artist in the room.

That’s ultimately what elevates the “Looky-loo” series. Like “The Poughkeepsie Tapes,” it invites you to revisit it because so much of the story exists between the scenes rather than inside them. Every repeated viewing uncovers another clue about the psychology hiding behind the camera. Unlike charismatic fictional killers like Hannibal Lecter or Dexter Morgan, this murderer isn’t interested in charming us. He wants us to appreciate the process: the stalking, the waiting, the intrusion, and finally the kill. In his mind, we’re his audience. He believes we should admire his work just as much as he does. And if we don’t, we might as well become part of his next production.

“looky loo: PART II” will have its Midwest premiere at Hysteria Fest in St. Louis on Thursday July 9th.