Assi Movie Review: Anubhav Sinha’s Assi is audacious, heart-wrenching and an urgent watch. Much like Mulk and Thappad, the theme remains the same – reclaiming dignity in a world where the minority is subjected
to dishonour, disrespect and violent oppression. Both Thappad and Assi explore women’s agency after violence – one within marriage and the other after sexual assault – and circumnavigate on how a women redefines self-worth after being wronged. Assi, however, is a macro-level deep-dive on the systemic, bureaucratic and maybe even legal negligence in relaying justice.
Is justice delayed indeed justice denied? What makes a criminal? Is violence the only way to avenge violence? The film throws open a host of questions modern India is dealing with. Assi sets the tone right from its very first frame. A woman is found lying by the railway tracks covered in blood, bruises and tattered clothes. A local carries her to a hospital. The action then shifts back a day, which gives us a glimpse into Parima’s life. Parima, a middle-class Malayali woman, lives with her Haryanvi husband Vinay and their son in a humble Delhi locality.
Like every other day, they leave home in the morning. The husband drops off their son to the bus stop and goes to a super market where he works. Parima goes to school where she works as a teacher. After a farewell party that runs late, she takes the metro and on her way home from the station, she gets followed by a car. Five men come out of the car and push her inside, leaving her skirt scattered on the road. Inside the moving car, they take their turns to sexually assault her.
They treat her as an object in a grotesque contest – boasting, laughing, competing and reducing violence to a scoreboard of masculine dominance. The next day, her husband reaches the hospital. And then enters Raavi, a lawyer. She fights for her in a court of law. But evidences get removed, burnt and tampered with as is the case with most cases involving affluent families. There’s also Kartik, the husband’s colleague and Raavi’s confidant, a man dealing with the death of his wife in a hit-and-run case, who becomes a pillar of support for Parima’s family.
Assi isn’t just about Raavi fighting for Parima to get justice. Anubhav also sheds light on the physiological and the interpersonal relationships of a rape survivor. In a heart-wrenching scene, Parima is seen fighting hallucinations, unable to get over how she was brutally touched and assaulted by a group of strangers. In another, she gets startled and petrified when her husband lovingly tries to touch her shoulder. In yet another scene, we see Vinay calling out his orthodox family expressing concerns about having a rape victim as part of their unit.
But it’s the assault sequence that deeply terrifies and lingers. In Ravi Udyawar’s Mom, a similar incident unfolded inside a moving car, one that was filmed using a purely suggestive, symbolic technique and deafening silence and that’s what made it so disturbing. But here, Anubhav goes graphic and elaborate, making us confront the horrors of a society where brutality becomes a game and a woman’s body becomes a battlefield for male ego. He doesn’t want you to forget the chilling barbarity of the act. Every 20 minutes, the screen goes red with a reminder – yet another rape has happened.
While Assi attempts to widen its lens to include police apathy, corrupt systems and Kartik’s personal backstory, these parallel threads end up stretching the narrative, sifting attention away from the survivor’s emotional journey. But maybe that’s what the makers wanted.
This is no Pink. You may not experience that sense of victory and sweet revenge that Pink left you with. The final argument by Raavi before the judge becomes more like a stage for an extempore-cum-emotional breakdown. It becomes more mechanical than personal. Having said that, Assi largely wins. It wins for its moments that stay back with you without trying too hard. Anubhav insists that rape impacts families too and so, children are made to sit in courtrooms and appear as witnesses. Marital rape and ‘Bois Locker Room’-esque conversations are also dealt with in the story.
As for the actors, the film belongs to Kani Kusruti, who plays Parima with a lot of emotional honesty, never allowing her to slip into self-pity. She conveys the aftermath of trauma through silences, guarded movements and withdrawal from the world, which carry more weight than words. It’s a difficult role approached with dignity and unsettling truth and Kani’s performance is quietly devastating, capturing not just the trauma of the assault but the echo it lives on the body and mind.
Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub is perhaps the softest and yet the strongest character in Assi. Instead of playing the saviour, he allows the focus to remain on Parima’s journey. He embodies a rare cinematic masculinity, bringing a quiet steadiness to his role. Kumud Mishra resorts to restraint as Vinay and Raavi’s confidant dealing with a troubled personal life. And he’s top notch. Naseeruddin Shah, Seema Pahwa, Surpiya Pathak and Manoj Pahwa are brilliant too. Satyajit Sharma as defense lawyer Navratan deserves a special mention too.
Revathy becomes the bridge between both parties. She’s unyielding, often breaking into shock, but never insensitive. As for Taapsee Pannu, she’s on the other side of the witness box this time around – unlike her act in Pink. After Mulk, she dons the lawyer’s robe once again in Assi. Sure, there’s her trademark intensity and moral conviction. But while the part is undoubtedly powerful, the performance feels familiar, treading territory she has explored before. But the seasoned actor in her makes the rage and righteousness appear palpable.
Yes, Assi is an urgent watch. Ultimately, films like Assi matter not because they depict brutality but because they force us to confront the everyday silences that surround it. The survivor’s struggle and a female lawyer’s frustration become a mirror to a society that still hesitates to listen, believe and act. Assi deliberately broke from star-driven promotion by positioning itself as a writer-first film. And needless to say, both Anubhav and Gaurav Solanki deserve a mention for a sensitive portrayal of a woman survivor, a woman lawyer and a woman judge along with a doting husband and a bereaved widower, coloured with both empathy and strength.
