Tere Ishk Mein
Hindi - Drama
165 mins
Netflix
Long post alert - I cannot help myself when I have these wonderful opportunities to rant!
Prologue
Maestro A.R. Rahman’s music is still deeply loved by audiences. Now in his 35th year as a composer, he has produced some of his most compelling work in recent times with long-time collaborators like Mani Ratnam and Aanand L. Rai.
While the Mani–ARR partnership spans almost the entirety of Rahman’s career (nearly 17 films), the Rai–ARR collaboration is just about a decade and three films old. The music from these films (Raanjhanaa, Atrangi Re and Tere Ishk Mein) has done something quite remarkable. They have carried Rahman’s sound deep into the hinterlands of North India, where his songs are now embraced with the same affection once reserved for older Bollywood classics. Coincidentally, all three feature Dhanush in leading roles.
In the second half of 2025, I had the bewildering experience of Thug Life. I have tried very hard to recover from that cinematic debacle, so shocking that it may permanently dent my faith in a new Mani Ratnam film. As a soundtrack, it was probably one of the ARR's complete albums in recent times. Each song was unique in genre, yet sadly lost and misrepresented in a film that now feels almost like a premonition of a leading Tamil actor turned wanna be CM.
In the name of trying to contemporize relationships in a gangster drama, the film delivered insane sequences replete with inane dialogue… let me stop here, before this becomes a Thug life review.
Tere Ishk Mein joins that unfortunate list. While it is in no way as abominable as Thug Life, it remains a similarly baffling exercise in pseudo neo-realism: a film that is an inexplicable human drama that feels devoid of clarity, intent, or even basic common sense. Do not you dare deflect blame on the "toxicity" of love!
The Review
Tere Ishk Mein could have been a very straightforward story. A romance that cuts across class divisions, rich versus poor, privilege versus struggle. Hindi cinema has told such stories for decades with varying degrees of success. Given the music and the actors, I suspect the film would have been far better received if it had simply remained that.
Instead, the film chooses a far stranger path.
Shankar (Dhanush) is the typical college ruffian. Mukti (Kriti Sanon) is a South Delhi girl, complete with loose pyjamas, “daaru-sutta” and casual “yaar” speak. We are introduced to her presenting a doctoral thesis at Delhi University. A 2,200-page study(??) on separating violence from masculinity. “Violence is an appendix which has no use but to cause pain” she believes, as Shankar bursts into the auditorium beating up a rival candidate, in front of her professors, who diss her theory.
She decides to "recruit" Shankar as a test subject and he willingly signs up. She will “cure” him of violence, prove her thesis and win academic glory, while he is clearly in it for the "fun" tells her that he may fall in love with her. All this "what-the-hell-is-going-on" unfolds for about a good thirty minutes until she secures her doctorate and Shankar gets his reality check.
Shankar is summoned by Mukti’s father, a Joint Secretary and IAS officer who reminds him that 750 IPS officers and 250/300 district magistrates report to him. Mukti stands there watching while Shankar is promptly shown his place. Shankar declares that he will clear the UPSC prelims (not even the whole deal) and only then call her. She must answer his call when that day comes.
Voila - Shankar studies relentlessly and ranks 843 in his third and final attempt. By the time he returns to meet Mukti, three years have passed. She has moved to the United States, further "doctored" and is now returning as a psychological consultant for the Indian defence.
Shankar calls, while she is announcing her engagement and does not answer. He reminds her of the day they first met, when he warned her that if he ever fell in love, "Dilli Phoonk Doonga" and he does, setting petrol bombs and destroying her engagement.
A terrific and intense scene follows. Shankar confesses that his body burns in her love, while Mukti tells him that he may love her or threaten her, but that does not obligate her to respond:
“.............par main dar hi jaaun yeh zaroori toh nahi… tum mandir mein Shivalik mein patak lo maatha… mukti mil hi jaye yeh zaroori toh nahi.”
She urges him to forget her, become a good man and pursue this life changing opportunity.
The actors are terrific in this scene, but the dialogue feels random and tonally inconsistent. It reminded me of that beautifully shot beachside confrontation in "Thug Life" where Simbu and Trisha have a similar emotional outburst. Wild writing and execution turned that moment into an unintentionally meme-worthy sequence.
Shankar is arrested and beaten by the police. His father (the ever reliable Prakash Raj) must humbly plead at the IAS officer’s home before Shankar is released. Mukti, shaken, confesses to her fiancé that she never truly loved Shankar and is too scared to tell him that, but thought she could help him become a better man(!!)
Shankar’s father takes him home, battered and bruised. On their ride back, In a touching moment he tells his son that he always imagined Shankar flying the fastest aircraft ever built. Tragedy strikes and he dies in the scooter crash.
Shankar nearly shoots himself until a plane flies overhead on his Kalkaji home terrace. He lowers his "Desi Katta" (random!) and is reminded of his father’s dream.
Forget the IAS, he becomes a hot-shot fighter pilot - how, no one cares, another beautiful song plays to the montage.
Whenever he flies, both sides of the border grow nervous. His aggressive flying style leads to disciplinary concerns and he is grounded. Mukti, now a psychological consultant, is called in. She flies to Leh to assess him.
Oh yes, the new Mukti is a blood spurting, pregnant alcoholic. She must sign his clearance, otherwise he cannot fly. The country is under attack on two fronts, the nation needs Shankar—but Mukti he shall not get.
And then comes the astonishing climax - Mukti suddenly declares that she loves him. Shankar calls her a manipulative woman. She tells him his love made her bleed, just as her water breaks in a bloody mess.
As she is wheeled into the delivery room, she explains that she "convinced" her husband to have a child despite her habits. She believes she will die and does not want the child to grow up alone. Therefore she refuses to sign Shankar’s clearance—because she believes he will die in battle. (hello, your husband is on a frigate, in the war!)
Of course, Shankar promises to survive (or the dad will). Armed with her blood-stained letter, he is cleared for duty without question. He flies a kamikaze mission into an enemy frigate while saving Mukti’s husband—who understandably has no idea what is going on (and is not even aware that he now has a infant to care about)
End credits. “An A. R. Rahman musical.” 😠
Aanand L. Rai is a reasonably good filmmaker whose success came from rooted writing by collaborators, writers Kanika Dhillon and Himanshu Sharma. Small films with small ambitions, in small settings, they worked quite well. Judging by their last three outings, including the baffling Zero—a serious creative reset is necessary for this team.
To the film’s credit, the two leads rise well above the material. Dhanush is in superb form. By now he inhabits emotionally volatile characters almost instinctively and carries the film with remarkable intensity. His Hindi accent is noticeably more southern than it was in Raanjhanaa—perhaps a deliberate attempt to make the character feel more pan-Indian.
Kriti Sanon plays what the film presents as an ambitious woman, though the character frequently veers into outright opportunism and moral ambiguity. She is written as fiercely independent yet emotionally manipulative. To Sanon’s credit, she performs the role with conviction and probably delivers one of her more rounded acting performances.
Which raises a genuine question.
When actors of the calibre of Dhanush and Kriti Sanon were rehearsing or performing these scenes, did they never pause to wonder whether something felt fundamentally off? Did no one walk up to the director or writer and ask what exactly these characters were talking about?
Or, just as in Thug Life, did everyone simply surrender to the director’s vision?
Because some of the dialogue is genuinely baffling, especially the sequences in which they are spoken they are spoken
- “Mere liver mein cirrhosis hai, brain mein nahin!”
- “Main aise ladko ko jaanti hoon. Woh mujhe shaadi ke jode mein dekhega to theek ho jaaega.”
- “Zindagi mein kuch logon ko pyaar milta hai, kuch logon ko violence.”
- “Bahut pressure mein hoon. Woh pressure waapas karne aaya hoon.”
- “Guilt is a pointless emotion, Mukti. Mujhe taras mat de, mujhe mera jahaaz de de.”
Moments like these sit awkwardly beside genuinely good sequences. A well-written moment occurs when Mukti invites Shankar to a hotel room for "fun", while he unexpectedly withdraws. There is also lovely scene where Murari (Zeeshan Ali, returning from Raanjhanaa), now as a priest performs Shankar’s father’s last rites and delivers a lifesaving wordplay about Shankar and Mukti.
Yet such scenes only deepen the tonal inconsistency. The film strives for neo:realism; but it plunges into dialogue that feels unintentionally comic.
In the end, Tere Ishk Mein is a frustrating film, never boring though. It has talented actors, evocative music and occasional flashes of sharp writing. Yet it insists on dressing up a simple emotional story in layers of intellectual jargon that neither deepen the narrative nor do justice to its characters.
Sometimes the most powerful stories are also the simplest ones. Tere Ishk Mein never quite realises that.
Epilogue
In another staggering coincidence, just like "Muttha Mazhai" in Thug Life, the best song from the this soundtrack does not appear in the film
Do yourself a favour: Read my review, skip the movie, but listen to the stunning soundtrack—especially Awara Angara, Deewana Deewana and Shilpa Rao’s gorgeous reprise of the Arijit Singh – sung title track.
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