One phone call, taken live on air, is enough to turn a washed-up broadcaster's morning into the story of his life. Dhamaka, a 2021 Indian thriller from director Ram Madhvani, traps its lead behind a microphone and asks how far he will go to get his old job back.
What is Dhamaka about?
The man at the centre of Dhamaka used to be a television news anchor. Now he reads the news on radio, a demotion he has not forgiven, and his cynicism about the industry has curdled into habit. Then a caller gets through to his show with an alarming message, the kind that cannot be dismissed as a prank. Where a different person might hang up and call the police, he sees an opportunity. If he can keep the caller talking and steer the story back onto television, the comeback he has been waiting for is suddenly within reach. From that point the film tightens around him. Every choice he makes about what to broadcast, what to withhold and whom to trust is also a choice about the kind of journalist he is willing to be, and the ratings clock keeps running whether or not his conscience can keep up.
About the cast
Kartik Aaryan leads a cast that includes Amruta Subhash, Mrunal Thakur, Vishwajeet Pradhan, Vikas Kumar, Anuj Gurwara and Priya Tandon. Because so much of the story unfolds inside a studio, the film depends heavily on faces, voices and reactions rather than action set-pieces, and the performances are built accordingly.
Context & significance
Ram Madhvani's film blends action, drama and thriller elements into a single-location pressure cooker, running a brisk hundred-and-three minutes. Its real subject is the news business itself: the appetite for live drama, the temptation to shape a crisis into content, and the personal cost of chasing an audience. That theme gives Dhamaka a sharper edge than a standard hostage-style thriller, and it explains why the film travelled well beyond its home market. It arrived as a 2021 release and was generally well received by audiences drawn to tense, talk-driven suspense.
Watching Dhamaka on Ktime
Dhamaka streams on K-Time in its original language. To watch, log in with a free K-Time account; browsing this page needs no account at all. The service is built for Persian-speaking viewers, with a Farsi interface that makes finding and playing the film simple from any device.