Maalik: 2025 Bollywood Gangster Action Thriller Film, Trailer, Review

4to40.com July 12, 2025 Movie Reviews 2,476 Views

Movie Name: Maalik
Directed by: Pulkit
Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Manushi Chhillar, Medha Shankr, Huma Qureshi, Anshumaan Pushkar, Swanand Kirkire
Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller, Drama
Running Time: – Minutes
Release Date: 11 July, 2025
Rating:
Production Companies: Tips Industries, Northern Lights Films
Budget: ₹– crore

Maalik is a gangster drama starring Rajkummar Rao that is expected to be a gripping story about a man’s rise to power in the underworld. The film is based on social issues and is expected to be full of action and adventure.

Maalik: Movie Overview

Maalik is an upcoming Indian Hindi-language gangster action thriller film directed by Pulkit and produced by Kumar Taurani and Jay Shewakramani. The film starring Rajkummar Rao in the titular role, alongside Prosenjit Chatterjee, Manushi Chhillar and Medha Shankr.

The film is scheduled to be theatrically released on 11 July 2025.

Principal photography for Maalik began in late August 2024. The film had a continuous three-month shooting schedule, covering Lucknow, Varanasi, and Unnao. The first schedule begun in late August on the outskirts of Lucknow, along the Lucknow-Kanpur highway, featuring Rajkummar Rao and Manushi Chhillar. The film also shot at Lucknow University’s Subhash Hostel on 25 September 2024. The two-month Lucknow schedule wrapped up in mid-November 2024. Some scenes were shot at the District Hospital in Unnao.

The final leg of filming took place in Kanpur, concluding with the protagonist’s wedding sequence on 14 November 2024. Rao also performed high-intensity action sequences, including weapon-based combat and Hand-to-hand combat.

The film’s songs are composed by Sachin-Jigar while lyrics are written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. The background score is composed by Ketan Sodha.

The film is set to be released on 11 July 2025.

Movie Trailer:

#TEASER

#TRAILER

Movie Review:

Rajkummar Rao rules in this rambling action drama

A typical gangster story born out of class struggle in the Hindi heartland, the film is less than the sum of its parts

Rajkummar Rao is going through a purple patch. Taking a break from his comic capers, this week, the actor dons the cape of an outlaw, a product of social injustice who ends up becoming the mirror image of what he sets out to wipe off.

Maalik sounds like a spiritual cousin of Manoj Bajpayee’s Bhaiyya Ji, which was released last year. Both films posit masters of understatement who revel in realistic space in a bombastic, mainstream atmosphere. While Bhaiyya Ji went completely off-key after setting up the conflict, Maalik has its moments as writer-director Pulkit manages to create the mood that we associate with Tigmanshu Dhulia’s kind of cinema.

The film is set in the feudal Allahabad of the late 1980s, where Deepak (Rajkummar), the son of a farm worker (a solid Rajendra Gupta), rebels against the landlords to become a ganglord and assumes the title of ‘Maalik.’ The police stations of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are full of case files of history sheeters like Deepak, who picked up a gun because of caste or class struggle, and were adopted by politicians to maintain the balance of power. Raj lends the flawed character flesh and blood, and adds sparks to the predictable character arc.

The locations are not decorative, dialogues have traces of dynamite, and the posturing of the politicians, led by Saurabh Shukla and Swanand Kirkire, sounds realistic. The politician-criminal nexus laced with episodes of revenge and betrayal has been told numerous times before. In such stories, the leader becomes a liability after a point, and the love interest of the gangster assumes the moral centre of the story. Here, Manushi Chhillar plays that predictable part well.

The surprise package is Prosenjit Chatterjee as the ageing encounter specialist brought in to hunt down Maalik. With his Bengali touch and stylish demeanour, the seasoned performer brings freshness to a stock character. Anshuman Pushkar and Saurabh Sachdeva match Raj’s magical mundanity to generate the grime and grind that we associate with the region, but the screenplay doesn’t allow them to flex their muscles beyond a point.

The pacing is problematic, the editing is uneven, and the narrative contrivances are left uncovered. The set pieces are gripping, but their tails sag. The catchy item number composed by Sachin Jigar — and suitably performed by Huma Qureshi — is also lazily accommodated into the story. So does the background score that assumes its own life at crucial junctures and is not integrated into the narrative. The scenes and language that have won the film an adult certificate are avoidable.

Overall, it feels like the makers are under the impression that they are telling something novel when, perhaps, the effort should have been to hide the obvious. At 152 minutes, the picture gets pixellated, and one gets piqued. However, the climax featuring a dancing Prosenjit and a scowling Raj once again injects adrenaline.