Bombay Stories (2026) Review: Kazmi Adapts Manto

The film braids three strands of Bombay's underbelly. Three sex workers, each with her own arrangement, her own keeper, her own quiet calculation of survival. Around them orbit the pimps who claim ownership of their bodies and their earnings, a constable named Shinde (Bilal Ahamad Bhagat) who moves between all three lives, and a host of hangers-on who treat the women's rooms as their personal living rooms. Kazmi's screenplay pulls from multiple Manto stories and stitches them into a single, loose-limbed narrative about a world where affection and exploitation share the same bed. Because the source material is episodic by nature, the film invents connective tissue - some of it elegant, some of it merely connective. The women's stories brush against each other, sometimes collide, and eventually, as the title promises, become a chorus rather than solos.

The film's greatest asset is its ensemble. Mouni Roy, shedding the glossy television persona, brings a wounded steeliness to her role. Anupriya Goenka is quieter but no less effective, her eyes doing the work her dialogue refuses to. Gargi Duggal and Monica Aggarwal round out a trio that never competes for sympathy - each performance simply occupies its own corner of the frame and lets the audience come to them. Bhagat's Constable Shinde is a fascinating creation: a man who is both predator and confidant, and whose moral ledger is so muddled he has stopped keeping one. Kazmi himself steps in front of the camera and holds his own, though a director casting himself in a Manto film is a choice that will invite some eye-rolling.

Where the film stumbles is in rhythm. At 124 minutes, it takes its time, which is admirable in principle - Manto requires atmosphere, not urgency. But Kazmi mistakes drift for texture. Scenes linger past their meaning; subplots wander off and return without having paid rent. The dialogue, in Hindi, is deliberately coarse, honouring Manto's refusal to prettify the demimonde, and occasionally it lands hard. Other times it announces its own grit rather than embodying it.

Cinematography and production design deserve genuine praise. The Bombay of the film is not the postcard city of tourist brochures; it is cramped rooms, flickering tube lights, narrow corridors where everyone knows everyone's business. The film refuses to make poverty picturesque, which is exactly what an adaptation of this material requires.

Yet the adaptation itself is the film's trickiest problem. Manto's stories work because they are brief, cold, and devastating. Stretched across two hours, the cruelty dilutes. A moment that should stab instead hums. There is one brief scene late in the film - a transaction involving a small amount of money and a large amount of humiliation - that briefly recaptures the acid on the page. More of that would have lifted the whole enterprise.

Pros

• An extraordinary ensemble, with Mouni Roy and Anupriya Goenka doing career-deepening work.
• Production design that renders Bombay without romanticism or condescension.
• A rare Hindi film willing to sit with characters mainstream cinema usually avoids.

Cons

• Uneven pacing; several stretches test patience without earning it.
• The episodic source material never fully coheres into a single narrative engine.
• Dialogue that occasionally performs its own rawness rather than feeling raw.
• The film's climactic moments lack the cold sting of Manto's prose.

BOMBAY STORIES is an honourable attempt at difficult material, and honour does not automatically equal excellence. It respects Manto's world, and at its best it breathes that world onto the screen with real conviction. But respect is not the same as understanding, and a 124-minute film built on short stories needs sharper architecture than Kazmi provides. See it for the performances - the cast is doing work that deserves to be seen. Just don't expect the film to leave a scar the way the original stories do.