Kaleen Bhaiya starts the film tied up. Not metaphorically, literally captive, which is a strange place to put the most feared don in Purvanchal within the first few minutes of a movie named after him.
That's the hook, and it works because it forces the film to rewind and explain itself. Director Gurmmeet Singh and writer Puneet Krishna didn't pick up where Season 4 left off. They went backward instead, planting the story somewhere before the deaths that gutted the show's later seasons. Which means Munna Bhaiya, shot dead in the Season 2 finale, gets to walk around again. So does an earlier, less shattered version of Kaleen's kingdom.
Fans had been asking for a movie for years. Nobody was really asking for a prequel. They got one anyway, and going by early reactions, most people aren't complaining.
This time the trouble comes from outside Uttar Pradesh. Ravi Kishan plays Babban, a rival who's cheated a business partner in Jaisalmer and now has his sights set on Kaleen's throne, dragging the film's geography out of its usual mud-and-carpet-belt setting into desert territory.
Underneath all of that, Guddu and Bablu Pandit are still just employees at this stage of the timeline, and they know it. Loyal, useful, and treated like foot soldiers rather than family. Outlook India's review picked up on this as the film's real emotional spine, more than the shootouts: brothers doing everything right and still never quite getting a seat at the table.
Jitendra Kumar takes over as Bablu (Vikrant Massey played the role in the series), a swap that could've gone badly. Reviewers mostly seem fine with it, calling his work dependable if not showstopping. Ravi Kishan, on the other hand, has been getting genuinely enthusiastic notices, with more than one critic naming him among the film's better additions.
Saibal Chatterjee's review for NDTV landed at 2.5 out of 5. Not a pan, not a recommendation either, sitting in that awkward middle where a critic respects the craft without loving the result. He found the film strongest in its quieter stretches, when it stops shooting people long enough to be a family drama, love and jealousy and loyalty getting as much screen time as bullets. He even floated the idea of a Mirzapur film franchise going forward, on the condition that future entries actually have something new to say.
That score put NDTV on the more skeptical end of the spectrum. Free Press Journal was gentler, calling it a decent extension of the show rather than a reinvention, with a first half that lands better than a second half that could've used trimming. Bollymoviereviewz didn't hold back at all, tagging it a "sure-shot hit" and praising the dialogue as razor-sharp. And then there's social media, where some reviewers went as high as 3.5 stars and started predicting box office numbers before the film had even finished its opening weekend. Somebody even flagged a post-credit scene worth sticking around for.
Here's where almost everyone agrees. Pankaj Tripathi's Kaleen Bhaiya is still the film's anchor, and critics keep circling back to the same observation: his menace doesn't come from volume. It's a pause, a gaze, the stillness before a line lands. Ali Fazal gives Guddu the physical urgency the role has always needed. And Divyenndu's Munna Bhaiya, arguably the character fans missed most after his exit, gets singled out repeatedly, even by reviewers who weren't crazy about the story wrapped around him.
A few smaller performances are pulling weight too. Rasika Dugal apparently gets an unexpected twist in her track as Beena Tripathi. Abhishek Banerjee's Compounder and Mohit Malik's Birju Lohar both get more room once the second half kicks in, for whatever that's worth if the second half is the part that drags.
Whatever critics decided, audiences appear to have made up their minds early. Sacnilk tracked over 31,000 tickets sold within 24 hours of advance booking opening, days before release, pulling in more than a crore in gross collections once block seats were counted. The film released on September 4 against Arshad Warsi's Jeevan Bheema Yojana and Mahaprabhu Jagannath, though trade buzz never really treated that as a fair fight, given the size of Mirzapur's existing fanbase.
Running a little over three hours, the film comes from Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar's Excel Entertainment, produced alongside Amazon MGM Studios. Chatterjee's review left the franchise question open, and honestly, the ticket counters seem to have already answered it for him.
Mirzapur: The Movie hit theatres on September 4, rewinding the Purvanchal gangland saga to a point before Season 1's bloodiest turns. NDTV gave it 2.5 out of 5. Other outlets weren't nearly as stingy, some going as high as 3.5 stars. Advance bookings, meanwhile, don't seem to care either way.
