Where the line between reel and real blurs, a film like AK vs AK is born. A refreshing meta-movie where the cold vibes between a struggling director (Anurag Kashyap) and a longtime star (Anil Kapoor) reach an all-time high during a TV show and escalate into a hostage situation, AK vs AK makes you believe in the possibility of something like this actually playing out. The two leads are the ideal choices - Kapoor, at 64, is still relevant in Bollywood but rarely gets acclaimed roles, whereas Kashyap's films never rake in box office moolah. While the former has successfully introduced his children to Bollywood, the latter is a highly vocal Twitter user who's never short of controversy.
When these names play fictionalized versions of themselves, bringing a fair amount of prior reality-baggage into the mix (the bit about Allwyn Kalicharan is real, Kapoor's birthday being 24th December is real), things stay wholly interesting. Also, it helps that the proceedings are shown to unfold in real-time. The director is shown to have a steady upper hand over the actor as the plot thickens. Even in the midst of what looks like a serious search for a missing person, the film reminds us that it's quintessentially Bollywood. There's the scene where a battered and bruised Anil Kapoor breaks into a dance routine from one of his earlier films, entertaining a crowd to extract the information he needs.
AK vs AK also gets pointy in its dialogues (written by Kashyap himself), especially when an injured Anil Kapoor sits on the side of a road reminiscing what he went through - often picking profession over family - because the allure of stardom can be intoxicating as hell. A comical stretch where Harsh (Kapoor's actor son) goes overboard with his admiration for Kashyap is also filled with inside jokes aplenty. Sarcasm and curse words are thrown at each other in a free-flowing hate conversation between Kapoor and Kashyap, adding a tinge of honest seriousness to the plot. It's only the final-final reveal that didn't really strike me as particularly innovative, in a way undoing the emotional emphasis of what had transpired until then. It's a fun 108-minute watch, filmed in a self-aware, mockumentary style that befits the concept.
