Mardaani 3: The Rani Mukerji Film Gets The Job Done

BACK IN 2014, Pradeep Sarkar’s Mardaani, a police procedural drama on child trafficking, was a clutter-breaker among an assembly line of romances. A sophisticated villain was pitted against a female cop as the clash between them expanded into an ego tussle. In 2026, Mardaani is a franchise and police procedural dramas headlined by women are everywhere. The novelty of the premise has chipped away, but Mardaani 3 refuses to change.

This is both a good and a bad thing. Mardaani 3, directed by Abhiraj Minawal, is more of the same. Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukerji), the famed police officer, is handed a case of missing girls. A little probing reveals that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Standing on the other end is Amma (Mallika Prasad), who runs a nexus of a beggar mafia across Delhi. Given that the franchise has built a reputation for propping up the nemesis at par with the protagonist (both Tahir Raj Bhasin and Vishal Jethwa broke out as villains), Prasad’s sinister turn as a woman who will stop at nothing imbues Mardaani 3 with a familiarity that runs the risk of inducing fatigue.

There is also the film’s tendency (Aayush Gupta, Deepak Kingrani and Baljeet Singh Marwah are credited as writers) to keep wanting to outwit the audience by clogging the narrative with one twist after another. It is a little Abbas-Mustan in its levity and Pathaan in its frivolity, but Mardaani 3 refuses to budge even when the biggest twist could be guessed from a mile.

This commitment, flippant and self-serious in equal measure, is also what works for the film. For the most part, Minawal’s outing finds a sweet spot between what the film is forced to be (another rendition of Mardaani) and what it can be within the restrictions. It does not always work, especially in the second half, where needless expositions find their way into conversations like misplaced PSA advertisements. But it is quite fun when it does.

Take, for instance, the Jawan-like introductory scene the maker designs for Mukerji. Much like Shah Rukh Khan, her face is covered till a swift jab of the knife reveals her eyes. It is a slight moment that works because it is orchestrated around a star. Mukerji is persuasive in her reprisal of Shivani Shivaji Roy. I liked the pockets of vulnerability that the film afforded her, like when she steps back in shock on seeing a child die or the brief pause she takes while dispensing orders as her husband lay in the hospital.

In many ways, Mardaani 3 is a vanity vehicle for Mukerji, as so many exist for male contemporaries. But the writers also anchor the stunts and excess in something deeper than they might seem. Take, for instance, the fact that the film starts with the disappearance of two kids, and the investigation begins only because one of them was the daughter of someone influential. Later, Amma tells Shivani that the reason she could traffic kids for so long with impunity is that they were poor and no one cared when they went missing.

Who is Mallika Prasad? Meet the merciless ‘Amma’ in Rani Mukerji’s Mardaani 3

There is also some joy in seeing Mukerji do action. Unlike others, say Deepika Padukone and Katrina Kaif, her frame is slight, but she brings a rewarding fluidity to the undertaking, offsetting at the same time the limitation of the writing with superfluous dialogue. Most of the scenes take place in crowded places, and the sense of reality seeps into the proceedings and adds to the urgency.

In that sense, Mardaani 3 gets the job done even with a bizarre Sri Lanka segue later in the story. But the more pressing question is this: if the problems keep remaining the same as do the solutions, and the only inventiveness the recent film has to offer is a combination of the first two instalments, then where does the franchise stand in the sea of lookalikes?