• Shubhra Gupta
    Shubhra Gupta
    Indian Express

    3

    There are flashes when you feel the film will finally say something important, but then it lapses back into stodgy set-pieces which go on and on.

  • Rahul Desai
    Rahul Desai
    Film Companion

    -

    Laal Kaptaan is a boring and self-absorbed period drama – one that is so obsessed with historical detailing, eccentric characters, bare physicality and country-style pace that it forgets to be narratively and humanely absorbing.

  • Even though Singh keeps away from the sentimentality common to Hindi cinema, Laal Kaptaan lacks pace and certain scenes feel unbearably long. Dialogues, so essential for a historical thriller like this one, falter and flail in critical scenes, puncturing the impact of a unique story. As far as Hindi films go, Laal Kaptaan treads a path less trodden, but it meanders and spectacularly loses steam. It should have cut to the chase, literally and figuratively, but instead, it becomes an unbearably long and pointless pursuit.

  • Jyoti Sharma Bawa
    Jyoti Sharma Bawa
    Hindustan Times

    -

    Saif Ali Khan’s slow-burning period Western beautifully sets up its period and ambition, only to peter off at the most crucial juncture.

  • Laal Kaptaan deserves a watch just for Saif’s spunk.

  • Sreeparna Sengupta
    Sreeparna Sengupta
    Times Of India

    5

    Somewhere, ‘Laal Kaptaan’ was perhaps attempting to be a Western movie, with horses, dust, guns and the works, but ultimately, a tedious narrative and a very lengthy runtime pull it down.

  • ensational; but a stretch, sadly…In Laal Kaptaan we effectively experience a valiant attempt at merging the East, with the Western

  • Sensational; but a stretch, sadly…In Laal Kaptaan we effectively experience a valiant attempt at merging the East, with the Western

  • Singh, the director, had all the pieces to craft an effectual Indian western: the terrain, the long-suffering sadhu, an age of flux, elements of magic realism, and touches of Shakespearean tragedy. But Laal Kaptaan falters on an over-written script and visually over-told story.

  • Uday Bhatia
    Uday Bhatia
    LiveMint

    -

    Laal Kaptaan is the sort of film I wish there were more of – an exploration of the richness and weirdness of old India, one which doesn’t try to smooth the edges or create a Disney-esque franchise. Recent films have used our nation’s distant past as a reflecting pool of orthodoxy (Padmaavat) and proto-nationalism (Manikarnika). Singh, on the other hand, admits that we’ve always been a complicated, fractured country, and that entire lives can be defined by nothing more than a desire for revenge.

  • Namrata Joshi
    Namrata Joshi
    The Hindu

    -

    All the interesting disparate elements in the film don’t come together well enough to build it into a compelling whole

  • ‘Laal Kaptaan’ is strictly for Khan’s fans who dig his cerebral conversations in person and therefore will be easy on him.