10 Best Taapsee Pannu Movies
10 Best Taapsee Pannu Movies Taapsee Pannu has proved herself as a dependable actor time and again. She’ known for her versatility across a variety of genres, be it comedy, action or drama, or even action. She has gone from strength to strength over the years and makes her fans look forward to her every release. She’s someone who gets author-backed roles and of late, she has been making her name doing cause-based films. Presenting a list of her best movies down the years…
Pink (2016)
Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Andrea Tariang, Angad Bedi
Storyline: Taapsee Pannu played today’s girl who has to face lots of harassment for living life on her own terms. She is molested and given death threats but doesn’t relent and finally wins justice in the court. Consent is the most important thing when it comes to consensual sex between two people. A woman saying no at any stage should mean no. And we shouldn’t be quick to judge people on the basis of their clothes or behavior. These are the two basic causes espoused by the film. Three young women — Minal (Taapsee Pannu), Falak (Kirti Kulhari), and Andrea are harassed by three young men Raunak (Raashul Tanden), Vishwajyoti (Tushar Pandey) and Rajveer Singh (Angad Bedi). As a woman has hurt them, their well-connected friend, Ankit (Vijay Varma), vows revenge. Andrea gets stalked, Falak loses her job and Minal is kidnapped and molested in a car. The lawyer hired by the three boys points out that the girls were prostitutes — they were friendly towards strangers, they drank with men, attended a rock concert and were wearing revealing clothes. The lawyer for the girls, played by Amitabh Bachchan, reasons that while women are stereotyped as prostitutes if they come home late, move out of their home, want to be independent, drink and so on, none of these conditions applies to men when they indulge in the same thing. He states no means no and doesn’t require further explanation. This statement created a lot of buzzes and hopefully opened a few eyes as well.
Naam Shabana (2017)
Director: Shivam Nair
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Akshay Kumar, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Manoj Bajpayee, Anupam Kher, Danny Denzongpa
Storyline: Spinoffs have been in vogue in Hollywood for a while and the Hindi film industry is slowly catching in on the trend. Taapsee Pannu’s short but fiery role as agent Shabana Khan in the 2015 film Baby was much appreciated and filmmaker Neeraj Pandey decided to make a movie revolving around the character. So we get to see Shabana’s past in the film. The film belongs to Taapsee, who essays her role with complete conviction. She’s good both as an angry collegian who wants justice at any cost and as a trainee who knows she’s said yes to something she isn’t totally prepared for. Her action scenes are nicely choreographed and she’s confident doing them. You enjoy watching her despite the unconvincing storyline and the glaring plot holes and that’s her real victory.
Mulk (2018)
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu, Prateik Babbar, Neena Gupta, Manoj Pahwa, Prachee Shah, Rajat Kapoor, Kumud Mishra, and Ashutosh Rana
Storyline: Taapsee played a feisty lawyer in this film which was all about the rights of minorities. How does one prove that one loves one’s country? And should this love be questioned in the first place? Who are the actual citizens of this country, really? Given the fact that 40 lakh people in Assam find themselves out of the citizen list, these are relevant questions indeed. Such questions have never been pointedly asked in such a fearless manner in our films. For years, we have been divided into them and us and slowly, this divide has reached such a state that now the criteria is that if you hate them, only then you’re with us. Shahid Mohammed (Prateik Babbar) is the wayward nephew of advocate Murad Ali Mohammed (Rishi Kapoor). His younger brother, Bilaal Mohammed (Manoj Pahwa), runs a small electronics shop. His elder son is settled in England, along with his Hindu wife, Aarti (Taapsee Pannu), who too is a lawyer. Shahid is accused of being a terrorist. He’s killed in an encounter and his father is arrested for having a connection with terrorists. Worse, Murad himself, who is fighting his brother’s case, is slapped with a charge of collusion. Now it’s up to daughter-in-law Aarti to clear the family name by winning the case in the court
Manmarziyaan (2018)
Storyline: Rumi (Taapsee Pannu), and Vicky (Vicky Kaushal) are a much in lust couple who believe in rutting like rabbits whenever time and place permits. But is there something deeper between them? That question comes to haunt them when they are once caught red-handed. Vicky is hugely commitment-phobic and just doesn’t see them as a married couple. Rumi wants to settle down for the sake of love and understands one cannot survive on love alone. That one needs to own up to responsibilities as well. Tired of his procrastination, she agrees to marry Robbie (Abhishek Bachchan), an NRI who knows of her past but thinks he can handle it. Taapsee lives and breathes the duality of Rumi’s character — someone who is brimming with no-holds-bar passion and wants the same thing in return but knows there is life beyond that as well and is struggling to strike a balance. She hits it off with both Vicky and Abhishek and finally when she does find closure, the joy reflected in her eyes is something you want to bottle and keep.
Soorma (2018)
Director: Shaad Ali
Cast: Diljit Dosanjh, Taapsee Pannu, Angad Bedi, Vijay Raaz, Satish Kaushik, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Storyline: Taapsee played Sandeep Singh’s girlfriend in the film. She’s also a sportswoman and hence becomes a great motivator for him. Watching her, one felt one was watching a real hockey player. Her interaction with Diljit Dosanjh was also refreshingly natural. Soorma is an inspirational film based on the life of former hockey player Sandeep Singh. He was a natural drag-flicker and holds the record for the fastest drag flick ever recorded. Fans started calling him Flicker Singh because of his achievements. In 2006 his promising career was cut short when a stray bullet hit him in the back while he was traveling in the Shatabdi Express. He was paralyzed from the waist downwards but after around a year of rehabilitation, came back to play hockey for India once more. India won the Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament under his captaincy in 2009. Soorma is based on his remarkable story. The film hinges on Diljit Dosanjh’s performance and he doesn’t disappoint. Whether it’s the hard knocks Sandeep gets while training or his anger and frustration at being paralyzed, everything is as it should be. The segments where he’s shown recuperating in Holland are as real as his antics on the field. You relate to Sandeep’s dreams and struggles and constantly root for him.
Badla (2019)
Director: Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Amrita Singh, Tony Luke, Manav Kaul
Storyline: The Invisible Guest (2017) was a critically acclaimed Spanish film that met with commercial success as well. Badla is an official remake of that and is quite faithful to the original plot. Though it does deviate in some details. Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) is a defense attorney who hasn’t lost a criminal case in his career spanning 40 years. He meets a new client Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu), who is accused of killing her lover, Tony Luke. He begins asking her pertinent questions, exposing a web of lies and half-truths. It isn’t clear what the actual truth is, each new revelation making the tale more dark and complex. Whether Naina will get justice and whether Badal will be able to rescue truth from the quicksand of deceit forms the crux of the film. Taapsee offers naiveté, vulnerability, and steely determination in different parts of the film. She brings forth different shades as the story unfolds. She finds a perfect partner in Amitabh Bachchan, taking her cues from the thespian and building on them.
Game Over (2019)
Director: Ashwin Saravanan
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Taapsee Pannu, Vinodhini Vaidyanathan, Anish Kuruvilla, Sanchana Natarajan
Storyline: Game Over is the Hindi dubbed version of the Telugu/ Tamil original going by the same name. Taapsee Pannu plays Swapna, a gaming designer based in Guru Gram, who has issues interacting with people and can only work from home. Besides that, she also has an irrational fear of the dark. She lives alone in a huge two-storeyed home with just her maid Kalama (Vinodhini Vaidyanathan) for company. Her day revolves around alternating between working on her computer and playing video games. She starts getting disturbing dreams after she gets her latest tattoo. The dreams get increasingly bizarre, leading her to injure herself. She starts hearing voices, then images of a young girl getting brutally killed by a home intruder. Things take a turn for the worse when she falls off the roof of her house, breaking both her legs. She then learns that her tattoo artist had used leftover ink from a previous client’s artwork. A distraught mother whose daughter was killed by an unknown assailant had requested the immersion of the daughter’s ashes in the ink. Swapna learns that her own life could be in danger. That she can be the next victim. And that the spirit of the dead girl is giving her warnings.
Saand Ki Aankh (2019)
Director: Tushar Hiranandani
Cast: Bhumi Pednekar, Taapsee Pannu, Prakash Jha, Vineet Kumar Singh
Storyline: Taapsee won everyone’s hearts playing a 60 plus woman who takes to the sport of pistol shooting and still manages to win medals even at her age. Saand Ki Aankh is a biopic on octogenarian sharpshooters Chandro Tomar (Bhumi Pednekar) and Prakash Tomar (Taapsee Pannu). The film teaches you that it’s possible to have new beginnings at any age if you have the will for it. Saand Ki Aankh is the story of the two grandmothers who went against the norms and helped others break them as well. Their accomplishments paved the way for women in and around Baghpat to take up the sport. Prakash’s daughter Seema is an internationally renowned Trap shooter. Chandra’s granddaughter Shefali also competes nationally and internationally at pistol events. While we speak of women breaking the glass ceiling and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the men, that’s true only for urban areas. Equality has still to see the light of the day for the vast majority of women in India. Despite the overwhelming opposition, they yet find a way to claim a little bit of sunlight for themselves. The sisterhood they feel towards each other more often than not becomes the greatest weapon in their fight and that’s what shines through in the film as well. Both Bhumi and Taapsee essayed their characters with conviction and won plaudits.
Thappad (2020)
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Ratna Pathak Shah, Kumud Mishra, Maya Sarao, Tanvi Azmi, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Manav Kaul
Storyline: Amrita (Taapsee Pannu) is seemingly happily married to Vikram (Pavail Gulati). You see her taking care of him from the first shot itself — she makes breakfast for him, files his important papers, gives him coffee to drink on the way and even brings him bed tea. She monitors her mother-in-law’s (Tanvi Azmi) sugar levels as well, making sure she takes her medicines on time. She’s the Adarsh bahu you can dream of. It all shatters one day when during a house party, frustrated by the hindrance put in the way of a lucrative London posting, he slaps his wife when she’s trying to stop him from getting physical with a senior. She begins to understand the cracks in her relationship and realizes she doesn’t love him anymore. The slap sort of triggers a journey of self-awareness, and she decides to divorce him and seek a separate existence.
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