Detective Sherdil (2025) Movie Review & Ending Explained: Who’s the real killer of Pankaj Bhatti?

Ravi Chhabriya’s Detective Sherdil (2025) is a straight-up disaster from the get go. There’s nothing redeeming about it, be it a spectacularly demented plot, a sleuth who just miraculously unlocks a mystery, the embarrassingly tawdry music and editing compete to rattle your patience and nerves. Among an ensemble stacked with respectable, fine actors like Ratna Pathak Shah, Boman Irani, you wonder how they could even be compelled to go through the grind of this blatantly silly film. Diljit Dosanjh gets a flashy introduction, overselling his sleuth’s skills, which is an instant recipe for disaster.

Detective Sherdil (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

Detective Sherdil (Diljit Dosanjh) is a sleuth of great self-possession. When the film opens, he compares himself to the greats, like Sherlock Holmes and Byomkesh, and adds that he does something which neither had ever done. He makes reels after cracking a case. The film has this jocular spirit but the humour is so juvenile, wilfully asinine, there’s little rescuing it or investing it with any intelligence. That it’s a trainwreck is written from this almost arrogant, showy opening.

The screenplay, which the director penned with Sagar Bajaj and Ali Abbas Zafar, has the kind of impetuousness that doesn’t bode well for any film. The frantic editing gives a headache as does the darting between places. Where’s the compulsion a mystery generates? The quest to track down the killer(s) isn’t mined effectively here. Sherdil is on a vacation when he’s handed another assignment. A telecom magnate, Pankaj Bhatti (Boman Irani), is murdered in his car on a desolate patch by a bike-born individual.

Sherdil meets Bhatti’s family, who have been recently rattled by his revised will that passed on the bulk of his estate to his daughter’s boyfriend, Purvak (Arjun Talwar). The family, seething at being passed over, casts their blame on Purvak. Bhatti’s snooty wife, Rajeshwari (Ratna Pathak Shah) and son, Angad (Sumeet Vyas) are all furious at him for being left out of his will. Rajeshwari and Pankaj’s marriage had soured. Bhatti’s mute and deaf daughter, Shanti, is said to be his favourite in the family. The father couldn’t tolerate his son for the latter is a spendthrift.

Bhatti’s driver, Jaipal, is missing since the murder, pinning him as a suspect. Bhatti had given away ten percent to his brother-in-law, Bodhi. It’s the latter who confides in Sherdil that he did see something peculiar. There is also Jaipal, whom Sherdil tracks down and who helped Purvak frequently change houses. Purvak ends up confessing to Sherdil he’s behind the murders. But the detective still has his doubts. He believes Purvak is taking the blame for coercion.

Sherdil connects dots, the mechanics of which are often and wilfully kept out of view. He discovers Bhatti was suffering from cancer and routing money to a Budapest hospital for his treatment. Bodhi insists Bhatti had been disillusioned with money and fortune and saw his family as sharks. He turned to philanthropy. When he announced his will, it was Shanti who lashed out in its aftermath. She hatched the plot to kill Bhatti and make someone else a scapegoat.

Detective Sherdil (2025) Movie Ending Explained:

Who’s the real killer of Pankaj Bhatti?

She was discussing the plan when the househelp, Falak, stepped in. The latter began demanding blackmail money. Shanti took on Purvak as her boyfriend on the ultimate plan of scapegoating him. Bhatti resented him initially. However, with time, Bhatti softened towards him. Purvak, compassionate and tender, confesses to Bhatti the family’s plan of killing him. Bhatti confronts his family and it’s his beloved daughter who shoots him dead. Sherdil deduces from the dried blood on the painting in the room that the murder was committed there, not in the car where his body was just dumped later on. The family then coerced Purvak to take all the blame. Falak drugs his sister, whom he had illegally brought into Budapest, at her place. This is why he couldn’t protest, helpless as he was. The family hired Luca as the assassin and designed the fake crime scene on the road. Hence, Sherdil has the entire family and Falak taken away to serve jail time. Purvak is let go of. The film ends with Sherdil taking off for another investigation.

Detective Sherdil (2025) Movie Review:

A solid murder mystery yarn works when there’s not just a charismatic sleuth unravelling but also a group of unreliable suspects, each of whom keeps you guessing their motivations. The revelations, the gradual unmasking accrues thrill and satisfaction only with an interlocking of the varied missing pieces. There must be sound logic, testy characters orchestrating a drama sweeping from suspicion to spite. Though the sleuth will prevail, it can’t all look so easy and cut-and-dried for him to lay it all out for you. Where are the stakes in Detective Sherdil?

Sherdil’s complacency in his skills quickly becomes a contrivance. Yes, he can be shrewd and perceptive but the film gives him too much leeway, superhuman ability to gauge through everything. Such a tendency makes a murder mystery instantly joyless, not letting the sleuth earn your trust gradually. Rather, it’s a dump of information which has barely any set-up. This diminishes the payoff of a mystery, cutting down on a complex network of alibis and inclinations. None of these, however, seem to have factored into the lazy, mostly non-functional screenplay. There are just snatches of scenes, the film hurtling without taking stock. The mystery becomes duller and implausible.

This is a mystery that stretches belief and credulity. To exacerbate matters further, the film is a complete dud, blending delirium with heightened purposelessness. It leaps from point A to point B without a thread of coherence or seamless development. The makers critically misread the genre itself. The sleuth should command the scene but not entirely hog the dispensation of revelations. Other characters must get a shot at flashing their own depth and add intrigue. Instead the film relies on the detective playing on his harmonica whenever he’s figured out something. This gets grating quickly. There’s no quirk or suspense drumming the plot further along the way.