Joddha: The Warrior of Life (2025) Movie Review: Neither Action-Packed nor Entertaining 

“Joddha: The Warrior of Life” (2025) positions itself as a grand rags-to-riches story of grit and personal triumph, but without any significant thematic maturity to support its storytelling. It is a story about finding strength within one’s own self when the world offers none, but told in a manner that makes the overall theme childishly insignificant in the broader format of storytelling. “Joddha” opens with a loud and dramatic setting – of a stormy night where a family is deserted by its patriarch. We don’t know why. Soon, they are also disowned by his side of the family. 

And now, without bestowing much context about the tragedy that just unfolded, the film rushes to focus on the helplessness of the family, which consists of the mother and the three children. In the first few minutes, the mother’s (Mala Goswami) suffering is portrayed. She does odd jobs in and around the locality to support the education of the children. Later on, the story shifts to the perspective of the elder son and his struggles as his motivations are hyper-developed to extreme levels, so as to capture the pain and the struggle of the family.

For example, as an innocent school-going boy, he faces constant bullying just because his mother works as a domestic helper. Later on, he also drops out of school and takes charge of looking after a neighborhood school-going girl and her needs to contribute to the family’s earnings and support his mother. But the staging of the entire set of events is so overdramatic, and it happens too quickly, as it is rushed through montages and flashbacks, that it brings in no ultimate effect.

He also braves off an illegal enforcer who threatens his mother for being unable to repay her loans. So, you can see that the stakes exist and are very intense as well, but the problem is that they are artificially manufactured and captured in a state of harsh emotional hollowness. This harshness makes the pacing of the film rough. The treatment is melodramatic, the acting is forced, and so is the feeling.

As the child grows up, he (Rajkumar Talukdar) starts doing small jobs to support the family, like working in a nearby petrol pump. During this time, his honesty and dedication grab the attention of a local gangster-cum-contractor, who takes him under his wing. Under his mentorship, the boy quickly rises to new heights. However, when a criminal case is filed against his mentor, the godfather is forced to flee the country (only to return towards the climax of the movie). So, just like the family background and the dynamics at the beginning of the movie, the narrative abandons that mentor-protégé plotline as well.

After that, the story shifts to a romantic subplot, and just like the protagonist, the film too loses its focus on the story that it wants to tell. The romantic angle carries the same old binary as that of old Hindi films, like the loyal childhood friend on one side and the deceitful femme fatale on the other. The female characters are played by Alishmita Goswami and Kajal Sharma, respectively. Obviously, after being deceived in love, the protagonist turns to his childhood sweetheart, whom he had long ignored, and without asking for any justification, she accepts him, having been in love with him all along. The female characters in the film, right from the mother to the lover, serve merely as catalysts in a man’s tale of struggle, change, and redemption. But maybe genuine love is above all notions of gender and politics.

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The redemption arc and the rise of the protagonist to his extreme career success are shown as a battle between the core values of truth and lies, and between honesty and deceit. But the most glaring narrative lapse lies in the very ethical compass that the film thinks it supports. In an already confused moral universe, the protagonist’s ‘path of truth and success’ here involves sharing a percentage with the concerned minister to secure government contracts. It is only thereafter that he finds success. So, are the writers of the film bowing down to the corrupt machinery of the state administration here?

This wild act that goes against the ideals of a story that focuses on truth, hard work, and honesty is done so that the hero can win against the antagonist. So, a wrong is met with a wrong to conquer another wrong. The antagonist is played by actor Sunit Bora, and regrettably, his role functions more like a caricature of some villain from the nineties than as a powerful or threatening one. The villainy is also so done to death that it deducts a few impression points from the film.

Apart from these confusions, there are two special songs in the film featuring each of the love interests of the protagonist, which are shot in Rajasthan and Goa. And although the songs are easy to forget, it does give the audience a refreshing look as opposed to the film’s otherwise dull visuals. Singer and actor Zubeen Garg drops in for a cameo performance in one of the songs, but it still contributes little to elevate the film.

Therefore, to conclude, “Joddha – The Warrior of Life” suffers not from a lack of ambition, but from an absence of clarity – of thought, of purpose, and of execution. It draws from a familiar well of literary tropes, such as the rich versus the impoverished, betrayal in love, and overcoming in life, but reproduces them without any sustainable creativity or innovation. “Joddha – The Warrior of Life” goes down due to its outdated storytelling, clichéd plot points, weak villain, and a forced tear-jerker climax that has zero impact.

While the posters and publicity material suggest that “Joddha – The Warrior of Life” is a high-octane action entertainer, the film fails to meet even the lowest of those expectations. It is neither an action film nor an entertaining one in any sense. In the entire film, there is only one decent action sequence, and that too comes only when the climax approaches.

“Joddha – The Warrior of Life” is directed by Bhaskar Jyoti Goswami and produced by Parimal Biswas and Rima Biswas. Released on 22nd August, 2025, alongside Himjyoti Talukdar’s “Taarikh,” the film struggled to survive beyond a week in the theatres of Assam.

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Joddha: The Warrior of Life (2025) Movie Link: IMDb