‘The Miranda Brothers’ Review: Goa, Football and (Filmmaking) Crimes

Director: Sanjay Gupta
Writers: Sanjay Gupta, Sameer Hafiz, Milap Zaveri
Cast: Harshvardhan Rane, Meezaan Jafri, Sanjay Suri, Manasi Joshi Roy
Streaming on: JioCinema
Language: Hindi

Sanjay Gupta’s The Miranda Brothers revolves around two hunky brothers named Julio (Harshvardhan Rane) and Regalo Miranda (Meezaan Jafri), rising football stars in a Josh-coded Goa where orphaned babies are picked up from garbage dumps outside churches; arrogant cricketers cackle and say: “Cricket has two C’s: Cash and Chicks”; football scouts exclaim: “if we select both brothers, it’s like an earthquake and typhoon becoming one!”; bronze-bodied dance tracks called “Be My Mehbooba” pop up on a beach; and mourners at a funeral walk together in slow-motion as if they’re teleported to Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante (2002) instead.

Older bro Julio has anger issues and works for the local drug leader named Morocho (not Morocco, mind you). Regalo likes a girl named Soul, detests her abusive boyfriend, kisses her once, and then most seriously asks if he is the father when she says she’s pregnant. There’s also Julio and Regalo’s mother, Susan (Manasi Joshi Roy), who feeds her sons chorizo pao after matches, and says deep school-level thoughts like “In the end, we all become stories; we should make them memorable!” so that we know she’s going to die. Susan is a generic activist, so after she is run over by a mysterious car in front of that same church (while Regalo is trying to get his sneakers down from a wire — don’t ask), the sons react differently. Regalo wants to crack the Goa Football League (GFL) tryouts, but Julio wants cold-blooded revenge at any cost. Somehow — and I’m almost impressed with how ridiculously the film does this — a local football final will decide the fate of both brothers. The stakes: Coach Carter (Sanjay Suri, of course) promises to tell Julio who killed his mother, while Regalo is told by the GFL boss that both brothers will get contracts only if they win the final. I know, right?

What you see above may read as a plot summary of The Miranda Brothers. But the film kind of reviews itself by existing. At one point, a news anchor interviews Susan during a protest, turns to the camera and almost sighs before signing off with: “This government needs to answer her questions.” Julio also has a girlfriend named Isabella, but she’s only there for the songs. The climax is so bereft of craft and detailing that you can literally see fans in the stadium chatting with each other when a broad-daylight murder happens on the football pitch. The football itself is staged and choreographed like the violence in Sanjay Gupta’s Shootout at Wadala (2013). That is neither a metaphor, nor a compliment.

I could also swear that Julio, like any self-respecting older sibling, claims that he wanted a pet when they found baby Regalo in the trash. Only this time, he isn’t joking; Regalo is genuinely adopted like that in a sepia-tinted flashback. The kid sings and dances for a living, because a club owner whose voice is badly dubbed hands him a wad of notes in a scene that looks like a South Park-style spoof of the film. When the scout declares that they are looking for the next Ronaldo, Regalo proceeds to assault the rival goalkeeper in the end. He scores some goals, too, but when his mother indulges in wordplay like “You play football to score goals, no? You should achieve your goals through football”, you know it’s over for everyone. In short, The Miranda Brothers belongs in an archeological museum. Everything about it is a relic from a bygone era. Dig any deeper and you’ll find a dinosaur who left its brains at home.