May 2, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Sailesh Kolanu
Telugu with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “HIT: The Third Case” (the third movie in the “HIT” series) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A vigilante police detective discovers a cult of serial killers, goes undercover to infiltrate the group, and becomes a murderer on a killing spree.
Culture Audience: “HIT: The Third Case” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and the “HIT” series, but this movie abandons the intriguing detective drama concept and makes it an unimaginative and gory massacre movie.
“HIT: The Third Case” ruins this movie franchise’s original intent of being a compelling story series about police solving murder mysteries. Instead, this “HIT” movie is a bloated action schlockfest of excessive violence that glorifies police brutality. It just another trashy movie that panders to the lowest common demoninator by copying too many other action movie abominations that have terrible screenplays and exploitative violence and are churned out on a regular basis.
The “HIT” series began with 2020’s “HIT: The First Case” (which had a 2022 Hindi-langauge remake also titled “HIT: The First Case”) and continued with 2023’s “HIT: The 2nd Case.” Each movie features a different police detective as the movie’s protagonist. All the “HIT” movies so far have been written and directed by Sailesh Kolanu, which is why it’s so disappointing that “HIT: The Third Case” (the third move in the series) has taken such a tacky and lazy turn for the worse. The only apparent explanation is that Kolanu and the movie’s other filmmakers thought they would make more money with a mindless and gruesomely violent action flick instead of a thought-provoking and intelligent police detective drama.
In “HIT: The Third Case,” Arjun Sarkaar (played by Nani) is a superintendent of police for the Indian Police Service’s Homicide Intervention Team (HIT) in Visakhapatnam, India. Arjun is an angry and corrupt official who frequently commits police brutality. As shown in the movie, he doesn’t hesitate to break bones and beat up people whom he interrogates in custody or whom he catches in the act of committing crimes. He sometimes does this illegal police brutality in front of his colleagues, who do little or nothing to stop him.
Arjun is in therapy for his anger management problems, and he has trouble sleeping. But this therapy is clearly not working. When Arjun is shown in a therapy session, all he seems to care about is getting a higher dosage for his prescription medication. “HIT: The Third Case” is such a shallow film, there is no explanation for why Arjun is the way that he is, but his aggressive style of policing has apparently gotten a lot of people arrested.
“HIT: The Third Case” tries to have some comedy relief early on in the movie, when Arjun’s unnamed widower father (played by Samuthirakani) plays matchmaker for bachelor Arjun by signing up Arjun on a dating app without Arjun’s consent. It leads to a montage of Arjun going on numerous disasatrous dates that always end abruptly because Arjun scares or turns off the women by interrogating them like a harsh police officer. The women on these dates make excuses to use the restroom and they never come back.
Arjun is extremely judgmental, emotionally immature, and socially backwards in his thinking. However, Arjun seems to get lucky when he meets Mridula (played by Srinidhi Shetty) through the dating app where Arjun’s father created a profile for Arjun. When Arju and Mridula go on their first date, she says she admires his blunt honesty. They begin dating and fall in love with each other. Mridula has a secret that is revealed later in the movie.
Arjun is investigating a series of murders where corpses are found hanging upside down from trees in isolated wooded areas. The dead people’s throats have been slashed. It’s eventually discovered that the murderers are members of a serial killer cult named CTK (an acronym for Capture Torture Kiil), which is operating on the Dark Web. In order to join the CTK cult, prospective members have to kill at least two people in this way and video record these murders.
Arjun infiltrates the CTK cult by going undercover as a prospective member. His murder victims are criminals, whom he thinks all deserve to be killed. A huge plot hole in the movie is that Arjun is supposed to be a famous police detective (famous enough for strangers to know who he is when he’s out in public), and yet CTK’s leaders—two sadists named Samuel Joseph (played by Ravindra Vijay) and Alpha (played by Prateik Babbar)—don’t even recognize Arjun when he joins the cult. Arjun makes no effort to disguise himself.
Supporting characters in “HIT: The Third Case” are one-dimensional and have very hollow personalities. Three of these generic characters are Arjun’s HIT colleagues: director of general police Nageswara Rao (played by Rao Ramesh); assistant superintendant of police Varsh (played by Komalee Prasad); and sub-inspector Diwakar (played by Chaithu Jonnalagadda), who don’t do much in the story except enable and cater to Arjun’s nasty temper and out-of-control antics. None of the acting is impressive in this junkpile movie.
“HIT: The Third Case” (which has an overly long running time of 157 minutes) just becomes a mind-numbing, obnoxiously loud and terrible mess of heinous violence where the “hero” is no better than the villains. In fact, the “hero” murders and attacks more people than any other murderer and attacker in the movie. The action scenes also look ridiculous. Don’t expect a real detective mystery in “HIT: The Third Case.” This horrible movie is just an excuse to show vile and disgusting assaults and murders, with a meaningless story and a very warped portrayal of law enforcement and justice.
Wall Poster Cinema released “HIT: The Third Case” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on May 1, 2025.
