‘Tere Ishk Mein’ review: Tamil star Dhanush stars in glossy, engaging Bollywood love story

Dir: Aanand L Rai. India. 2025. 150mins

Mixing a little Romeo and Juliet, a little My Fair Lady, a dash of regional geopolitically driven action and a lot of tumbling AR Rahman percussion, Aanand L Rai’s Tere Ishk Mein – a spiritual sequel to Rai’s Raanjhanaa which also stars returning Tamil superstar Dhanush – weaves a tragic romance loaded with misunderstandings and obsession between two oddly unlikeable lovers.

The comforting and familiar storytelling should draw the crowds

When a hotshot air force pilot and a defence department therapist are thrown together years after a complex university relationship comes to a fiery end, no less than India’s national security and an unborn child’s future are at stake. In other words, just a regular Bollywood love story, one that is buoyed by engaging performances and a glossy finish.

Getting its gala world premiere at Goa alongside a day and date rollout in various territories including India, UK, US and Australia, Tere Ishk Mein is poised for a big opening at home, with ticket pre-sales projecting up to US$1.7m; one of the stronger openings for local cinema in India in 2025. That bodes well for the international overseas markets, too, and the comforting and familiar storytelling, together with the popularity of leads Dhanush and Kirti Sanon, should draw the crowds – although the general romantic drama tone might keep it from attaining the kind of word-of-mouth enthusiasm that powered SS Rajamouli’s RRR and Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Coolie to success in recent years. Netflix is already credited as a streaming partner.

Tere Ishk Mein starts in India’s mountainous Ladakh region, where simmering border tensions with Pakistan and China are always threatening to boil over. Indian Air Force pilot Shankar (Dhanush, Atrangi Re) has a run-in with a Chinese plane of unidentified purposes over questionably international airspace. After a game of airborne chicken, the Chinese fly away and Shankar is grounded for insubordination.

Knowing Shankar is his best pilot, his commander Shekharat (Vineet Kumar Singh) calls in a military psychologist to clear him for duty. That’s Mukti (Sanon, fast rising star of Laxman Utekar’s Mimi), whose name literally means ‘salvation,’ and who’s shocked to discover she and her new client have a long, complicated history. Professional ethics should dictate she recuse herself from the case but this is a Bollywood romance, so off she goes to Ladakh to counsel the pilot she’s told is “outstanding, outrageous and out of hand.”

In classic Bollywood fashion that’s the start of a long, winding melodrama in which love is hampered by class and mistaken for ambition; romantic rivals and demanding families make their presence known; characters spiral into violence and addiction; rejection is mistaken for betrayal; and forgiveness is hard to find. It’s all captured by cinematographers Tushar Kanti Ray and Vishal Sinha on a bright, sunny palette that showcases Delhi at its most beautiful and vibrant.

There’s not much in Tere Ishk Mein’s narrative that hasn’t been done before, and as is the traditionally the case, it lives or dies by the strength and appeal of its central characters and actors. Rai’s doomed lovers are more flawed than awful, a refreshing perspective for Bollywood heroes. Dhanush unsurprisingly makes the most of Shankar’s rakish charm, least until his fragile emotions start to take over. Sanon has the more difficult job of balancing ambition and agency in a character that’s typically supposed to be unfailingly supportive of her man. Rai and co-writers Himanshu Sharma and Neeraj Yadav deserve credit for making Mukti as nuanced as she is, even if she ultimately slips into a traditional role.

What at first appears to be mixed messaging turns out to be Rai playing with Bollywood expectations, and incorporating the impact of childhood traumas and the human need to mitigate pain. Small psychological details fill in the blanks and recontextualise motivations as the story goes on, even as it cleaves close to Bollywood tragedy convention. The legendary composer Rahman (Dil Se, Lagaan, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire) doesn’t reach the delirious musical heights of “Chaiyya Chaiyya” but he comes close on “Araaro” and the rest of the score is suitably foot-tapping.