Metro… In Dino is a poetic exploration of modern love, weaving six urban stories through seasons, cities, and souls—capturing heartbreak, hope, and human connection in bittersweet harmony. Arnab Banerjee reviews the film.

Metro… In Dino, directed by Anurag Basu, is a contemporary anthology film exploring love, heartbreak, and emotional resilience in India's bustling metropolises—Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Bangalore. Featuring standout performances by Aditya Roy Kapur, Sara Ali Khan, Konkona Sen Sharma, and Fatima Sana Shaikh, this spiritual successor to Life in a... Metro (2007) blends romance and realism with a powerful musical score by Pritam. With six interwoven narratives and lush cinematography, the film reflects on relationships across age, class, and circumstance, offering a soulful cinematic experience. Ideal for fans of emotional dramas and modern love stories. 

From Spring Flings to Winter Warmth: A Romance That Lasts  

Director: Anurag Basu

Cast: Anupam Kher (Parimal), Neena Gupta (Shibani), Konkona Sen Sharma (Kajol), Pankaj Tripathi (Monty), Aditya Roy Kapur (Parth), Sara Ali Khan (Chumki), Fatima Sana Shaikh (Shruti), Ali Fazal (Akash), Saswata Chatterjee, Rohan Gurbaxani, Kush Jotwani, Darshana Banik, Pranay Pachauri, with cameos by Anurag Basu and Imtiaz Ali

Cinematography: Abhishek Basu, Anurag Basu

Music: Pritam

Rating: 3 stars

In the ceaseless hum of city life, where buildings scrape the skies and dreams stretch further still, Anurag Basu returns to familiar terrain—with unfamiliar faces and untold tales. Metro… In Dino is less a sequel than a kindred spirit to Life in a... Metro (2007), that elegiac hymn to urban loneliness and love. Where the earlier film rode on the late Irrfan Khan’s quiet gravitas, this one blooms with a new ensemble of characters—a tapestry woven with fresh threads but dyed in the same bittersweet hues of metropolitan melancholy.

Love Across Cities and Seasons

If love is a constant, it is so not because of its predictability, but because it defies time, space, and season. That is the foundational pulse of Metro… In Dino: the unbelievable becomes believable, the mundane profound. Basu doesn’t just craft stories—he paints atmospheres, where cityscapes become emotional landscapes, and each window, each narrow alley, tells a tale of yearning.

This spiritual successor traces the contours of contemporary relationships—fractured, ephemeral, tender, and quietly devastating—against the backdrops of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Bangalore, cities not just as settings but as sentient beings. They breathe, they pulse, they ache along with the lovers they cradle.

Across 156 minutes, Basu orchestrates six intersecting stories, each revealing a different face of love: innocent and adulterated, budding and decaying, remembered and rediscovered. His characters are romantics, idealists, cynics, and survivors—all shaped by the cities they inhabit and the times they live in.

A Cast of Contrasts

There is Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur), a wandering, self-involved travel blogger for whom intimacy begins and ends in the bedroom. Opposite him is Chumki (Sara Ali Khan), an HR consultant with deep-rooted faith in the sanctity of marriage, navigating the baffling modern dating landscape. Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Monty (Pankaj Tripathi) appear the perfect couple—until one crack unmasks the façade. Shruti (Fatima Sana Shaikh), caught in the net of loyalty and longing, can’t sever ties with her struggling singer-boyfriend Akash (Ali Fazal), even as responsibility tugs her elsewhere. In the most poignant thread, Shibani (Neena Gupta), now in her twilight years, dares to dream again, rekindling love with her college sweetheart Parimal (Anupam Kher), affirming that no age is too late to begin anew.

Some of these characters are bound by blood, others by coincidence—but all are bound by the invisible thread of hope. Of course, that also means some narratives succeed while others fall short. As with any anthology, not every story lands with equal weight. Some arcs soar, while others meander. But that is part of the film’s charm: the unevenness mimics life itself.

The writers’ compulsion to tie up every situation, relationship, and storyline with a sense of finality often results in a forced climax—a denouement that tries too hard to resolve everything.

Strength in Performances

Were it not for the strong performances by actors like Konkona Sen Sharma (always competent), Sara Ali Khan (a pleasant surprise), Aditya Roy Kapur (rock solid), and Fatima Sana Shaikh (a revelation), several scenes might have fallen flat. Certain tropes, such as Neena Gupta’s character, feel shoehorned in for comic relief and come across more as an attempt to justify screen time for a veteran actor than as an organic part of the narrative. For instance, the subplot featuring Anupam Kher as a widower—whose daughter is burdened with caring for him while being discouraged from pursuing a meaningful connection with her late husband’s friend—lacks emotional credibility and nuance. Kher’s would-be rekindling with Gupta feels undercooked—it never really glows.

Ali Fazal, now firmly established as the baddie everyone loves to hate thanks to his breakout role in Mirzapur, struggles to stay afloat in a part that demands a tricky balance—light-hearted banter on one side and angst-ridden discomfort on the other.

True to Basu’s style, the film opens in a splash of chaos and colour—Holi, that festival of joyous disarray. It is a perfect metaphor for the characters: vibrant, messy, unpredictable, yet profoundly human. The camera, shared between Abhishek Basu and Anurag himself, glides through cafés, apartments, flyovers, and crowded gullies—capturing not just moments but moods. The cities gleam and groan, becoming both backdrop and character.

The Soundtrack: An Emotional Backbone

And then, there is the music—oh, the music!

Pritam, in symphony with voices like Arijit Singh, Papon, Raghav Chaitanya, and Vishal Mishra, crafts not just a soundtrack but an emotional undercurrent.

These songs are not just interludes; they are emotional soliloquies.

• "Zamaana Lage" (Qaisar Ul Jafri, Sandeep Shrivastava) thrums with Arijit Singh’s velvet voice, capturing the confusion of love in modern times.
• "Dil Ka Kya" (Anurag Sharma), with Raghav Chaitanya’s wistful timbre, lingers like an echo in a lonely room.
• "Mann Ye Mera" (Neelesh Mishra), performed by Vishal Mishra, sings of aching hearts and unresolved desires.
• "Aur Mohabbat Kitni Karoon", again voiced by Arijit, soars like a lament.
• "Yaad", a haunting ode built on Momin Khan Momin’s poetry and sung soulfully by Papon, stops the world briefly.
• And "Mausam"—rendered by Arijit Singh and written by Qaisar-Ul-Jafri and Sandeep Shrivastava—is a melancholic monsoon that drenches the film’s emotional core.

Each song functions as a sigh, a whisper, or a wound—enriching every scene it touches. What holds the musical back is the way it crams in so many songs—they often feel more like interruptions than natural extensions of the story.

A Quiet Celebration of Love

Ultimately, Metro… In Dino is less about plot and more about pulse—the pulse of cities, of love, of ordinary people daring to love extraordinarily. It does not scream for attention, but lingers like a familiar fragrance—faint, yet unforgettable. It is a gentle reminder that amidst the chaos of urban life, amid the horns, high-rises, heartbreaks, and hurried mornings—love still survives.

In silences, in gestures, in glances.

And always, in the in-betweens.