Director – Anurag Basu
Writers – Anurag Basu, Sandeep Shrivastava, Samrat Chakravarthy
Cast – Aditya Roy Kapur, Pankaj Tripathi, Konkona Sensharma, Neena Gupta, Ali Fazal, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Anupam Kher, Saswata Chatterjee, Sara Ali Khan
Duration – 159 minutes

Anurag Basu returns with Metro In Dino, a deeply felt, modern-day emotional tapestry that once again explores the heartbreak, hesitation, and hope that flicker beneath the noise of the city. Like its spiritual predecessor Life in a… Metro, this one is all about the whispers between the chaos — the pauses, the long glances, and the unspoken words, but only thing wrong with movie is Sara Ali Khan, who is dragging the movie down. 

A perfectly balanced and well-crafted movie, but Sara Ali Khan is like a sore thumb, you just cannot hide, this makes her seventh film where she lands everything wrong, Kicking off with Gaslight, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, Murder Mubarak, Ae Watan Mere Watan, Sky Force and now Mero, same dull old routine of being starlet but fails as an actor. 

Sara Ali Khan’s performance unfortunately sticks out — and not for the right reasons. Playing Chumki, a troubled young woman grappling with past heartbreak, Sara appears disengaged and miscast. Her line delivery lacks conviction, and there’s a flatness to her portrayal that fails to match the emotional richness around her. She seems to rely on stylised stillness rather than actual stillness, and it comes off as lifeless instead of nuanced. The attempt to present her as “raw” is undone by how calculated and surface-level her performance feels.

To make matters worse, her wig is glaringly ill-fitted and distractingly obvious, which only emphasizes the lack of cohesion in her character’s look and energy. In a film that feels so grounded and intimate, the artificiality of her appearance — and the strained effort to make her look “undone” — works against the authenticity Basu builds elsewhere. It’s unfortunate, especially when her co-star Aditya Roy Kapur brings such restrained warmth and believability to his role.

Set against the familiar hum of urban alienation, Metro… In Dino weaves together several intersecting stories with a poetic eye and a generous heart. The standout segments include Pankaj Tripathi and Konkona Sensharma as a couple locked in the inertia of a faded marriage, and Neena Gupta as a woman who masks years of emotional neglect with humour and charm. Fatima Sana Shaikh and Ali Fazal bring both pain and poignancy to a long-distance marriage fraying at the seams. Each of these threads feels authentic and quietly powerful — never forced, always rooted in truth.

The crown jewel here, though, is once again the music. Pritam’s score—featuring vocals from Papon and Raghav Chaitanya—doesn’t merely support the narrative; it breathes life into it. The songs feel like inner monologues, flowing effortlessly into scenes and lifting emotions in ways dialogue sometimes can’t. Basu and Pritam continue to make magic together, turning the film into a melodic meditation on love and loneliness.

Visually, the film is crafted with elegance. Basu’s signature lyricism is in full form — he allows stillness to speak, lets moments sit, and trusts the audience to feel. There's a confidence in the storytelling that doesn't chase after melodrama or easy resolutions. Instead, it gently invites you to reflect.

In the end, Metro… In Dino is still a triumph — a soft-spoken, sincere film that reminds us how fragile and beautiful human connections can be. It’s a film that doesn’t demand your attention with spectacle but earns it through emotion and empathy. If only every character had been handled with the same care. Sara Ali Khan’s misstep doesn’t ruin the film — but it does leave a visible crack in an otherwise beautifully painted mural.