‘Kennedy’ Has Style, Substance, and Ghosts

Like any great magical realism story, from Borges to Marquez, the film begins where it ends. In Kennedy (2023), which Anurag Kashyap wrote and directed, we meet a crooked cop who is technically dead on paper, but very much alive in reality. Haunted by the ghosts of everyone he’s killed, and also the victim of his own choices, Kennedy is the alias of Uday Shetty, who once joined the police force to combat corruption yet got consumed within the system — so much so that he enjoys seeing people’s eyes as they die in front of him. But now, he is the tool of police chief Rasheed Khan, who can direct him to kill anyone. After all, Rasheed Khan has promised to deliver him Saleem, an underworld don-like figure who has wronged Kennedy greatly. We’ll just have to wait till the end to find out why.

Kashyap filmed the movie during COVID-era lockdowns. They lend a certain cinéma vérité to the desired noir look of the film: urban areas look abandoned, people look panicked and sleepless. Though it premiered at Cannes in 2023 and received a standing ovation of seven minutes, the film has been in a purgatory of sorts. It never reached theaters or streaming platforms. Finally, at the end of 2025, it made it to Letterboxd streaming. Here’s why it’s definitely worth the wait.