Costao
Steaming on ZEE5
Rating – **1/2 (2.5/5)
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priya Bapat, Kishore Kumar G. & more
Directed by: Sejal Shah
It remains endlessly fascinating to chart the evolution of Nawazuddin Siddiqui — from being a blink-and-miss presence on the sidelines of big-ticket films to carving notable spaces within them, to breaking out as a name to reckon with, and finally to leading from the front. Some actors live charmed lives where bad performances are a rare blip, and Siddiqui largely fits that elusive bracket, barring a stray few. Lately, however, his off-screen entanglements — controversial interviews and turbulent personal life sagas — have made more headlines than his cinematic work. Yet, even amid the cacophony, his raw, unshakeable talent has never truly been up for debate.
This preamble is necessary because Siddiqui is back, this time with another release — the biopic Costao on ZEE5.
In Costao, Siddiqui steps into the shoes of Costao Fernandes, a no-nonsense customs officer whose professional rigor was second to none but whose personal life bore the bruises of that single-mindedness. One case, one turning point, alters Costao’s life on every front, and as viewers, we are left piecing together what fate ultimately befalls this man.
Despite a handful of impactful scenes where he flickers into his element, Nawazuddin Siddiqui never fully embodies Costao’s formidable aura the way you expect.
Biopics, on paper, always seem like foolproof ideas. The allure of dramatizing a real-life odyssey sounds irresistible. But in reality, it’s the sheer scale of human endurance that often moves us, not just the bullet points of their CV. Hindi cinema, alas, has struggled to master this genre — usually sugarcoating it to Disney-fication or cramming it with endless milestones in a rush to tick boxes. ZEE5’s Costao sadly falls into the latter trap.
The film unfolds chronologically, dutifully chronicling milestones in Fernandes’ life but treating them more like bullet points on a presentation deck than visceral moments of lived experience. Ironically, Siddiqui — an actor celebrated for conveying oceans of emotion with the slightest glance — struggles here to tap into the raw nerve that this role demands. Despite a handful of impactful scenes where he flickers into his element, Siddiqui never fully embodies Costao’s formidable aura the way you expect.
There’s a charged confrontation scene between Costao and his wife Maria (played superbly by Priya Bapat) that should have been home turf for Siddiqui. Yet, curiously, he flounders — unable to match the simmering energy that Bapat brings to the frame. While not meant to be a performance joust, it inadvertently becomes one, simply because one actor commands the space with more potency than the other.
Priya Bapat, in particular, breathes gravitas into the role of a wife battling on all fronts, refusing to be reduced to a trope, embodying the lonely resilience of a woman whose husband is present in body but absent in spirit.
Director Sejal Shah, alongside writers Bhavesh Mandalia and Meghna Srivastava, makes an intriguing choice by positioning Costao’s young daughter Marisa (Asmi Deo) as the story’s narrator. It lends the film a childlike emotional filter — raw, pure, vulnerable. But despite this clever framing, the narrative rarely leans into its potential, surfacing only intermittently to nudge major moments, but otherwise abandoning the rich emotional fabric it could have weaved.
Still, a big round of applause is due where it counts. In a genre that often sidelines wives and children as mere narrative furniture, Costao rightly accords Maria and her children significant emotional weight. Priya Bapat, in particular, breathes gravitas into the role of a wife battling on all fronts, refusing to be reduced to a trope, embodying the lonely resilience of a woman whose husband is present in body but absent in spirit.
Siddiqui, too, manages to inject some of his signature humor into a handful of moments — a reminder of his effortless comic timing that deserves wider exploration elsewhere, though perhaps not quite in this brooding tale. Despite the hiccups, it’s not that Siddiqui drops the ball completely — far from it. He still flashes glimpses of brilliance, reaffirming why he remains one of the sharpest tools in the industry’s acting arsenal.
Costao could — and should — have been an extraordinary excavation of an unsung life, precisely because its story lacks the traditional glamour or obvious dramatic hooks biopics often latch onto. A life shaped by a few critical turns, told with minimal bells and whistles. Yet, despite the makers’ honesty and good intentions, the film stumbles in dramatizing its emotional stakes, leaving Costao feeling like a noble half-measure: earnest, but frustratingly
