Indian Police Force Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Police work, espionage, surveillance, etc ko uske sabse dull form mein dekhne karne ki agar kaafi specific/weird requirement hai aapki, and if Mission Majnu was not nearly enough to scratch that itch,
Look no further than Indian Police Force.
Aao let’s take a quick look at the latest Rohit Shetty presentation, Indian Police Force, now streaming on Prime Video.
Celebrating authority is one of mainstream Hindi cinema’s favorite thing to do right now. And I know we’re talking about a prime video series here, but because the show for all intents and purposes is Bollywood-coded chicanery extended over 7 seemingly un-ending episodes, this review shall also treat it as such.
Indian Police Force the show, shows you two kinds of Muslims. The terrorist and the police officer. It’s broad, basic, beaten to death. Policeman Kabir Malik follows Islam, but isn’t shown practicing it. You don’t see him wear a namaz cap, kajal, or use words like janaab, salaam-alaikum, or mashallah. I only mention his religious identity here because the character draws your attention to it multiple times. Others hold him in high regard for being a shining example of Muslim-ness, once even by a woman married to the terrorist. The show can’t stress enough how much of a hero Kabir Malik is.
On the other side is Haider/Zarrar, a young man from Kanpur, who is also from the same religion, except his beliefs are shown visually. He goes to a madarsa, sell itar, invokes Eid and aabo-hawaa in the very first sequence, and even get a wedding sequence, so the words “qabool hai” can be uttered.
Haider has been radicalized, and in order to take intekaam from India, because a mob set fire to his father’s factory in childhood, its never very clear who those people were…..he joins the Indian mujahideen. He then Aids and abets blasts across the country. only Kabir Malik stands in his way to total global annihilation.
Indian police force is not a show that bothers with subtilities, or nuance, and hence their take of this chor-police story as old as time has little freshness on offer. You’re always a few steps ahead of the action, although given I couldn’t have predicted that if one simply rams their car through the gates at the India-Bangladesh border to get back to the country, the 100s of armed Bangladeshi army personnel, will only point their guns at you, looking on as you complete you task. Aside from that, the hero entry shots, in slow motion after a bomb has gone off and people lay dead or dying, but Kabir takes is glasses off in style, is pretty much on brand. This slow-mo sequence in the very first episode is enough to tell you what the remaining 6.5 are going to be like — only concerned with the image of the Delhi Police as superhero saviors. They’re fit, fab, and fly in their gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. It’s almost jarring to hear Kabir complain about Delhi’s pollution and traffic in one scene, I wasn’t anticipating the show to suddenly start spitting facts!
The 7-episode paean to Delhi police is dead on arrival, and stood no chance to be a successful white-washing exercise. Not a single trope in Screenplay and Script for Dummies is missing, Chat GPT could have written the episodes, for all you know. There is a deceased wife, a deceased cop’s widow waiting for revenge, many shootouts in many public places, a young vulnerable pregnant lady, and a high-ranking minister who first poo-poos the covert mission this sarphira policeman wants to carry out behind enemy lines, but by the end of the meeting is all “go get the bastards”, and more such platitudes all thrown into a blender along with more bad ideas.
The lone female police officer obviously has no time to have a family and a career. But hey, she gets to run around wearing sneakers and not made to strut her stuff in high heels, so there is a small victory for women there!
To hide the boring-ness in the boring plot points, each scene is embellished beyond recognition with deliberately shaky camera work and deafening underlay music, which includes but is not limited to using the siren sounds from a police jeep set to a jaunty uplifting music, used in action sequences as a battle beat. The only word in the opening credit song sequence is Jai Hind repeated over and over again, as visuals of Delhi float around your screen with giant assault guns replacing public infrastructure like….bridges. Don’t worry about the road, we will shoot people for you.
The baseline for our relationship with all the characters is assumed here –cop ever is the good guy, do not question. Let them pick up men without a warrant and kick them around, put guns to their heads in empty rooms, because laato ke bhoot baato se nahi maante, toh extra-judicial rough-housing is okay. Even in this fictional universe, police have absolute power, no man woman, or child is allowed to question them.
Can we question the writing though? I have never seen a show with less satisfactory cliffhangers. The show written by Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket, feels like a film script, stretched out over 7 episodes, neither of which has a discernible beginning middle, or end, or if they do, the structure is unrecognizable under the the elaborate machismo and bad CGI. Digging up perfectly manicured lawns of what seems like green-screen Lodhi Garden to do a tree planting ceremony is worth pointing out ONLY because Vivek Oberoi and the gang are standing on top of the scenery, rather than within. Equally bad is the post-edit dubbing. As far as I could tell, nearly ALL dialogue has been re-recorded in empty recording booths, making all of it devoid of any acting. Sharad Kelkar, who knows a thing or two about dubbing, sounds the same when he’s walking, and the same when he’s driving. All actors again sitting on TOP of the scenes, instead of inside them. It’s CID, on a much much bigger budget.
Siddharth Malhotra is not known to be the most natural actor, and here his inherent stiffness is enhanced because of the stoicism and discipline he’s tried to bring to the character. If there was an award for least chemistry with any co-actor ever, it would go to Siddarth and all his scene partners, mom wife superior officer. It doesn’t help that his nemesis, Zarrar/Haider is played by Mayank Tandon whose severe lack of charisma and on-screen presence makes him entirely unable to use the opportunity presented to him. The actor has close-ups, hand-to-hand fight scenes, chase sequences, a romantic song, a wedding, everything a debut actor can dream of, and more. And yet, every scene looks like an audition to play the scene. The actor is unprepared, his arc is underwritten, and as a result, you don’t care if he lives or dies.
When a filmmaker, and here we have two, Rohit Shetty shares direction credits with Sushwanth Prakash, presents good guys and bad in their story, at some point, the viewer needs to question their own allegiance. If you recall Hansal Mehta did this with Aditya Rawal’s character in last year’s Faraz. The bad guy’s beliefs are so compelling, that you begin to see their side of the story too, only to be yanked back to what’s real and what’s good, driving the point home stronger. Richie Mehta also achieved this with the first season of Delhi Crime, obviously, the men the police are on the hunt for are bad and must be caught, but what is so rotten in our society that’s causing people like them to operate with impunity?
And then you’re reminded this is the “Rohit Shetty cop-universe” so you take a seat, write a review and upload into the void. The series, however, is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
