Member Reviews

For a film in which the leading man’s signature line is ‘I am unpredictable’, Game Changer feels as old as cinema itself. In fact, the plot of this film — stretching over an abominably long 165 minutes — is so stale that every second of it will remind you of some terrible movie you may have had the misfortune of sitting through in the past. Game Changer is vintage Shankar, which is more of a bad than a good thing these days. The man who once gave us films like Gentleman and Anniyan, Enthiran and Indian, has been stuck in a creative rut, recently illustrated by the torture fest called Indian 2. Game Changer is a definite improvement over Indian 2 but that isn’t saying much about a film that relies on every overused trope in the masala movie book — physical (over) acting, grating background score, expensively-shot but totally unnecessary songs and a story that goes here, there, everywhere… and ultimately, nowhere.

A Vikramaditya Motwane film (or series) will always have one standout moment that stays on with the audience long after curtain call. In his debut film Udaan, it is the final moment of brothers Rohan and Arjun triumphantly walking hand-in-hand to their long-deserved freedom. In Trapped, it is Shaurya’s almost gleeful taandav-like dance when he burns down his mattress in a bid to attract attention in the apartment he finds himself locked in. In Lootera, it is the painfully poignant penultimate scene of Varun hanging an artificial leaf in the blinding blizzard so that Paakhi has reason to live, for at least a day more. In Jubilee, among many memorable moments, it is the unbridled sense of joy, reminiscent of Awaara, where Jay and Niloufer lose their umbrella in the pouring rain, but discover each other in the process. Each of these scenes represents freedom — or the journey towards it — in many ways. Each moment, as is the norm in a Motwane directorial, is simple on the surface but is loaded with meat and meaning.

“People say prison is a trashcan, but it’s really a circus,” DSP Tomar (Rahul Bhat) tells his new jailers. Black Warrant suggests that hangings are the circus’ circus. The sentenced are celebrities of the prison world. The visiting hangmen are celebrities for the Tihar staff. Inmates become nervy; reporters start asking questions. Everyone’s on edge—all except ASP Dahiya (Anurag Thakur), grinning broadly as he massages banana pulp onto a noose. The best Hindi streaming shows of the past few years are carefully built from the ground up, the longer runtimes allowing for more complex narratives but also challenge creators to populate and make believable specific universes—stock markets, village councils, counterfeit operations. I didn’t know hanging ropes were once smoothened with mashed banana. It’s not a vital piece of information; you’d miss it altogether if you weren’t paying attention for those three seconds in the second episode. But it’s sort of detail that gives me confidence, tells me the makers have burrowed deep inside their setting.

Co-created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh, the Netflix series Black Warrant is adapted from Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury’s non-fiction. Set in the 1980s, it follows a young man who signs up to be a jailer in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, as it is the only job available, and finds himself in the process. With compelling performances and an engrossing narrative, the prison drama unfolds just like a page-turner you can’t put down. At the end of the seven episodes, Black Warrant will leave you wanting more. Zahan Kapoor plays the straitlaced Sunil Gupta, who moulds himself and his beliefs according to the job. His co-workers, played by Paramvir Cheema and Anurag Thakur, seem better suited for the position. His boss, Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhat), and family don’t think he can last long. But he proves them all wrong as he keeps at it, despite facing the wrath of his superiors every other episode. Sunil must prove himself over and over again. With Sunil’s growth, audiences learn the stories of the prisoners, from the most notorious murderers to the petty criminals. Some of these are taken from the famous inmates who were housed at Tihar, some awaiting execution.

‘Black Warrant’ is a seven-part series based on a book of the same name about an insider’s account of his time at what has been dubbed ‘the biggest prison in Asia’, Tihar Jail. The volume is co-authored by Sunil Kumar Gupta, who joined Tihar in the early 80s, and journalist Sunetra Chowdhary; the show, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, cherry picks some of the most sensational cases that unspooled during Gupta’s watch, as he grew from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to an experienced jailer, without losing his humanity. Gupta, credited with starting Tihar’s first legal aid cell for poor, illiterate under-trials, is played by Zahan Kapoor. The actor, who debuted in Hansal Mehta’s 2022 terrorist drama ‘Faraz’, is given enough time here to grow into his role. Within a few minutes of the opening, his slight frame and smiling, soft ways — unlike his colleagues, he doesn’t cuss a mile a minute, nor does he use brute force on the inmates — are underlined more than a few times, and it’s quickly apparent why. His character, who doesn’t quite fit the job description — maintaining order in a rough-tough jail — is a familiar device used to impart chunks of information. And it is to Kapoor’s credit that he becomes more than just that device which is pressed into service through the series; he inhabits his character with conviction.

Jailers, convicts and undertrials populate Black Warrant, a seven-episode Netflix series created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh and produced under the banner of Applause Entertainment. Barring occasional detours beyond its prison setting, the show remains firmly focussed on an upright, unassuming jailer navigating a corrupt, insensitive system. It provides a sprawling overview of Delhi’s understaffed and overcrowded Tihar Jail of the 1980s from the perspective of a real-life prison superintendent. The insider’s take sets the series apart from average yarns about cops and crooks, crime and punishment. Black Warrant is no yarn. Rooted in reality, it portrays the intense struggles of a hero who is anything but a boilerplate man of action. He isn’t a cocky, hyper-masculine, strapping crusader out to flatten everything in his path.

In the 1920s, a young George Orwell was posted in Burma, as part of the Indian Imperial Police. In a famous essay titled A Hanging — written, in all likelihood, from lived experience — Orwell describes the morning of a prison execution. His unnamed narrator contrasts the minutiae of prison life with the moral shock of capital punishment. “It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man,” he writes. There is a touch of the young Orwell in Sunil (Zahan Kapoor), a rookie jailer finding his feet in Tihar, Asia’s largest and most dreaded prison. Set in the 80s, Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh’s series is based on the non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer. The real Sunil Gupta, who co-authored the book with journalist Sunetra Choudhury, was a former superintendent of Tihar, while doubling as its press relations officer and legal adviser. In his decades at the jail, Gupta oversaw the execution of several high-profile criminals, including Delhi child murderers Billa-Ranga and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhat. He spoke candidly to Choudhury about his experiences. Once you put a face to the stat, how long can you look away?

पंजाब के किसी गांव में लोगों को लोन दिलवाने वाली एक लड़की दिल्ली आकर गुम हो जाती है। उस लड़की के घर में रह कर एक डेयरी फॉर्म में नौकरी करने वाला सीधा-सादा फतेह सिंह उसे ढूंढने निकला है। फतेह जहां जाता है, लाशें बिछने लगती हैं। कौन है फतेह? क्या करता है वह? फतेह इस लड़की को तलाश पाया या…! किसी खुफिया एजेंसी के रिटायर्ड एजेंट के किसी कारण से तबाही के धंधे में वापस आने की कहानियां खूब बनती हैं। बस इन एजेंटों के वापस आने का कारण अलग-अलग होता है। इस फिल्म में कारण है लोन देने के बहाने लोगों का डेटा जमा करना और उसके ज़रिए उन के बैंक अकाउंट खाली करना। इस फिल्म (Fateh) में यह तामझाम खूब फैला हुआ दिखाया गया है लेकिन यह न तो तार्किक है और न ही कायदे से समझाया गया है।

Early in Fateh when a strapping Sonu Sood, dressed in a sharp black suit, enters a large room full of cocky goons, he is told that there is no space for him inside. The 120-minute bloodbath becomes a metaphor for the struggle of the sincere actor to carve a niche for himself as a solo hero. Sonu has a booming voice and a body to own the big screen. However, in a bid to flex his muscles and serve his off-screen image of a saviour (during the pandemic), Sonu, who trebles as an actor, producer, and director, has bitten more than he can chew. Cinematographer Vincenzo Condorelli and action directors Lee Whittaker and RP Yadav combine to create the right pitch for a visceral action drama. But after promising to take forward the renewed interest in the classic action genre, on the lines of Animal and Kill, the adults-only film falls into a painful pattern where the plot refuses to thicken and emotions don’t swell enough to turn the theatre into a slaughterhouse.