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Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Vivek Oberoi, Shilpa Shetty, Mayyank Taandon, Vibhuti Thakur, Nikitin Dheer, Isha Talwar, Sharad Kelkar, Shweta Tiwari, Vaidehi Parshurami
Creator: Rohit Shetty
Director: Rohit Shetty, Sushwanth Prakash
Streaming On: Amazon Prime
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 31-49 Minutes (7 Episodes)
Indian Police Force Review: What’s It About:
It’s ‘Delhi Police Raising Day’ & we see SP Kabir Malik IPS (Sidharth Malhotra) & his boss, Joint CP Vikram Bakshi IPS (Vivek Oberoi), are called in to stop the bombings occurring across the capital of the country. Following the same route as the 26/11 films/shows, Shetty makes sure to add nothing new and carry forward the narrative to back one of the most routine shows in the history of OTT.
Indian Police Force Review: What Doesn’t Work :
Written by Rohit Shetty & his team of writers (Sandeep Saket, Anusha Nandakumar, Ayush Trivedi, Vidhi Ghodgaonkar, Sanchit Bedre), the story is only a rehashed version of what we have seen many times. The sets scream ‘fake’ owing to everything being neatly polished without any blemishes. The tension created around a sub-plot of a bomb is hollow due to the weak writing. A kid holds a bomb because he thinks if he keeps it somewhere, it’ll blast. A senior officer comes in, gets the bomb from him, and does the same thing until it gets defused. Why? Bodyguard’s bomb defusing scene, one of the best sequences perfectly grasping the fear of handling a live explosive, should’ve been studied by Rohit Shetty.
You know when the conversations start to sound ‘rehearsed’? When the characters don’t even pause to think and keep blabbering their dialogues as if “subah unko Panvel nikalna hai” (RS easter egg). Talking about easter eggs, Sidharth’s Kabir asks Shilpa Shetty’s Shetty to address him as Singham, Simmba, or Sooryavanshi, which falls completely flat, just like the limited comedy of this film (also just like Cirkus).
Let’s do a cliche count and see how many this show follows:
#1 – The lady lover who’s unknown to her boyfriend/husband is a terrorist
#2 – Junior officer will lose his senior officer to go into revenge mode
#3 – There will always be a kid around for the terrorists to grab & escape from the police
#4 – One weak terrorist among the group who breaks down and leaves an obvious hint by using a cell phone only for the police to track them
Throughout the show, it looks like Rohit Shetty envisioned this as a two-part film, but because of budget constraints and the fact that many wouldn’t have bought this, he went ahead to convert it into an OTT show. Clocked at over 4 hours, it packs less tension and substance than 2-hour films made on the same subject. Why it’s even named Indian Police Force when the story majorly revolves around Delhi Police? Why not call it a Delhi Police Force? Or why not inculcate a proper contribution of the various police forces across the country to justify the title? Some action scenes feel like they’re running at 2x speed only to realize they’re shot in that strange way for effect. Another ‘for effect’ thing is the distractive glares added while the characters punch each other for a scene.
Indian Police Force Review: What Works?:
At this point, Shetty knows best how to use the police siren sound creatively to make it a theme music for his projects. The hand-to-hand combat sequences work the best both visually and story-telling-wise as well. The big action scenes don’t really land appropriately due to sub-par cinematography by Girish Kant and Raza Mehta & the very artificial aura created by the sets of the show.
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Indian Police Force Review: Star Performances:
Sidharth Malhotra as SP Kabir Malik doesn’t work because of how well Ajay Devgn, Ranveer Singh & even Akshay Kumar have done being Rohit Shetty’s cops before this. Malhotra’s Kabir is just bland and inconsistent. The whole ‘Delhi Ka Launda’ vibe comes across as too fake to be true & none of his actions actually justify it at any point in time.
Vivek Oberoi as Joint CP Vikram Bakshi is just about okay. He’ll talk with a certain baritone in one scene, and in the immediate next scene, he’ll speak in his normal voice. Thankfully, it’s a short role, or many other weaknesses of his character could’ve been exposed (like the one in which he had almost won the fight against the terrorist but gets killed instead because the show would’ve ended at episode 3)
Shilpa Shetty Kundra, as Gujarat ATS Chief Tara Shetty, gets the poorest character of them all, which only gets sidelined by the male cops. She gets into a couple of action sequences, but those aren’t mainly built around her. All the brouhaha for the tag of Rohit Shetty’s ‘first female cop’ was for this?
Sharad Kelkar, Nikitin Dheer & Mukesh Rishi, in supporting characters, do their job as instructed, though they suffer from how poorly their characters are penned. Mayyank Taandon, as the antagonist, does a better job communicating through his act. Vaidehi Parshurami is the best of the lot when it comes to acting without being pretentious about it.
Indian Police Force Review: Last Words:
All said and done; if Cirkus was RS doing worst at the genre (slapstick comedy) he has mastered, this butchers his second favorite genre (action) in the same way.
Two Stars!
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