Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Konkona Sen Sharma, Nassar, Sayaji Shinde, Lal, Anbuthasan, Anula Navlekar, Kani Kusruti
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Creator: Abhishek Chaubey
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Streaming On: Netflix
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 43-59 Minutes (8 Episodes)
Set in a very Munnar-like fictitious town, the story revolves around Swati Shetty (Konkana Sen Sharma), a not-so-talented chef aspiring to open a Paris-inspired hotel one day. Married in an uber-rich family, her husband Prabhakar Shetty (Manoj Bajpayee) is the futile little brother to Arvind Shetty (Sayaji Shinde), who handles the drug business in the disguise of a tea plantation.
Oh & once a professional nurse, Swati also has an extra-marital affair with Prabhakar’s masseuse, who, for some weird reason, also looks like a lean, bearded version of him. Prabhu somehow gets killed, and Swati does whatever she can to sway the narrative to her benefit of owning her dream hotel.
The world created by Abhishek Chaubey strangely feels like the one you would love to look at but somehow won’t want to be in. Though the comedy isn’t as dark as the mood of the lighting in this, some utterly stupid lines will make you chuckle. The predictable plot keeps me intrigued by things other than the major twists. It’s never about who’s right or who’s wrong throughout the show, but it’s always about who’s going to do what next.
Chaubey writes with Unaiza Merchant, Harshad Nalawade & Anant Tripathi as they mold a real-life event that happened in Telangana in 2017, adding twists and turns to shape it into a web show. The story isn’t something you haven’t heard before; the treatment to present the same is distinct & eccentric.
Score Benedict Taylor & Naren Chandavarkar’s score & Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s (Sonchiriya) are the second-best pair of the film post, almost touching the magic of Konkona Sen Sharma & Manoj Bajpayee. From playing A.R. Rahman’s Tu Hi Re (Bombay) to Nina Simone’s Sinnerman highlighting an important sequence with “So I run to the Lord, Please hide me, Lord, Don’t you see me prayin’? Don’t you see me down here prayin’? But the Lord said, Go to the Devil!”, the soundtrack and the background score play an essential role of holding your attention for more than it could’ve been otherwise.
Exploration of opera, Jazz & various other music forms backs the story’s eccentric flavor. It also uses Mumbai hardcore band’s I Love You, Pav Bhaji which came out nowhere but I’m not complaining.
Accidental deaths become predictable after a point of time. You’d smell from afar about what could happen next, and many a time, you won’t be wrong. That’s not even the major problem because there are other things to marvel at. Things crumble when Meghna Manchanda Sen, Sanyukta Kaza’s editing takes eight episodes to convey things that could’ve easily been a 5-episodic mini-series.
Recently, The Railway Men amazingly proved the same by narrating a moving tale in just four episodes, and this should’ve followed the same route, eliminating a lot of clutter. It suffers from the ‘Khufiya’ problem in which you have an ordinary tale, so you try to cover that with the brilliance of your screenplay & filmmaking; you’re so obsessed with the treatment that you want to keep everything you’ve created and add some more.
There are loopholes, some major of them. A scene shows some characters running from the goons only to go back to their home, an address known by the one following them. Why? The “senior police hallucinating his dead colleague following his clues to solve the investigation” subplot just didn’t work with me. It made things too convenient to be intrigued about. He follows whatever he hallucinates to solve the case; sometimes, it feels like he has had the shrooms a character is dealing with in the show.
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Konkona Sen Sharma & Manoj Bajpayee deliver precisely what you would expect from them to do with a subject like this. Sharma maintains the ambiguity around her character with the irresistible charm she owns. From a bruised lover, a selfish b*tch to a seductress who wants to command her life the way she wants, Sharma skillfully owns every shade with utmost honesty.
If you want a single actor to play two contrasting roles in the same film, you know you’d wish Manoj Bajpayee to do that. He plays the “How could one person be so different in two different characters?” to the best. From Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai last year to Killer Soup now, let’s take a moment to hail his legendary script choices.
Delivering an A+ performance in The Jengaburu Curse, Nassar plays the role of an honest police officer, Haasan, and he continues the streak. Sayaji Shinde, as Arvind, is so wicked, so it starts to look like this character was written, keeping him in mind from the beginning. Lal, as monstrous Lucas, puts both heart and brain into portraying this character, and he aces at everything as he does. Anbuthasan is just about right as Thupalli. Anula Navlekar, as Appu, is outstanding, carrying a natural aura around her performance. She owns the accent, never coming across as pretentious. Kani Kusruti as Kritima holds your attention for every frame, and she owns a jaw-dropping action scene that will make you hoot.
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All said and done, Killer Soup is a dish you wouldn’t want to have more than once because it would satisfy all your quench the first time. Astounding performances meet trippy BGM meets peculiar screenplay meets a Konkana Sen Sharma who will hypnotize you to stay till the end.
Three Stars!
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