It is sad to see Manoj Bajpayee trying so hard to be funny. Sadly, the humour never lands as it ought to. For Bajpayee’s lines to generate laughter outside the screen (I am sure the cast had a blast) and to reach the audience, they have to be written with more than just a scratchy sense of a giggle wriggle.
What is so funny about a cop trying to nab a notorious criminal? One would like to ask writer-director Chinmay Mandlekar why he thought it prudent to use the facetious tone of narration for a crime story that shook the world? And why is crime a laughing matter in the first place?
In Main Aur Charles, Prawaal Raman attempted to piece together the seductive life of Charles Sobhraj. It was an uphill task. And one that required reams of rigorous research, an actor who could define and own Sobhraj’s seductive charms, and a certain detachment from Sobhraj’s scheming intellect to ensure we didn’t get sucked into his deceptions. This detachment is achieved in the plot by making the Delhi cop Amod Kanth, who nabbed Sobhraj, the hero of the show. Not that Sobhraj plays the villain. But his cool quotient, conveyed by Randeep Hooda in rationed doses, is ruthlessly challenged and thwarted by Adil Hussain’s upfront and unfettered contempt for all attempts by books, movies, and news channels to glorify a criminal like Sobhraj.
Now there is this Charles Sobhraj in Inspector Zende. Jim Sarbh’s performance as Charles Sobhraj, sorry, Carl Bhojraj, is so campy, it makes you wonder: was Charles really so much in touch with his feminine side? Or are actors sliding into a somewhat campy portrayal of a criminal who was a lady killer in more ways than one?
As Sobhraj/Bhojraj’s nabber, Manoj Bajpayee is the archetypal grassroot cop, dedicated professional, loving husband to an attentive wife (the lovely Girija Oak), much-loved citizen, etc., etc. It is a familiar world, swathed in banality, which is perhaps why the film chooses a levitational tone.
Sadly, the humour doesn’t work. By the time Zende and his team arrive in Goa to get the campy killer, the entire set-up reeks of a mission so open-and-shut that it feels horribly haywire, with Manoj Bajpayee struggling to keep the proceeds afloat. In the absence of any substantial emotional pitch, failing miserably.
The humour falls to a point where we are supposed to snigger at characters urinating, trying to make a moot point, I guess. There is a cop in Zende’s team named Jacob (Harish Dudhade) who never laughs.
Jacob is the only one who gets it.
“Yeh subah ka akhbar raat ko padhte hain,” says a character at one point about another character.
That about sums up what this limp, limbless cop-and-robber satire tries to do.
