BOTTOM LINE
This Staple Crime Saga is A Yawn-Fest
PLATFORM
Amazon MX Player
RUNTIME
5Hrs 16 Mins | 8 Episodes
What Is the Film About?
SSP Samar takes charge of crime-ridden Jwalabad, vowing to dismantle a brutal child trafficking ring and the city’s corrupt political nexus. To expose the truth, he joins hands with Kabir, a small-time goon turned informer who wages a war against the local gangster, Munna. As they go after liquor empires and land scams, their bond is tested by past secrets.
Performances
The show has several bankable actors in Saqib Saleem, Varun Badola, Aarif Zakaria, and Vikram Kochhar, but the meter of their roles limits the histrionics and the scope of their performances. Saqib Saleem only succeeds partially in portraying the guilt eating him up at work. Vikram Kochhar’s rugged role promises much but delivers little.
Zakaria remains in Jinnah mode from Freedom at Midnight. Varun Badola is a tad too casual in playing a typical crooked politician, while Siddharth Nigam sparkles briefly, though the formulaic treatment does not allow him to do much. Anushka Kaushik is an actor with promise, unfortunately saddled in the role of a victimised woman.
Analysis
Kaptaan is everything you expect from a quintessential cop saga. You wait for the twists to land, an upgrade to the standard tropes or for the writing to tighten up, but the impact never quite hits. SSP Samar is a thorough professional in the field, yet he is crumbling within. Guilt over past mistakes consumes him, taking a toll on his marriage even as he tries to remain a doting father to his daughter.
The plot picks up pace when Samar is posted to Jwalabad, a town notorious for crime, where the young Munna and the elderly Shaheen scramble for power. The tension rises as Shaheen’s loyal henchman, Kabir, is framed for murder. With a mole in Samar’s team helping Munna and a local MLA using these rivalries to gain influence, the officer needs to find newer ways to reinstate order in the region.
The proceedings take a sharp turn as Samar joins forces with Kabir to dent the crime nexus. Kabir agrees, not just for protection, but to settle scores from his past. The women, with a rare exception, generally serve as typical emotional anchors, trying to steady the men as they lose their way. However, once the power hierarchies are established, the story offers little else to look forward to.
Across both gangs, henchmen hustle to wield influence in the region; some stay loyal, others get greedy, a few are killed, and the rest go undercover. The sequence of events remains quite predictable, even as the storyteller weaves a complex web of relationships to keep the viewer emotionally invested.
Samar does his best to minimise collateral damage as the past weighs heavily on his mind. The women remain the most vulnerable entities, and the criminals conveniently target them the moment they smell vengeance. The narrative runs on autopilot, revealing the indifference of the makers in crafting a story that truly matters or engages. Ultimately, the action choreography is as lazy as the writing.
Even the way these powerful men maintain control is derivative. The poor are exploited, land is grabbed forcibly, fake liquor is sold, and child trafficking mafias run rampant. Characters with a heightened sense of self-importance wear a single expression, discussing clichéd power games as if they were the next big thing on the planet. Over the course of five hours, Samar doesn’t exactly succeed in his mission; while a few goons fall, the bloodbath continues with the same intensity.
Shows like Kaptaan are not merely generic or mediocre; they suck the joy out of the template. There is no enthusiasm in the filmmaking or the performances. It simply gathers what has worked in the market recently and flashes it in your face until you’re bored. While a muted colour palette and a forced musical score try to inject a sense of urgency, there is little reason for a viewer to truly care.
Music and Other Departments?
Faizan Hussain’s thunderous background score tries to pump in excessive noise to compensate for the shallowness in the proceedings, draining your energy big time. The cinematography by Lawrence Alex Dcunha is neat, although the muted colour palette prevents the show from having any real visual texture.
The action segments by Amar Shetty are a complete snooze fest, failing to bring in any tension or urgency. The editing struggles to trim the clunkiness in the writing; there is absolutely no experimentation or effort to surprise the target audience.
Highlights?
The Samar-Kabir equation
How it portrays the vicious circle of violence
Drawbacks?
Almost everything – the lazy writing, dull characters and the passionless execution
Mechanical performances
Poor action choreography
Did I Enjoy It?
Not at all
Will You Recommend It?
Only if you want to watch a staple action fare that will put you to sleep
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