Bhagwat Movie Review: Arshad Warsi and Jitendra Kumar bring quiet gravitas to a familiar crime story

Bhagwat Movie Review:

With Arshad Warsi as a conscientious, furious cop taking on an urgent investigation into a girl’s disappearance, director Akshay Shere’s Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas seems like a crime-thriller we have seen before. It operates on similar tropes, taking us into the world of darkness and deceit in Uttar Pradesh (UP). An earnest, outsider cop getting transferred into some city in the state is a plot that has been unfolding since Shool (1999) and Gangaajal (2003). Forget the story, even the setting has now grown stale. With visuals of the vibrant ghats, narrow lanes and worn-out, dampened walls of old kothis—I could be talking about any show or film set in the Hindi heartland. Characters from different narratives could really bump into each other and it won’t be as surprising. Maybe Arshad’s Vishwas Bhagwat sitting in his darkly-lit police station chamber in Robertsganj will get a call of caution from Kaleen Bhaiya in Mirzapur. Isn’t it a franchise in itself? The North India Crime Universe (NICU).

Despite these tiring background similarities apparent right from the opening portions, Bhagwat is a film that still carves its own path. Inspired by the real-life serial killings by Mohan Kumar aka Cyanide Mohan that took place in Karnataka from 2005 to 2009, the film seems to have a hold on its narrative. It doesn’t really want to be subversive, like the show Dahaad (2003) which took the same case and set it in Rajasthan while bringing in a larger commentary about gender and caste. Instead, Bhagwat stays sincere in just following the investigation around Poonam Mishra, a girl in her twenties who goes missing. Vishwas promises her father that he will bring her back in fifteen days. However, as details unfold, it turns out to be more than just one missing person’s case. Poonam’s trail leads the cops to find out about more women who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Starring: Arshad Warsi, Jitendra Kumar, Ayesh Kaduskar, Rashmi Rajput, Sandeep Yadav and Tara Alisha Berry

Directed by: Akshay Shere

Written by: Bhavini Bheda and Sumit Saxena

Streamer: ZEE5

At first, some members of a political party force-fit their narrative about Poonam eloping with a certain Abdul, drawing parallels to the made-up conspiracy of Love Jihad. The makers remain mostly tight-lipped in taking a stronger stance about the farcical reality. The hesitance is palpable even in another scene where a guy named Sameer (Jitendra Kumar) goes to meet Meera (Ayesha Kaduskar) by the ghats of Ganga in Varanasi. The two sit next to each other, their hands slightly brushing against one another. The intimacy is broken with a jolt when they are forcibly taken away by a moral policing fringe group. The two later comfort each other over a phone call.

The evolving love story of Sameer and Meera intercuts with the investigation. The two later meet in a private cabin at a restaurant where Meera wears a jeans and T-shirt gifted by Sameer. She confides in him that the last time when she wore it was in school and her father had reprimanded her. An evocative exchange follows where Sameer expresses his frustration about the near impossibility of their love to prosper in a country where they cannot even get a moment of solace without getting contemptuous glances or getting thrashed for merely holding hands. The scene is written earnestly. It acts as a hidden moral voice of the film which strikes out even though we know through the trailer that Sameer has dubious intentions; that his words are merely a deception. At the moment though, it is as if he means everything. It plays out with a heartfelt honesty.

The film also doesn’t operate as a traditional mystery. By juxtaposing the investigation with a love story, it is already made apparent that the two worlds are going to meet at some point. Akshay and cinematographer Amogh Deshpande give sharp visual separations for the two stories. The love story is told with an almost pastel-like touch, giving it a dreamy feel of belonging to an alternate, romantic reality. On the other hand, the investigation gets grittier with more contrast in frames along with flashes of yellow light that adds on to the dread. The dichotomy creates a growing feeling that a world shredded in the comforts of love is soon going to enter that of deadly cynicism. And it does. There is no sense of foreboding or dramatic reveal. The shock is not in the ‘what’, ‘who’ or ‘how’ but in the hopeless belief of love’s promise of an escape from bigotry and hate. The belief soon breaks as Sameer shifts character. Afterall, this is no country for lovers.

There are seeds of such unrealised, deeply political ideas in the film which are hushed through a story of a serial killing. It is enough to spark a thought but the film doesn’t quite narrativise reality into a biting account. It just manages to be a compelling procedural which is powered by towering performances from Arshad, Jitendra and Ayesha. Arshad mounts the short-tempered, mental heaviness of Vishwas quite comfortably in his body language, barring some awkwardly placed shots in uniform. Jitendra smoothly turns from being an instantly likeable youngster to a vulturous predator. He doesn’t oversell his kindness nor does he wear the menace on his sleeves. It is all skillfully balanced.

Even though Bhagwat has surface-level similarities to some of its contemporaries, it still manages to reveal a faint, stirring voice in its filmmaking. The storytelling stays away from being needlessly provocative and shamelessly pretentious. It knows what it cannot be. The opening credits run over an obscure animated retelling of the entire story. It is followed by a quote: To keep truth alive, you must tell its story. Bhagwat may not be the strongest resonator of the line as it often feels restrictive in its pursuit of truth. However, it still necessitates a smaller nudge.