Perhaps the most serious failing of Khakee: The Bihar Chapter is its unwillingness to go past the surface. It’s like a flesh wound on a cop show. But that might also be its greatest asset. It’s more forgiving this way. Khakee, set in the Bihar badlands in the mid-2000s, is a surprisingly compelling masala entertainment that embraces its lowbrow qualities rather than attempting to be anything different. Its crude storytelling has a raw beauty to it, as it wilfully ignores the smallest hint of moral nuance.
Netflix’s seven-episode criminal thriller, created by Neeraj Pandey and directed by Bhav Dhulia, is content merely to exist, like a new police recruit so satisfied with their ‘Vardi’ that they don’t bother checking to see whether it fits.
Karan Tacker plays rookie officer Amit Lodha, a highly qualified young man who, like Ayushmann Khurrana’s character in Article 15, is assigned to a lawless new area that he neither understands nor especially likes. He is, nonetheless, driven by duty and is almost absurdly upright. In one moment, his wife notices him smiling at himself in the mirror as he gets ready for work. It would be impolite to refer to him as a boy scout; he is nearly a saint.
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Over the following five years, Amit rises through the ranks, as does a lowly goon named Chandan Mahto, played by Avinash Tiwary in a performance so transformational that his brownface makeup seems unnecessary rather than troublesome. As the performance sends Amit and Chandan on an action-packed collision course, women are ignored, bodies are murdered, and more macho energy is expended than even ten Axe body spray ads could contain.
Tacker, who previously collaborated with Pandey on the quite amusing espionage series Special OPS, makes the best of the minimal weaponry handed to the underdeveloped Amit. Amit is an idealist, and that’s all there is to it. Throughout the season, he’s been praised as the police force’s brightest new talent,’ shunted’ for a while after upsetting the apple cart, and then restored as a possible fall guy in the force’s quest for Chandan Mahto. Along the way, the program includes some very pointless scenes of Amit in a home environment, but they are treated with even less consideration than the idea of privacy at a men’s urinal.
However, a third figure is tasked with narrating this narrative. Abhimanyu Singh’s sweating station house officer finally joins up with Amit to establish a rogue squad of sorts to apprehend the elusive Chandan, whose power and influence over Bihar politics grows enormously in the background. Veteran actors Ashutosh Rana, Anup Soni, and Ravi Kishan appear as supporting roles on both sides of the law, while Vinay Pathak’s twisted politician is so underutilized that he might have passed for a woman.
A lot is going on here, as you can probably see. And by taking on so much responsibility, the program effectively does no credit to any of its 15 simultaneous narrative threads. In comparison, Breaking Bad spent five seasons on less plot than Khakee covers in seven mid-sized episodes. Forget adequately studying its own topics; it treats even its main characters with merely a passing glance. For example, Khakee does not allow them to enjoy the privileges that they would have had in the real world, such as the opportunity to experience reluctance and uneasiness; instead, every decision is taken with a single-minded resolve, just to advance the story.
Normally, this is a highly irritating method to tell a tale, but unlike competing crime series Mirzapur, Maharani, and Aashram, Khakee’s fast speed is part of its attraction. Consider an elaborate jail breakout plot staged in an early episode by Chandan Mahto and his right-hand man, Chyawanprash Sahu (Jatin Sarna). It’s rough around the edges, as is almost every other sequence in the program, but Dhulia and Pandey give it a feeling of forward momentum that is interesting on numerous levels. It’s a violent episode that, oddly, begins and finishes with shots of prasad. And, even though the filmmaker cuts away fairly immediately on both occasions, it implies that, while his sensibilities may be outdated, the storytelling principles are all there.
The scenario not only establishes Chandan Mahto’s cruelty but also his cleverness; he understands how to take advantage of idiots.
Similar, all-too-brief attempts are made to establish comparisons between Amit and Chandan, especially at the conclusion, when the show transitions from Scarface to The Untouchables to Heat. If, on the other hand, you’re hoping for psychological insight into the brains of dedicated detectives and psychotic criminals, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Potentially intriguing concepts like systemic corruption and encounter killings are toyed with but never completely committed to. Khakee is satisfied to be a B-level potboiler. I mean this as a complement, not a slight. Few programs, especially of this type, can maintain a consistent tone. Pandey has proven himself as a master of this type of squad-style procedural. Fans of his style of storytelling will find much to like here, while others may be put off by the simplicity.
