AI might be here sooner than expected. In a baffling sequence in Milan Luthria’s period-crime drama Sultan of Delhi, the protagonist Arjun (Tahir Raj Bhasin), in order to make a deal with a former enemy, somehow decides that the best way to do it is sans clothes. He strips and is ultimately butt-naked in front of the Muslim crime-lord and his wife. It seems like the scene was concocted only to punch in the line: ‘Farooq Shaikh, bina kapde ke aur kisi lafde ke dosti ka haath badhane aaya hoon (Farooq Shaikh, I have come here without clothes or conflict to offer a hand in friendship). The couple looks at him, and for a second, I felt they were dumbfounded enough to forget their lines. I wonder what prompts were given to ChatGPT to come up with this.
Director: Milan Luthria an Suparn Verma
Cast: Tahir Raj Bhasin, Mouni Roy, Anjumm Shharma, Vinay Pathak, Nishant Dahiya and Anupriya Goenka
Streaming on: Disney+ Hotstar
Set in the 60s, the Disney+Hotstar series feels like an assortment of stale offerings from Hindi cinema of the 70s. There are heroes with thin moustaches, an unhealthy dose of dialoguebaazi (‘Purani baatein wahi yaad dilati hain jo hum bhoolna nahi chahte’ (Lost conversations remind us of conversations we don’t want to forget) Huh?), random and convenient shootouts, women who either love men or seduce them, cabaret dancing for dummies and plot developments as predictable as cops showing up at the climax of an old Bollywood actioner.
We begin in 1947. After losing their family during riots in Pakistan, a young Arjun and his shell-shocked father arrive in Delhi. They are clustered in a refugee camp where Arjun becomes a tired imitation of a socialist hero after he stands up against a local heavy who refuses him anaaj (grain). Parallelly, there is a track of Rajender Pratap Singh (Nishant Dahiya), a scion of a rich businessman with daddy issues and an oedipal urge towards his step-mother Shankari Devi (Anupriya Goenka). Jump to the 60s and now Arjun has grown up to become a daring hero who drinks and races a bike to win a bet, but is otherwise a teetotaler. He befriends Bangali (Anjumm Shharma), the henchman of arms trader Jagan Seth (Vinay Pathak). They team up to execute jobs for Jagan, which mostly include going from city to city and realizing somebody has tipped off the cops against them. Rajender also enters the picture as the arms trader’s business partner. The constant (and exhausting) struggle between Arjun and Rajender to one-up each other and become the coveted Sultan of Delhi forms the crux of the series.
The Delhi, in question, is reduced to drone shots of Qutub Minar and crowded lanes of Chawri Bazaar, which might as well be substituted to represent Mumbai’s Khau Gali. The series merely takes the frothing but leaves out the flavour of a 70s film. The action sequences (read shootouts) feel like a playdate and the scheming, manoeuvrings and back-stabbings are as plain as a pikestaff.
With nine, long drawn episodes, it’s dreary to see how unimaginative Sultan of Delhi can be. Its retro aesthetic and themes feel less of an homage, and more of a parody. The bonhomie between Arjun and Bangali has a strong Sholay hangover (They even call each other ‘partner’) but lacks the endearing warmth of Jai and Veeru. Characters feel like they have been picked up from a stockpile of yesteryears’ unremarkable Bollywood films. An otherwise fine actor like Vinay Pathak is confined to playing a crime boss who mostly converses in riddles and his arc remains a mystery. Tahir seems to confuse rigidity in expression as a show of determination as Arjun. Anupriya appears on the screen either to scheme, titillate or adjust her scarf. Her act as Shankari is as novel as that of a vamp in a K-drama (Not the Korean one). Nishant struggles to be evil as Rajender and Mouni Roy is just incidental as cabaret dancer Nayantara. Only Anjumm, as the jocular sidekick Bangali, is enjoyable in some instances.
I remember, in 2010, being impressed by Luthria’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai. Although there were scenes and dialogues which felt like they were out of a gangster fable, the film was ably sold by the solid performances of Ajay Devgn and Emraan Hashmi. It was also inventive and witty in some instances. The sequence where Emraan manages to smuggle firearms in the trunks of cars of the city’s elite comes to mind. It can now feel plain but still had some thought put in. In Sultan of Delhi, to give a retort to Nishant’s Rajender and in accordance with his boss’s (Jagan) mannerisms, Arjun offers him a riddle: “What is something that the rich want but only the poor have?”. “What?” asks Rajender. “Nothing,” replies Arjun before slowly walking away, confident of the subtext of his comeback. Did I miss something?
#simulation #retro #crimesaga #Cinema #express
