Crisply starched Major Monica Mehra (Jennifer Winget) is sharp. She foils an assassination bid on Chief Minister Joshi (Manoj Dutt) on Kargil Diwas and goes sleuthing to deduce that a vigilante group with army training and access to army supplies is active.
The vigilantes have been on the noble mission of eliminating the corrupt who’re behind defective defence supplies; uncountable soldiers have died in areas as widespread as Siachen, Kashmir and Nagaland due to faulty equipment including choppers. The vigilantes have been moving stealthily and swiftly to destroy everybody in the rotten supply chain right up to the political patrons who sanction the deals. Major Mehra has to find them and stop them.
Along with writers Aniruddha Guha, Samar Khan and Niharika Puri, director Akshay Choubey has sufficient intrigue in the plot to keep the eight episodes moving and the world of the defence force which is so far removed from civilian ordinariness makes it differently pleasant.
For Major Monica Mehra, it’s always been army over family, a maxim that ended her marriage. As the mystery deepens, the choice becomes even more difficult. The shadows are so close to home that her principle is put to the test. Will her sense of duty and her belief in doing right the legal way prevail even when it clashes with the closest of blood ties?
The plot and the moral battle are the two strong pillars of Ekta R Kapoor’s creation with Jennifer Winget’s sincerity and Tanuj Virwani with the lopsided smile (re-appearing as legal counsel Angad Sandhu) drumming up a likeable chemistry between them.
But the episodes also reveal a certain reluctance to be break-free different as adherence to the expected surfaces time and again. Whether it’s Rocket Boys, Vidya Balan’s Jalsa or Ekta Kapoor’s Code M, one staple they all bow down to is that if an important character has a minority name, he cannot ever be the traitor or killer, at best he can only be a red herring. Armed with that prior knowledge, mentioning the twist around CBI officer Ismail Qureshi (Swanand Kirkire) doesn’t even amount to a spoiler.
The Major having more instincts than fighting skills as she loses every hand-to-hand combat, a chase on a two-wheeler that’s quite unexciting, and a ‘Blacklist’ kind of childhood trauma over a fire which Monica will overcome as all fears must be on every show, are a few of the many bouts of laziness in the writing.
The thrill therefore is more in the premise than in the structure. But a theme centred around defence supply scams that are callously uncaring of the many lives lost is a good pivot and who the Major is ultimately chasing could come as a stunner to the viewer.
A smirk and a swagger from the unexpected keep the door open for another season.
Watch the trailer of Code M Season 2:
Also Read: Major Review: The Braveheart Makes You Teary