Indian Police Force Cast/ Actors: Sidharth Malhotra As DCP Kabir Malik IPS, Shilpa Shetty Kundra As Gujarat ATS Chief Tara Shetty,Vivek Oberoi As Joint CP Vikram Bakshi IPS, Isha Talwar As Rashmi Malik, Shweta Tiwari As Shruti Bakshi And Sharad Kelkar As Jagtap
Indian Police Force Director: Rohit Shetty And Sushwanth Prakash
Indian Police Force Release Date: January 19, 2024
Indian Police Force Available On: Amazon Prime (OTT Release)
Indian Police Force Season: 1
Indian Police Force Number Of Episodes: 7
Indian Police Force Release Pattern: All episodes released together
Indian Police Force Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi And English
Indian Police Force Runtime: 50 Minutes
Indian Police Force Critic Review:
Serial blasts in Delhi, Jaipur. Same modus operandi as the blasts in Ahmedabad.
The Delhi Police Force don’t want to be labelled inefficient. “Dilli ka launda hoon, I’ll bring him back,” promises Kabir Malik (Sidharth Malhotra) as he sets off on a cross-border mission to nab Zarar/Haider (Mayyank Taandon), the master killer. It’s a plot that’s outlived its expiry date.
Created by Rohit Shetty and directed by him and Sushwanth Prakash, IPF is spectacularly routine cop-and-terror territory with Kabir and Zarar presenting two sides of the same community. One is the victim of radicalisation, the other has understood his holy book. One has turned desh drohi in the name of religion, the other has interpreted his religion to stand for peace and patriotism.
Labouring to drive home the message that everybody in a community is not supportive of terror, a thought we do support, Rohit Shetty’s writers Sandeep Saket and Anusha Nandkumar (with Ayush Trivedi, Vidhu Ghodgaonkar and Sanchit Bedre contributing the dialogues) start off with three feisty police officers who bend rules in their fervour to do their duty well.
Kabir’s senior Vikram Bakshi (Vivek Anand Oberoi) comes with a wife and a kid and a bit of undercurrent bristle with Tara Shetty (Shilpa Shetty), his batchmate.
Tara is single, not ready to mingle so far, and rumoured to be writing a book on the police force.
In the first season, Tara is the mandatory female presence for gender equality, contributing little to the game which narrows down to Kabir vs Zarar. The protagonist and antagonist must be from the same community for the message to be clear, get it?
With a mandate to humanise the terrorist and differentiate between the indoctrinated and the upright, both Kabir and Zarar have their respective romantic moments. So there is a rather unnecessary flashback song to establish how much Kabir loved Rashmi (Isha Talwar) and chemistry is built between Zarar and Nafisa (Vaidehi Parashurami) which crescendos in a full scale nikaah. Zarar is such a devout husband, he even cooks for her.
But families of terrorists either have no clue about their activities or have disowned them. One set of parents refuse to claim the body of their killer-son who’s been gunned down by cops and Nafisa doesn’t even know that Haider, her husband, is actually Zarar.
The sachcha Mussalmann exemplified by Kabir vs the radicalised is believable, credible, acceptable.
If only the screenplay had been equally admirable.
There are plenty of fast-forward moments for which you thank the OTT platform which facilitates it. A long monologue by the widow of a police officer, a lecture on what Islam is all about, varied chases where half the time the cops come out quite inept (like the Delhi encounter where they go to catch the terrorists holed up in a room), the usual still-to-be-explained equations amongst the police officers especially Tara-Vikram, and a rather laughable leader of Bangladesh who wears a bindi a la Sushma Swaraj.
Rohit Shetty’s mandatory stop in Goa, cars blown up and one surprise actor joining the team towards the end are all ticked off. Sharad Kelkar’s screen presence is welcome.
Sidharth Malhotra, as his screen mother tells him, looks handsome in uniform and he gets to perform premium action sequences. It is Rohit Shetty’s comfort territory with Shilpa Shetty also getting a few kickass fight scenes. Vivek Anand Oberoi adds gravitas to the khaki vardi. Nikitin Dheer is great hunk material in the ill-defined role of cop Rana while Lalit Parimoo cast as Nafisa’s father has a strange role most unbecoming of a normal parent.
The problem is the absence of freshness in the myriad characters. We’ve seen them, and the situations they’re thrown in, a dozen times, on the big screen and small. ‘Siyasat of nafrat’, indoctrination in a madrasa, childhood triggers, flashbacks of a slain police officer, family bonds, a handler from Iran, Kabir punished and put behind a desk, a cry baby terrorist, terror recruits with a Romeo thrown in (in Goa where he eyes a foreigner which ain’t funny), undercurrents amongst officers – all heard and seen.
I scoured all seven episodes for one new nugget. Hopefully, Rohit Shetty who has left the gate wide open for a new season will tell us something nobody’s told us before, the next time around. Oh yes, the PM with the bindi was a new one.
Indian Police Force Watch it or not: Only for the well-shot action.
Indian Police Force Review Score Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Indian Police Force Official Trailer:
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