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Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new Bollywood tradition in place of the ‘mahurat shot’ (which doesn’t really seem to be working these days anyway, does it?). Instead of gathering everybody together for a small ‘pooja’ before projects, maybe every Bollywood producer should consider hiring Anil Kapoor to individually address each member of the cast on day one, and have him say just six words to them in that trademark AK drawl: “You’re my lead actorrr, my starrr.” This is exactly what he does in a scene with Aditya Roy Kapur in The Night Manager, and the charisma on display is convincing enough for even ARK to momentarily forget that his last movie was Gumraah.
In the three-episode Part 2 of Hotstar’s Hindi remake of the popular British miniseries, we catch up with Roy Kapur’s Shaan Sengupta after he has successfully infiltrated the arms dealer Shelly Rungta’s inner circle. As a helpful recap reminds us, Shaan was recruited by Lipika Saikia, the Srikant Tiwari-esque spy played by series standout Tillotama Shome, to gather dirt on Shelly, who finally lives up to that ‘worst person in the world’ tag in these new episodes. What Shaan and Lipika discover is that Shelly’s operation is bigger than they’d ever imagined, and that they might be in over their heads.
Part 2 wastes no time in getting Shelly’s son Taha out of the way. This is unfortunate, considering how his scenes with Shaan were the highlight of the first part, but this makes room for Shaan to develop a new relationship inside Shelly’s close-knit cult. We’d seen the earliest hints of a romance between Shaan and Shelly’s girlfriend in Part 1, but the thread was mostly left dangling, much like everything else involving Kaveri. This arc is explored more meaningfully in Part 2, finally giving Sobhita Dhulipala scenes worthy of her talent. It’s interesting to watch her deliver a mostly naturalistic performance opposite Kapoor, who is fully chewing the scenery (in a good way) here.
He’s a delight to watch on screen, and God bless Danny Boyle for discovering his slippery side in Slumdog Millionaire. In Part 2, Kapoor gets plenty of opportunity to expose Shelly for the monster that he is, like the scene in which he chews on a cigar and talks about the beauty of bombs like he’s Wordsworth reciting verses about daffodils, or another scene, in which he stabs a former associate to death with what looks like a Reynolds ballpoint pen.
With Taha out of the picture, however, it’s impossible to generate any sort of sympathy for Shelly in Part 2. There’s no outlet for the little humanity buried within him. If anything, being away from his son, whom he truly loves, makes Shelly a crueler man. He is manipulative and petty, violent in both his behaviour and mindset. But this isn’t a one-note performance; Kapoor even manages to tap into Shelly’s insecurity in several scenes, adding yet another layer to a rather irredeemable person. It’s so satisfying to watch him be consumed by his own hubris.
But aside from Shelly, no other character has the sort of transformation that’s worth noting here. Shaan is still the suave secret agent, although his promotion to Shelly’s ‘CEO’ rings a little odd, considering that they’ve only just met each other. Lipika still has that disarming playfulness, and Kaveri is still mostly passive, but she has more screen time, and that’s about it. In fairness, none of these characters knew that Hotstar would arbitrarily decide to slice the show into two random halves, like a PVR projectionist who can sense when the audience needs a pee break midway through movies without a designated interval break. It’s not their fault if all this just feels… more of the same.
Creator Sandeep Modi, who co-directs with Priyanka Ghose, might not have a unique visual style, but he makes up for it with a keen sense of pacing and tension. Scenes have individual stakes, and there’s a rhythm to how conversations are cut. This is basic, but not too many Indian filmmakers working in the mainstream understand how important inserts and silent reactions are. So, it’s worth appreciating a director for not completely butchering the language of cinema for once. But Modi could certainly have avoided replicating Moby’s iconic music cue from the Jason Bourne movies in one scene. People aren’t stupid, you know; they can spot these things. At least Pritam had the decency to seek inspiration from Indonesia.
Besides this, there’s little to actively complain about with The Night Manager. In this day and age of incompetent Indian cinema, it feels positively refreshing to watch something that’s basically the cinematic equivalent of a back-bencher who scrapes by in the exams with a passing grade.
The Night Manager
Creator – Sandeep Modi
Cast – Aditya Roy Kapur, Anil Kapoor, Tillotama Shome, Sobhita Dhulipala, Saswata Chatterjee
Rating – 3/5
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