Merchants of Death

Merchants of Death| The Night Manager | Cast: Anil Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sobhita Dhulipala | Showrunner: Sandeep Modi | Hindi | Disney+Hotstar

“I don’t care who sees me naked, I care who sees me cry.” Very few women in the Mumbai film industry can carry off this statement without making the audience cringe. Sobhita Dhulipala, she of the perma-pout and exquisite dresses, is a perfect fit in the Hindi adaptation of The Night Manager. So is its intellectual veneer. Dhulipala is seen reading John le Carré’s The Night Manager (the novel on which the BBC One original series was based) by the poolside while a senior bureaucrat refers to Josy Joseph’s A Feast of Vultures in a conversation. Closely following the spirit of the original, the Hindi remake of The Night Manager deviates in crucial bits keeping India’s neighbourhood in mind. We are introduced to the night manager (played by Aditya Roy Kapur, who finally has a role that requires him to act) in Shimla and to Shelly Rungta, agricultural equipment importer aka arms dealer, in Bangladesh where the Rohingyas are protesting. The action takes us to Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia while the nerve centre of the investigation remains Delhi. Anil Kapoor plays Rungta like the sophisticated monster he is, with the hard-edged scrabbler not too far from the surface. In his linen suits, with his after-dinner cigar, private island and personal golf coach, he seems every bit the global industrialist he claims to be. As he watches his empire crumbling because of all-too-human foibles, you can see the eyes narrowing and the intellect ticking. Disney+Hotstar has wisely dropped only four episodes as of now and promised a part two in June. It is a hook that is even more enticing than the sight of Dhulipala embracing the ocean in a black swimsuit. Tillotama Shome is spot-on as the pregnant desk operative driven more by passion than protocol, while Joy Sengupta, a theatre star, is blandly brilliant as her boss and Saswata Chatterjee is quietly menacing as Shelly’s suspicious right-hand man. Prestige television is all about making the viewer feel more intelligent after watching the show. The Night Manager is a prime example of that.

Why watch it ? To finally see an adaptation which is almost as good as the original

Great Find

Lost| Cast: Yami Gautam, Pankaj Kapur Creator: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury | Hindi | Zee5

Yami Gautam has slowly and steadily inched her way into our hearts with quiet performances, whether it be the intelligence officer in Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) or the seemingly composed teacher in A Thursday last year. So it is a real pleasure to see her playing a journalist, Vidhi, looking for a missing Dalit activist in the crowded streets of Kolkata. As a conscientious crime reporter who refuses to give up, Gautam is excellent as she closes in on Ishan Bharti (Tushar Pandey), the activist who may be missing, dead, or may have joined an extremist organisation. Rahul Khanna plays a scheming politician with a mean edge to him, Pankaj Kapur is Gautam’s kindly grandfather, a former college professor, who is a font of wisdom and fun, and every other member of the ensemble looks as if they exist in reality. Kolkata was last brought alive so beautifully on screen in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani — its narrrow bylanes, its crumbling houses with character, its endless cups of chai and its chatty police officers. Very few movies bother to go into issues of morality, into how we live our lives, into our understanding of ethics, but Lost manages to do that without descending into a pedantic mode too often. There are many ordinary heroes in our lives—reporters who believe in the truth (in case we missed the point, Gautam’s bedside table has a copy of Ravish Kumar’s book), professors who still impart life lessons, and families who bear the brunt of vindictive parties with grace and dignity.

Why watch it? The scenes between Gautam and Kapur, full of affection
and warmth, alone are worth the run time.

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