Kartavya movie review: Cop jeep has more character than any human in Saif Ali Khan film

Kartavya movie review: Small town upright cop up against the all-powerful mobster. That could also be read as monster. Because the bad guy in Kartavya is yet another variant of the dhongi baba from Ashram, and several others that I’m finding hard to remember now because there have been so many of varied stripes but who broadly adhere to the ground rule: the more beatific you look, the more depraved you are. It says something about the utterly generic Kartavya, a crime thriller set in Haryana, that the good guy, played by Saif Ali Khan is surrounded by a bunch of bad guys — a senior cop (Manish Chaduhuri) who keeps blocking Pawan’s (Saif Ali Khan) path, and a junior cop (Sanjay Mishra) who is a constant companion, basically playing the BFF trope, and not one of them has been given a characteristic that we haven’t seen before. The streaming rule 101 — Let There Be A Body Within A Few Minutes Of The Opening — is faithfully ticked off. The victim is a faceless woman, later identified as a journalist, taking refuge in this town, for no good reason that we are given. Said town seems to have only two power centres, the first being a too-clean cop station, and the other, the baba’s (Saurabh Dwivedi) abode; the third, of no fixed location, is a horde of misogynist dudes roaming around, picking off rebellious young lovers who challenge caste diktats. Kartavya movie trailer: Pawan’s domestic arrangements are sketched in some detail. His father (Zakir Hussain) who bristles at the thought of any of his own being connected with any wrongdoing. When a ladki ka bhai shows up at their doorstep, accusing Pawan’s younger brother of running away with his sister, the father reacts with the customary concoction of disbelief and anger. So there’s your khap panchayat, and village elders reciting the ‘pratha’ of ‘honour’ killing, something that streaming shows have been on a spree with recently: just a couple of weeks ago, we had the same element in ‘Glory’, also set in Jatland. And then there’s the sinister baba with his legions of ‘bhakts’, with his own gun-toting cohort, who is whispered to be behind the disappearance of underage kids after doing ‘galat kaam’ with them. Dwivedi seems to be having fun, but how many more such babas will we have to suffer in the guise of these flicks that you forget even as you watch them? Saif, who’s done a cop after a sizeable interval (the previous one was in Sacred Games), tries gamely to pull off a Haryanvi accent and a man-with-a-spine who will only take so much and no more, but there’s only that much he can do. This Khan has been struggling with the paucity of meaty roles written for actors like him, and this had the contours for it, but it clearly needs effort. Rasika Dugal, who can make reading the back of an envelope exciting, is wasted here, in her supportive wife role, even though she has a great line about the lines on her husband’s face deepening, referring to Khan’s distinctive grooves on the forehead. The only actor who leaves a mark is the fresh-faced Yudhvir Ahlawat, who plays a young boy under tremendous pressure with conviction: when he bursts into helpless tears, it breaks your heart. The cop jeep with the menacing blue-and-red lights flashing on its roof has more character than any human in the film. What does that say about a cast with such heavyweights done in with lazy, formulaic writing? The answer is depressing.Story continues below this ad Kartavya cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Mishra, Manish Chaudhari, Rasika Dugal, Saurabh Dwivedi, Yudhvir Ahlawat Kartavya director: Pulkit Kartavya rating: 1.5 stars