Indian Police Force review: Rohit Shetty’s OTT debut is pale, routine and unexciting

Indian Police Force review

A tormented child from the minority community - Zarar, nursing a grudge, not to forget a teacher/maulvi Rafeeq (Rituraj Singh) brainwashing the child and making him into a weapon.

On the other hand, a duty bounded IPS officer from the same community SP Kabir Malik displaying his selfless deshbakhti and even mouthing out those popular gallis (swear words) to those bhatke hue musalmans. Sounds good but the problem with Rohit Shetty’s OTT debut is that its too much of a human drama than a thrilling action-packed espionage thriller that what the trailer hinted.

And the drama is so cliché, experienced so many times where the story gets told from the antagonist point of view – here it is Zarar who seems to be simple, cool and even romantic and it fails to register.

I expected a solid action packed, car and mind-blowing action-packed thriller series but the action moments are less compared to unwanted dramabaazi and dialogue baazi that has lines like “hum tum chale jayeinge bas reh jayeinge yeh ped, paudhe and fal (rough translation – we won’t be there one day but these tress, plants and their fruits will remain”.

Vivek Oberoi utters this gyan to Sidharth Malhotra in a scene that pops up from nowhere.

The director duo - Rohit Shetty (also the creator and writer) and Sushwanth Prakash along with their force of writers (five in all - Sandeep Saket, Anusha Nandakumar, Ayush Trivedi, Vidhi Ghodgaonkar and Sanchit Bedre), make a dull, predictable and uninspiring series that lacks surprises and thrills. Action is passable nothing much to shout about.

Perhaps, the team realised that they won’t be able to be at par with Neeraj Pandey and/or Raj and DK so tried to manipulate with the ‘human’ theory which also fails miserably.

The series is ‘A’ certified and after three episodes, I was wondering why is this ‘A’ certified but then suddenly after an action sequence that remined me of ‘Batla House’ movie, the makers tried to justify the ‘A’ rating.

The character played by Sidharth Malhotra starts spewing cuss words one after the another ( web series hai bhaiya, bina gaali ke kaise chalega) such is the desperation.

Performance

Only Sidharth Malhotra seems to be enjoying and he delivers with conviction and credibility.

Shilpa Shetty Kundra is miscast as tough cop, Sonakshi Sinha could have been a better choice.

Vivek Oberoi is strictly okay.

Mayyank Taandon as Zarar on whom the whole Indian Police Force got created is just a one expression actor.

Very sad to see Sharad Kelkar getting wasted and Mukesh Rishi reduced to just eating rotis in dhabha.

Final words

Rohit Shetty is best when he entertains be it Singham or Golmaal. When entertainers decide to be teachers on morality and restore to dramabaazi on those human angles on radicalism then things get messed up. Thoda peeche jaayie, brother! Make entertainers, blow cars, bullets, not throw unnecessary dramas.