Class Of 83 Movie Review: On Target But Suffers From Nervous Exhaustion

Class Of  ‘83(Netflix)

Starring Bobby Deol,Anup Soni, Joy Sengupta

Directed  by Atul  Sabharwal

Rating: ***(3 stars)

In how many  films from Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer  and    Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chappan to Mahesh Manjrekar’s  Kurukshetra and Prabhudheva’s Wanted have we seen the  cop-hero  battling the dreaded ‘System’ from the outside ?

As far as  originality goes Class  Of 83 scores poorly.  It  looks like  an encore  of dozens anti-establishment  angry-cop films we  have seen over the years,  when in  truth   Class Of  83  is  THE original  Dirty Harry  of Indian cinema. In the  1971 game-changing cops film , Clint Eastwood throws his  police badge in the  muddy water and  deals with a rampageous  killer as he deems  fit.

Things  are  not that  simple for  super-cop Vijay Singh(played with  suspicious stoicism by Bobby Deol). Unlike ‘Dirty’Harry Eastwood, Deol  has  to   play the  law enforcer  within  the rulebook. Also  he is  not a made-up  character  buoyed  by  flights  of  frenzy .What sets  Vijay Singh apart from all the other screen cops is  his identity. He is a real person.

Scripted from  Hussain Zaidi’s  real-life  encounter-cop Vijay Singh, Class Of  83 adheres  closely to facts, discarding in  the  process all the  flamboyant heroics  of the way we look at  cop heroes in  our films. Vijay Singh is suicidal and troubled by the arrogance of  the lawless.  His  team of young eliminators  is  fresh young enthusiastic and  raring to act.

And I do refer to both the young actors and the restless  characters they play.  Pramod Shukla (Bhupendra Jadawat), Lakshman Jadhav (Ninad Mahajani) , Vishnu Varde (Hitesh Bhojraj), Aslam Khan (Sameer Paranjape)   and Janardan Surve (Prithvik Pratap)  are  as impressive in their  anxious righteousness on-screen chraracters as they are  as actors.

Aslam’s murder in the hands of chain snatchers , shot with  a  Sam Peckinpah lunacy on a construction site, has one of the goons humming, ‘Chain  churake  laya hoon’ to the tune of  Gulzar’s Chand churake laya hoon. It is the only music you will hear in  this  film. No   melodic outbursts in  the  background, no  compromise with the  mood of no-compromise that the  protagonists wear like  badges.

 I wish Bobby Deol looked  more driven. His  body language  is way too languid for an on-the-prowl  cop. He is  more effective in his emotional  moments with his  dying wife(Geetika Tyagi) and  disgruntled son, than he is  as a uniformed  land-mower constantly  battling his red-tapism.

The  ‘encounters’ are staged with a feral fidelity that emblazons the screen  . The  crusty toasted-brown cinematography(by the Norwegian  Mario  Poljac) pins down the sweat nervousness of lives on the brink. Class Of  83 effectively  reflects the immediacy of  quick justice. It is a sharp-shooting drama ,lacking in  newness  but  making up for  it by making the familiar look furious fertile and  disturbingly futile.