Rating: ****
There is never a dull moment in Amazon’s Daldal . It is written with sharp curves and steep edges (by Sreekanth Agneeaswaran,Rohan D’Souza,Hussain Haidry,Priya Saggi,Suresh Triveni), directed deftly and cannily by Amrit Raj Gupta, and almost uniformly well-acted by the cast in the smallest of parts.
Bhumi Pednekkar who was earlier seen as a smalltime journalist investigating the sleazy goings-on in a shelter home in Bhakshak , here transforms into a sullen humourless cop with a troubled past. The only time Rita Farreira smiles is when she meets her genial subordinate’s little son .
That is one of the memorably scripted interactive moments in a serial about a serial killer whose identity is not hard to guess for us(we know soon enough) but has the cops flummoxed and running around in this pitch-perfect police procedural .
Another memorable moment: a young cop Jatin Shukla(Saurabh Goyal) smitten by a mysterious journalist addresses the irony of her umbrella being stolen at the police station. Such incidental moments contribute substantially to giving heft and cohesion to a plot that could have easily gone amok, like the slasher killer.
There a smear of equanimity even at the most anxious moments. The synergy level is constantly high, whether it is Bhumi and her colleague Indu Mhatre(Geeta Aggarwal Sharma,doing Farida Jalal’s bonhomie well) , or Bhumi and her boss who gives her a high rank appointment mainly to tokenise her gender and patronize her for the ‘privilege’ of the promotion.
The killings are brutal and not fully explained. They follow an incoherent pattern with the theme of abuse in orphanages and shelter homes providing a tenuous link. Nonetheless Dalaal works better as a serial on serial killings than most of the recent entrants in the genre.
But really, the serial killings and the police procedural have reached a point of overkill, in more ways than one.
The performances provide a cutting edge to the serial stabbings. Bhumi Pednekkar again proves herself a reliable performer, so much superior in craft to the deadpan over-cosmetized actresses around her. She get terrific support from her costars particularly young Samara Tijori and Aditya Rawal.
Rawal as a drug addict conveys the body language of a man-child trying to disappear into himself. It is a triumphant performance that makes you wonder why we don’t get to see more of this gifted lad.
The real revelation is Samara Tijori who in the most complex part of a girl with a dual life, kills it.
This is a world where women vie to keep their heads on their shoulders in a man’s world. Skilled and strong, Daldal is one for the weekend.
