Khakee The Bihar Chapter Plunders  Bihar For  Thrills

Khakee: The  Bihar Chapter(Netflix, 8 Episodes)

Rating: ***

Although  plunging into the percolating  plunderland of Bihar, Khakee: The  Bihar Chapter hardly has any Bihari actors in the lead except Abhimanyu Singh who  plays  a honest frustrated  cop whose attempts to arrest a notorious  lower-caste  criminal Chandan Mahto is  forever  foiled by powerful politicians.The more he tries, the more we  feel his pain. If watching the  criminal slip  out of the hands of law  is  so painful, imagine what an insider  in this  fugitive’s  freedom must feel like.

Chandan Mahto, as played by Avinash Tiwari, is  a  notorious  social  climbers. Starting off as smalltime goon, he is  don Ravi Kishan’s  righthand man soon. As his  socially upward climb on  ladder crime , continues, we are introduced to  other anti-socials who  shoot on command  without  a  hint of remorse.

Khakee  succeeds  in bringing out the menace and danger that  rural Bihar  encountered  in  the  1990s. But it revels in  excesses. The shootouts are done on  authentic  locations, so that we get the feeling of being in an  actual bloody battle between the  law and  the  criminals.

However  the  second-half of the series  with  honest cop  Amit Lodha(Karan Tacker) tracking down Chandan with the  help of  a parallel  listening facility on the telephone,  is repetitive  and  circumvent.I fail to see why the series has to be  stretched  into  painfully prolonged  episodes, unless the  obligation to make  a  certain number of episodes  is contractual.

The   characters  do  not get an opportunity to grow in the stifling scenario. The actors are incredibly committed  and that’s half the bloodied battles won.Avinash Tiwari as Chandan Mahto stands  out. He is at once the hero of the downtrodden and  one of Bihar’s most wanted criminals at  a time when computers were just beginning to  become  popular.Ravi Kishan,  Ashutosh Rana  and  Jatin Sarna  are also  in  fuelled form. Other talented actors like Vinay Pathak and Anoop Soni  are wasted.

It’s  a world in  transition, trapped between  the dark past and an  aspirational  future.  Everyone wants to get  somewhere  using gun and  goon power.It isn’t a pretty world.