The Night Manager Aditya Roy Kapoor Shines In  A Well Assembled Jigsaw Thriller

The Night Manager(4 Episodes, Disney+Hotstar)

Directed by  Sandeep Modi,Priyanka  Ghose

Rating: ***

It  is immaterial whether  you are familiar with John Le Carre’s  espionage  novel or not.  As a stand-alone piece of  kitschy art The Night Manager  works  just fine. The writers Sridhar Raghavan and  Sandeep Modi  make just the right switches  and  shifts  of  mood and location from the  original to the remake  , rendering the remake  so distinct that even those who enjoyed the  original would love the desi avatar  of  The Night Manager.

It is easy to miss out on the  nuances  that have gone  into creating this  selfcontained  world  of intrigue  and  suspense. Outwardly The Night Manager is a routine thriller  about an entrepreneur  tycoon Shailendra Rungta  moonlighting as  an arms dealer .

Anil Kapoor plays Rungta with the kind of archaic bland swag  that went  out of style  with Richard Gere in  Pretty Woman. He is  shown to be a sinister global criminal, a  passionate lover to a mistress(Sobhita Dhulipala, doing the femme fatale  for the umpteenth  time) and caring son to a  little  boy who  looks young enough to be  Rungta’s grandson.

Aditya Roy Kapoor who  plays the eponymous role of the  night manager  Shaan Sengupta, befriends all of  the three above-mentioned, though winning Rungta’s confidence takes time. The series has plenty of  it. The makers inform us that they  have just completed  four episodes and will continue the story  in July.

Although I  am not holding my  breath, the  storytelling is clenched,dreamy and steamy  enough to see me to the  next segment largely because Aditya Roy Kapoor creates  the kind of troubled  secretive hero that  that nudges Bachchan’s  Angry Young Man persona , and yet he is  his own person as the haunted hotelier  who can’t sleep because of his past, Kapoor manages to create  a hero  vividly  unravelling in  from of our eyes.

It is  a  treat to watch Kapoor evolve into such an effective actor. Anil Kapoor as the antagonist looks bored  rather than mysterious. I don’t think he came to grips with his character Rungta’s dual life and how Rungta  succeeds in merging the two contrary personalities.

The  supporting cast, especially Saswata Chatterjee  , Joy Sengupta and  Tillotama  Shome  is  first-rate. The girl who plays  the  Indian childbride  in Bangladesh  in the  first episode  makes  a very strong impact , more for her role than her character. There is a certain rhythm and flow in the way Shaan takes the  child bride into his care.

And yes, Imirtis will never taste the same  again.