Netflix Class of 83 Review, new cop drama, is far from engaging, it lacked the grip a cop thriller serve to its viewers. While it starts at the right pace, it looses viewers attention. Bobby Deol after a long time, one would have thought will keep the narrative and action strong but he couldn’t salvage the film.
He remained the elusive Dean even in the drama, and his 5 men hog the scenes with aimless killing and brutality to set right the nexus between politicians and mafia.
Based on the S Hussain Zaidi book, pages of reporting and writing on real-life crime and gang-warfare in Mumbai, the characters in the film don’t contemplate the morality of their actions; neither do they question the deeds that they have been ordered to carry out. Instead, they revel in the violence, they believe in it.
Netflix Class of 83 Review: This cop drama is rusty, nothing exhilarating one would expect
Class of ‘83 goes back a decade, when Bombay was going through a huge turmoil. Cotton mills and their ‘mazdoors’ were being ground to the dust through a combination of political acts and powerful real-estate sharks with an eye on the vast spaces, in the heart of the city, which housed the mills.
Then there was illicit money to be made, an endless stream of it, through smuggling of gold, counterfeit currency, drugs, arms, and property. And fighting over the spoils were the various gangs of Bombay, whose only opposition came from an increasingly shrinking slice of the police force which still believed in law and order.
The film opens in 1982, when Vijay Singh (Deol) fetches up on a punishment posting at Nashik’s police training academy. Smarting from the double blow of a personal tragedy and a professional setback, the reluctant dean’s attention is caught by five ‘back-benchers’, Surve, Jadhav, Shukla, Varde and Aslam, with the requisite degree of smarts, loyalty, and a streak of independence.
This class of ’83, moves very swiftly from the police training academy cadets grueling scenes to quick-on-the-uptake-cops on the ground in Bombay, they become thorns in the side of corrupt cops as well as greedy ‘netas’, especially CM Manohar Patkar (Soni), and begin themselves being buffeted by the allure of the filth in the system.
Bobby Deol’s character, a veteran cop named Vijay Singh, speaks about the pillars of democracy — the government, the judiciary, and law enforcement — in biological terms. In one scene, he compares them to impenetrable fortresses.
Red-tape and bureaucracy, Vijay Singh feels, have gotten in the way of justice. And in an act of vengeance against the system for mistreating him, an encounter specialist, he comes up with a plan. Vijay, who has been sentenced to a punishment posting as the police academy’s dean, selects five young cadets with a penchant for independent thought, and enlists them as members of a secret squad. As an experiment, he says, he will release these five men as ‘anti-bodies’ into the police system. “Unhe bina jurisdiction our restriction ke gangsters ka encounter karne ki freedom hogi,” he says excitedly.
His characters should have been made more watch worthy as he is lost somewhere in the narrative. He is like a switch on and off.
Director Sabharwal seems to be in a tremendous rush to tell the story. He was sprinting through the motions, concerned more with getting from point A to point B than effectively fleshing out its characters. Apart from Bobby Deol, the young actors who play members of the brash encounter squad are rather talented.
Bobby Deol fans must have felt very disheartened with this film. While it the movie did have an opportunity to make is more intense, it kind of makes the viewers feel that it is a movie made in a rush. Netflix should rethink their content strategy , rather than churning out such class of movies, it must make it more engaging for the subscribers who pay more to watch films on Netflix.
Filmykeema Review Class of 83 swings between two extremes – the studied cynicism of seasoned men in uniform and the feigned insouciance of cadets trying to fit in. At both ends are sweeping cliches.
Cast: Bobby Deol, Hitesh Bhojraj, Bhupendra Jadawat, Sameer Para, Ninad Mahajani, Prithvik Pratap, Annup Sonii
Director: Atul Sabharwal