Kartavya

It does seem puzzling that Pawan is clueless about the social currents in his home town. He’s bursting with bravado and uprightness, but his inability to see what is groaningly apparent doesn’t help his case. It’s a credit to Saif Ali Khan that the 55-year-old actor not only passes as a 40-year-old character but also manages to keep a mid-scene snooze at bay through sheer charisma. Everyone performs very seriously and earnestly in a movie whose screenplay, also by Pulkit, isn’t trying to be anything but… dutiful. Everyone except Saurabh Dwivedi, a popular journalist in real life who has trouble posing as a powerful abuser.

An earnest and socially relevant crime thriller that's undone by its predictability.

On paper, Kartavya, also written by Pulkit, has all the ingredients of a gripping emotional drama. Yet somewhere between it's political intrigue and caste commentary, the film struggles to make you truly invest in it's characters. It begins on an intriguing note, drawing you into Pawan’s race against time and the question of how he will track down the culprits on the run. As the narrative progresses, the beats become increasingly predictable. Two major factors hold the film back. First is the antagonist, Anand Shri, who doesn't leave the impact the story wants him to. His henchmen repeatedly build him up as a terrifying force, but the audience rarely gets to feel that menace. Apart from a couple of dialogue-heavy scenes, the character remains distant and underwhelming.

The dialogues are punchy, and the actors did get their Haryanvi accent right. There are also fun pop-culture references sprinkled throughout, from Shah Rukh Khan jokes to Amrish Puri callbacks, that add flavour to the narrative. The background score and music go unnoticed, and that sometimes is the biggest achievement. But what makes Kartavya frustrating is that it is not a bad film. In fact, it is an important and brave one. But the film stops itself from screaming when it should have roared. Had Pulkit allowed the story to be messier, angrier, and more fearless, Kartavya could have had a far deeper impact. Instead, it remains a good-intentioned thriller with excellent performances and powerful ideas that never entirely reach their full potential.

It says something about the utterly generic Kartavya, a crime thriller set in Haryana, that the good guy, played by Saif Ali Khan is surrounded by a bunch of bad guys — a senior cop (Manish Chaduhuri) who keeps blocking Pawan’s (Saif Ali Khan) path, and a junior cop (Sanjay Mishra) who is a constant companion, basically playing the BFF trope, and not one of them has been given a characteristic that we haven’t seen before. The streaming rule 101 — Let There Be A Body Within A Few Minutes Of The Opening — is faithfully ticked off. The victim is a faceless woman, later identified as a journalist, taking refuge in this town, for no good reason that we are given.