Writer-director Pulkit has quietly become one of the most prolific filmmakers strutting around Hindi cinema these days. Red Chillies Entertainment’s blue-eyed boy has had four releases in the last two years, with two more currently in production.
His finest work to date is his previous team-up with Netflix—2024’s Bhumi Pednekar-starrer Bhakshak. His latest, Kartavya, is a cousin of that film. Kartavya is not quite as concentrated, focused, and hardhitting as Bhakshak, but wrestles with similar themes of lone heroes taking a stand against injustice, systemic corruption, and the power structures that allow those at the top to prey on children.
Meet Pawan (Saif Ali Khan in fine form), SHO of the fictional north Indian town of Jhamli. The opening scene sees his fellow officers, led by his right-hand man Ashok Ji (Sanjay Mishra continues to be one of the best things about Pulkit’s films), cutting a cake for Pawan’s 40th birthday (the film makes it a point to tell us his age).
The festivities take place outside Jhamli Station, which looks suspiciously like Mumbai’s Bandra Station. It makes you wonder if Jhamli, too, has a growing armada of Boojee Cafes.
But the revelry doesn’t last long. On Pawan’s watch, an outspoken, brave senior journalist named Reema Dutta (who, in spirit, could well be Bhumi Pednekar’s character in Bhakshak, all grown up) is shot and killed whilst investigating the nefarious activities of godman-like spiritual leader Anand Shri (a smirking Saurabh Dwivedi struggles to make him interesting), known for radicalising and abusing minors.
Despite the interference and threats from his corrupt senior officer, Keshav (Manish Chaudhary shines even without a cigar in his mouth), Pawan soldiers on to bring Anand Shri to justice.
Saif Ali Khan In Fine Form
But, promising as it is, that’s only a brief part of the plot. Pawan is also trying to save his brother Deepak, who’s on the run after falling in love with a girl from a different caste.
The couple’s decision to elope has Pawan’s father (Zakir Hussain), the local Panchayat, and the girl’s brother (Panchayat’s Durgesh Kumar, another frequent Pulkit collaborator) all out for blood, wanting to find and kill the couple, as is tradition. The result is a familiar but effective rage against the mindset machine narrative.
Pawan’s fight is with the power structures that allow families to give their firstborn to a godman in the name of faith and that allows bloodthirsty men to brutally murder those who dare go against tradition and mess with the social order, as if it were a Tuesday.
The problem is that the film isn’t able to convey where Pawan’s liberalness is rooted or where his coming-of-rage arc stems from. He charges through the narrative like a man transformed. A man who’s always been a part of the very system he now looks to oppose, having had his eyes opened to the horrors around him. But what incites this transformation is unclear. Is it that he turned 40? Or that his brother is now on the run for his life? Is it simply generational? Is his algorithm different from those around him?
It’s why he risks feeling like a protagonist born the moment you press play, or an Article 15-style privileged outsider rather than a member of the very community he seeks to challenge. Unlike Dahaad’s Anjali Bhatti, for example, where the refusal to accept oppression is rooted in a lifetime of female rage and being on the receiving end of the very patriarchy and casteism she refuses to be subjected to.
Still, it's a rough edge that’s easy to overlook thanks to Saif Ali Khan. I can’t remember the last time he was this enjoyable to watch.
Be it his cocky growl when Anand Shri’s men try to take his gun; the smirk on his face when he first locks horns with Anand Shri; the compassion in his eyes when he meets Harpal (Yudhvir Ahlawat), the 16-year-old boy who’s been radicalised by the spiritual leader; or the burst of rage when he corners his own father for threatening his brother Deepak.
As Harpal, a heartbreaking Yudhvir Ahlawat is terrific as the scapegoat on the run. I just wish writer-director Pulkit was willing to convey his trauma rather than have him spell it out to us. More than Anand Shri himself, it’s the scene-stealing Saharsh Kumar Shukla as his head goon who brings the chill as the far more unsettling antagonist.
Elsewhere, the always excellent Rasika Dugal is given painfully little to do as Pawan’s wife.
A Coming-Of-Rage Story
There are other issues, too. Kartavya feels too rushed. It’s so swept up by plot and efficiency and hurtling towards its destination (and a twist we can see coming a mile away), that it doesn’t leave enough breathing room for us to take in this world, these characters, and the dense fog of violence looming over them.
Conceptually, the final stretch of the film takes bold, brave swings. I just wish the craft and staging of the three final confrontations were able to better underline and emphasise the gutpunch shock value of what takes place.
Still, despite some customary on-the-nose moments, Kartavya works well as a moody thriller that has its “message” felt rather than screamed at us. One that acknowledges that there is no victory or justice to be found here. Perhaps the very act of waking up to smell the horrors around you, and realising that the crime is coming from inside the house, is the greatest act of resistance.
Kartavya releases on Netflix on 15 May.
(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)