Inspector Zende Review: Manoj Bajpayee leads a fun gang in a dull world

Inspector Zende Review: Story – The year is 1985, Inspector Zende (Manoj Bajpayee) is carrying out his daily duties as a police officer and a husband with the same monotonous pace until the news anchor screams that Carl Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh) (a fictional variation of Charles Shobhraj) has once again managed to escape from prison, and this time it is Tihar. Zende, who had caught him before, now takes up the task to track him down again and is later officially appointed. The cat-and-mouse chase begins, and Zende’s only mission in life becomes to catch Carl and put him back behind bars.

Inspector Zende Review:

In the multiverse of Manoj Bajpayee and his fascination with playing men in uniform, there is now an addition. Alongside the multiverse of Bajpayee is the world with different variations of the infamous criminal Charles Shobhraj. Films and shows at this point have explored the man who escaped multiple prisons across the world in several avatars. The last was Black Warrant (also on Netflix), where Sidhant Gupta gave a phenomenal performance in the Vikramaditya Motwane-created show. While it is difficult to top that iteration of the real-life criminal, Jim Sarbh takes the job in Inspector Zende. Does this fictionalised account of a true story work in all ways possible?

Directed by The Kashmir Files actor Chinmay Ma ndlekar, Inspector Zende, now streaming on Netflix, is a film that aspires to be clever, funny, and pulpy all at once, and not as though it is a novel aspiration. Films like Special 26 have already achieved that (ironically it also starred Manoj Bajpayee). While Inspector Zende is completely unlike the Akshay Kumar starrer, it aims to tell a story that, while retaining the gravitas of the crimes committed by the subject, also wants to build a pulp fiction tale around it. Here is a man who killed 32 innocent people just to continue his luxurious lifestyle. Injecting comedy into such a story is in itself a very tricky task.

Chinmay and his team take it up and shape Inspector Zende with a lot of unseriousness but also a reminder that this tale centres on a criminal who has committed heinous acts. Credit where it’s due, the writing does manage to build a solid team of police officers in the middle of this chaos with Manoj Bajpayee, a phenomenal Bhau Kadam, Harish Dudhade, Onkar Raut, and others. While Zende as their leader is celebrated but also mocked by his bosses, the rest are complete misfits in the world of chasing criminals, and a criminal as big as Carl Bhojraj. So when they set out to find him and bring him back, you know it is going to be a hilarious ride to witness. Everything is established quickly without wasting much time, and that sets the ball rolling fast, making us invested.

Also Read: Inspector Zende: Release date, what to expect, trailer breakdown, cast, and more about the crime-comedy drama

But what happens later is what hampers what could have been a rather fun watch. With elements that have the potential to be the most hilarious film, Inspector Zende chooses the route of being nothing more than mediocre. These cracks are visible when the main gang is phenomenal at their job but the world built around them is not strong enough to hold their art together. Imagine one of the police officers calculating the expenditure of the operation during the mission itself while wearing a lungi. Or the DGP (Sachin Khedekar) conducting a secret meeting for an undercover mission in a Mumbai chawl, where these men sit in a modest household and not around a glass table in a well-decorated AC conference room.

Inspector Zende has several brilliant scenes peppered across the screenplay, but they are never woven together to appear like a series of smartly written moments serving a single product. The pace shifts frequently, the tone changes drastically, and these jerks are felt throughout without the necessary smooth transitions. The film also forgets to give Carl Bhojraj a voice. You always hear about his wrongdoings from others and even see him commit some, but he is rarely given dialogues of his own. This makes it difficult to completely invest in him to the point where you desperately want Zende to catch him.

Manoj Bajpayee is brilliant in how he effortlessly moulds himself into this new variation of a police officer. He can make you believe in anything without resistance. Bhau Kadam has to be the highlight of Inspector Zende and this should be a reminder for everyone to give this amazing actor more work. Girija Oak deserved much more screentime and a stronger parallel story. Jim Sarbh brings depth to Carl, but the script restricts him from doing more.

Inspector Zende Review:

The new Netflix film aspires to turn a gory story into a pulp fiction-like narrative but loses that aspiration midway. Even a phenomenal Manoj Bajpayee and Bhau Kadam cannot cover up the shortcomings.

Inspector Zende is now streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more updates on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.