While cop films over the years have etched out personal and professional conflicts in an officer’s life to good effect, their portrayal is invariably diluted in the garb of commercial liberty. Khakee doesn’t. Dheeraj Hariprasad (Karthi) is an epitome of valour. The director’s realistic bent shows when a higher official parodies how a police officer in a film approaches an investigation in contrast to a real one. Impressive detailing, edge of the seat narration notwithstanding, Khakee goes too far with one chase after the other and its predictability.
Dheeraj’s mother pushes him to swear by his uniform, even at the cost of his life. The personal and professional dimensions of a cop aren’t pitted against each other in Khakee , the protagonist and the people around him always look at the larger good. Inspired by a series of dacoit attacks on households in interior Tamil Nadu in the late 90s, the film is consistently on the move as it traverses all over the country.
The lighter segments of Khakee are restricted to its initial hour, where Dheeraj finds his ladylove (Rakul Preet). Karthi utilises his comic potential to the hilt though the director doesn’t do much to distinguish Rakul from any other lively, chirpy a.k.a dumbed down female lead. Dheeraj’s no-nonsense approach often lands him in trouble, to an extent his wife jokes, ‘Why don’t you take bribes, we could avoid so many transfers’. She’s Dheeraj’s emotional anchor as the film progresses.
Like in the director’s first film Sathuranga Vettai , the battle between brawn and muscle is equally matched here. Khakee ’s cops are vulnerable, the goons always have an upper hand over those bound by the law. Dheeraj does great homework to understand the histrionics of Bawaria gangs, who date back to the pre-independence era. The segments where he plays around with the line ‘ Mein begunah hoon saab ’ while dealing with the accused evoke situational humour. Intermittently, the director takes regular potshots at the system and on how cops could go beyond being mere pawns in the hands of politicians.
The discussions on ‘wolf-traps’, extensive action sequences across buses, trains, jeeps are shot with great precision. Ghibran’s musical score to the raw violence is effective. Running close to three hours, the filmis let down by its uni-dimensional plot that lacks major twists and turns. Cast in a role that doesn’t endorse heroics, Karthi charts the emotional graph of his character with ease. Abhimanyu Singh plays a part who’s more animal than human. Khakee is an honest experiment that needed a tighter script.
Khakee
Cast: Karthi, Rakul Preet Singh, Abhimanyu Singh
Director: H Vinoth
Music: Ghibran
Storyline: A cop traces the wherabouts of a dacoit-gang and their peculiar series of murders
