Everyone is familiar with the concept of noir, right? You have a hardboiled detective or police officer who is tracking down a dangerous criminal. Usually, there’s a femme fatale who has skin in this cat-and-mouse game. The twists hit you like a gut punch. The visuals reflect the intensity of the narrative with the help of dark shadows and silhouettes, while the music makes you nervous and tense at the same time. The genre’s lesser-known brother is slacker noir. The tropes are mostly the same, but all of it is seemingly doused in cough syrup. There’s an air of laziness to the whole thing, almost teetering on boredom. The films in this category have more jokes than their relatively serious counterparts, but some of them deliver plot twists that can give horror movies a run for their money. I’m talking about stuff like The Nice Guys, The Kid Detective, Inherent Vice, The Big Lebowski, The Long Goodbye, Rautu Ka Raaz, Under the Silver Lake, and maybe I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. Inspector Zende is a decent entry in this subgenre and worth checking out.
Set in the 1980s, Chinmay Mandlekar’s Inspector Zende tells the story of Inspector Madhukar Bapurao Zende. He lives in a room in a “chawl” in Mumbai with his mother, his wife, Vijaya, and their two children. His most trusted aide at his workplace is Patil. Things are pretty chill in his personal as well as his professional life. But all that is upended when Carl Bhojraj escapes from Tihar Jail, along with four henchmen, David Jones, Lalit Khatana, Ratan Tomar, and Subhash Tyagi. Since Madhukar had captured Carl once before, DGP Chandrakant Purandhare tasks him with doing it a second time. However, in all this time, Carl has improved his methods of evasion and, hence, is pretty hard to nab. Therefore, several expert officers are assigned to the case; they are Patil, Jacob, Patekar, Deshmane, and Naik. Madhukar and his crew’s investigation starts in Mumbai and takes them all the way to Goa. And while they start combing through the coastal state with great enthusiasm, as the pressure from union ministers and other law enforcement agencies starts mounting, Madhukar wonders if he should keep listening to his gut or simply give up.
Mandlekar’s opening narration for Inspector Zende kind of sets the bar too high by calling it a “story that is true but seems like a fantasy.” I’m sorry to break it to all parties involved, but there’s nothing really fantastical about this story. It’s actually quite the opposite, as it takes the process of chasing after a criminal who is on the run pretty seriously. And there’s nothing wrong with that. A lot of us forget that police work isn’t exciting or sexy. It’s mostly hours and hours of waiting, interrogating the townsfolk, negotiating with local authorities, collecting resources on a shoestring budget, and then waiting some more for the opportune moment. But I am kind of confused why Mandlekar tried to make it seem like it’s not. As for the narrative itself, Mandlekar has nothing really new to offer. It is your bog-standard crime thriller with a bunch of jokes sprinkled in. That said, I suppose the intent behind telling this story is noble. There have been countless biopics and incarnations of Charles Sobhraj, but none of Madhukar Bapurao Zende, and Mandlekar wants that to change. No, that’s not a call for more “copaganda,” but stories about people who stayed away from the limelight and kept doing the good work.
Mandlekar’s direction in Inspector Zende, along with Vishal Sinha’s cinematography, Meghna Manchanda Sen’s editing, Rajesh Choudhary’s production design, and Priyanka Castelino’s costume design, is great. The period-accurate aesthetics are on point. The music and the sound design are top-notch. And, on a scene-by-scene basis, all of this does come together for some really funny moments that I won’t spoil for you. But, after the halfway mark, the already “slacker” pacing of the film takes a nosedive, drags everything down with it, and never really recovers again. The whole thing kind of gets stuck in a loop where Zende and his team make some progress, Carl evades them, and the whole thing starts over again. Maybe the structure is cyclical in nature to put the audience in the shoes of Madhukar and his crew, and that point comes across quite well in the first half. Doing it again, but in a different setting—which is undoubtedly picturesque—just didn’t make sense to me. On top of all that, since the entire affair ends with a bit of a whimper, toiling through that repetitive narrative feels fruitless. By the way, Jim Sarbh’s hair situation—which is probably a wig—is an atrocity; he looks less like a womanizer and more like Pepe Le Pew. If that was the aim, well, good job, Sarbh.
Coming to the performances in Inspector Zende, Manoj Bajpayee has to do most of the heavy lifting, and he is pretty good at it. He doesn’t reinvent the wheel or anything like that. What he does, though, is enough to give us a peek into the mind of the real-life counterpart of the character he is playing. With all that said, I do think that Bajpayee has hit a wall. With the exception of something like Joram, it doesn’t seem like he is pushing himself as an actor. He knows that even if he sleepwalks through a role, he’ll fare better than his peers and those much younger than him. I mean, the man has given us stuff like Sonchiriya, Bhonsle, Gali Guleiyan, and Aligarh. Now, every law enforcer that he plays feels like a shadow of the ones he portrayed previously. I hope he breaks out of this cycle soon. The same can be said about Sarbh. I understand that he plays against type for Sanjay Leela Bhansali, but come on, man. He knows he’s more than capable of playing nuanced characters. But, here, he does nothing to elevate the material he has been given. In stark contrast to the leads, supporting actors like Girija Oak, Bhalchandra Kadam, Sachin Khedekar, Vaibhav Mangale, Harish Dudhade (his no-smiling policy is awesome), Onkar Raut, Bharat Savale, and Nitin Bhajan are far more interesting to watch.
Despite all my criticisms, I do think you should give Inspector Zende a try. Like a lot of “copagandas,” it does glorify police brutality, female characters hardly have any agency, and it focuses so much on the nobility of law enforcers that it forgets to treat them like three-dimensional characters from time to time. Other than that, yeah, the movie offers a morbidly hilarious and relaxing viewing experience. The visuals are colorful, and the music is, as the kids like to say, a bop. The performances are good enough to keep you engaged. And, most importantly, I think that it has its heart in the right place. A simple online search will tell you that Charles Sobhraj has been the source of inspiration for multiple books, movies, miniseries, and TV shows. But maybe this is the first time you are hearing about Madhukar Bapurao Zende. Does that sound fair to you? Why should the guy who has killed so many people get so many adaptations of his life story, while those who have toiled hard to nab him remain on the sidelines? I don’t know if this movie will bring about a change in the realm of true crime and its obsession with serial killers, but I sure hope it does.
