Class Of 83

Shah Rukh Khan's own production house, Red Chillies Entertainment has decided to produce web movies and web series for Netflix. Somehow their content hasn't been able to connect with audiences as much as they intend to. Netflix Hindi movies have earned a name that they disappoint the viewers mostly. Except for Radhika Apte movies, most of them failed in initial days of Netflix India launch. Recently, they found some sort of success with Indian shows like Sacred Games, Lust Stories. But most of the Indian movies that released directly on Netflix ended up disappointing the viewers.

Now, Class of '83 marks the entry of popular hero, Bobby Deol into the OTT platforms content world. With his debut movie, he created a sensation, can his OTT debut also become such a hit? Let's discuss ...

Story:

Dean Vijay Singh (Bobby Deol) earns huge name for his heroics in Mumbai Police. As a punishment, he is made into Dean of the police training academy. He doesn't like to take classes and he wants to kill himself. Class of '83, his first batch has five youngsters who are more interested in becoming policemen for the duty sake than to make money out of the power, it gives them.

He identifies their passion and decides to train them as assassins. They graduate, get postings and united, they plan out encounters of criminals. For this mission, Vijay takes permission from the Minister (Anup Soni) and IG, his friend. They keep answering to human rights commission and other committees that the encounters are not planned. Vijay has a final target in his mind but before he can touch him, his group of boys, face a personal loss. What will Vijay do? Will he achieve his target? Watch the movie to know answers...

Analysis:

Viju Shah's background score tries to bring the 80's and 90's flavour back but the movie doesn't really get that 80's masala feel back. Hence, the background score feels out of place most of the time.

Cinematography by Mario Paljac is the best thing of this movie. Visuals stick to the rustic Mumbai of 80's setting while it changes with the mood of the scenes too. Manas Mittal's editing could have been better as few scenes drag too much. He could have tried to reduce shot lengths or slightly change the frame rate, to keep the pace consistent. Some scenes needed time and some needed to be edited out with faster cuts.

Writer Abhijeet Despande tried to stick to the original Hussain Zaid's book, Class of '83 but the film suffers with length of the scenes and most of the action being said through exposition than shown through visuals. This could be choice of the director but writer Abhijeet could have tightened the proceedings with even sharp writing and enjoyable dialogues.

Director Atul Sabharwal tried to make the movie a balance between action dramas and realistic film with artistic setting. That doesn't bode well with the material he has in his hands. Movie needed to have more interesting conversations and characters but even Bobby Deol kind of a performer too suffers with rather non-interesting material. He tried to sell the act but his deep voice modulation doesn't suit the film at all. Some scenes suffer due to his voice modulation as well.

With more than half the film being used as a set-up, the final drama doesn't really take off the way we expect or the makers have intended to. It feels like a sober paced wannabe Ram Gopal Varma action drama that missed it mark by miles. Film could have been a nice fun filled action drama had the director did not go for making it too serious. For most of the runtime, you don't feel like he wanted to make very heavy drama too. May be that confusion has lead him to make such a not here not there film.

Verdict:

Film tests your patience if you are expecting a good action drama with some masala fun. Even if you're expecting a hard-hitting drama like Shool, this film disappoints you. On the whole, we can say that this is another disappointing Netflix Hindi Film.