Amazon Prime Video’s Indian Police Force review: Rohit Shetty’s streaming debut is mellower, but ultimately wasteful

Created and co-directed by Rohit Shetty, Indian Police Force should really be called Delhi Police Force. The show is obviously, unapologetically mass. (Screen grab from trailer/YouTube/PrimeVideo India)

“Police ki naukri koi sarfira hi kar skta hai,” an officer of the maligned Delhi Police says in response to a senior’s inquisition in Prime Video’s Indian Police Force. There is a touch of melancholia to the casual declaration, and it hints for the first time in Rohit Shetty’s sprawling police universe, at softness and vulnerability. It’s also indicative of the demands of streaming that require more than just testosterone-fuelled exuberance to power a story. Shetty’s cinema is about raw, masculine firepower, but in his streaming debut, he mellows down, considers the guardrails of trauma and grief on the edges of swashbuckling violence. Unfortunately, these considerations are footnotes in a series that feels too unabashed, corny and deafening for the intimate viewing experience of streaming.

The first episode of Indian Police Force is a whirlwind 30-minute sprint towards a fragmented setup. Delhi is under siege; bombs planted in the capital city’s key locations have to be hunted and prevented from going off. Tasked with the job are Delhi Police colleagues Vikram Bakshi (Vivek Oberoi) and Sidharth Malhotra (Kabir Malik), two unremarkably earnest police officers. Bakshi is a family man who makes statutory statements about the importance of those around him. In one sequence, while walking through Lodhi Garden, he compares them to the ‘basic’ yet fulfilling role trees plays in our life. It isn’t the worst form of exposition you’ll hear, but it feels staged despite the actor’s best attempt.

Into the mixer of a police force going after the nefarious but forgettable terrorist, played by Mayyank Taandon, there is Shilpa Shetty’s intelligence officer Tara Shetty and the glorious repurposing of Mukesh Rishi as the man spitting orders and discipline at subordinates. Shilpa Shetty, who doesn’t look like she has aged a day, is serviceable and so are Malhotra and Oberoi in roles that really don’t demand much of them. Malhotra is given a poignant backdrop to play to but precious little space to ruminate or flesh it into something meaningful. His backdrop of trauma exists like this nail dug into the wall that someone forgot to hang something worthwhile on. It’s there but with no significant life force to commit.

Sidharth Malhotra and Shilpa Shetty in director Rohit Shetty's Indian Police Force, streaming on Amazon Prime Video. (Screen grab/YouTube/PrimeVideo)

Created and co-directed by Rohit Shetty, Indian Police Force (which should really be called Delhi Police Force) is obviously unapologetically mass. Cars and SUVs are either blown or bulldozed with regularity, bullets aimlessly dispensed, like much of the dialogue while men and women parade in and out of conflict-ridden spaces with the guise of flattery. There are things to like as well. Once that odd, messy and somewhat rushed setup is out of the way, there is a sprawling sense to the narrative that travels across Indian states and cities. It does feel like a nation-trotting, proudly desi show. The action sequences, for streaming’s scale, are well done. A scene atop a ferry in Goa’s waters is so dizzyingly unique, the camera to ludicrously unruly, it can feel both sensational and disorienting. It’s just the Shetty way of doing things.

Streaming also seems to have pushed Shetty to write at length, if not necessarily better. In comparison to his flat but bullish police officers, the designate villain seems to have an alternative life, a bit of an arc and a prickly inner conflict with shades of both kindness and confusion. The fact that the creators choose to reveal him at the outset, suggests a more intimate study of villainy and malice, as opposed to the routine bad bullies that populate the director’s films.

The intent’s possibly there, as the stretched limitations of streaming act a sort of negative catalyst toning a gung-ho director down to rare moments of contemplation. Sadly, this act of tenderness is nullified by everything we know and have come to expect of Shetty’s over-the-top filmmaking. Speeches are pronounced, bombastic manifestos read out as Delhi is turned into this surreal city of ruins. Even casual police get-togethers take place on this bizarrely lit rooftop restaurant overlooking Old Delhi. Again, the word that comes to mind is stagey.

Not everything is bust with Shetty’s streaming debut. This is a calculated attempt at bringing mainstream bombast to the relatively highbrow etiquette of streaming. It has the look, the texture and confused grammar of an experiment. Like a poking device fashioned to check if one of Hindi cinema’s most successful mainstream directors can adapt his instruments to the small screen. The actors soldier on and so does the director through his renown, and technically adept, larger-than-life methods. But Indian Police Force feels like a thundering prodigy of the kind of cinematic heritage that relies on giant screens and ear-splitting sound systems to drown out the desire to seek nuance and deftness. On streaming, maybe this vacuum has to be filled by life-sized meaning if not spectacle-sized transcendence. Some formulas maybe are too massive for inch-sized mobile screens.

Indian Police Force is now streaming on PrimeVideo.