Kaalkoot review: Vijay Varma is excellent in a show that has ideas but lacks focus

In Kaalkoot, Vijay Varma plays Ravi, the son of a poet/teacher who struggles to fit into a world that expects him to act hardened and sound muscular. (Screen grab/JioCinema)

In a scene from JioCinema’s Kaalkoot, a senior police officer confronts Ravi, who has recently tried to quit the force. “Police ki naukri karni hai toh shareer mein thori mardangi lao,” he says. It’s a scene that underlines the essence of a show that tries to illuminate fragility in places where it is neither welcome nor visible.

Anchored by a team of policemen, and led by an excellent Vijay Varma, who, for a change, isn’t the most toxic thing walking around the canvas of a story, Kaalkoot is sombre, revealing but also confused about what it wants to be. Directed by Sumit Saxena, it has a great many ideas, foremost of which is to gauge masculinity’s many forms under a shapeless, toxic roof. And though it soars in parts, its music and visual language dizzy allies, it never quite becomes the thing it sets out wanting to be.

Varma plays Ravi, the son of a poet/teacher who struggles to fit into a world that expects him to act hardened and sound muscular. Moreover, he is a part of a police team, where his colleagues regularly deride him for being a soft touch. Gopal Dutt is commendable as a toxic, sexist superior while Yashpal Sharma does a good job of acting as the shoulder that knows not how to weigh the world around him. In a scene, Sharma confesses to Dutt about hitting his wife. It’s eerie and affecting, but it could have aimed for far more depth than a passing moment of candour. Ravi and his station squad are tasked with the investigation of an acid attack. The victim here is played by the underused Shweta Tripathi. While they juggle with the details of the case, Ravi is also forced to contemplate the many ways toxicity translates around him. Marriage, virility and pretty much everything from society’s handbook about men, is thrown at him in fits of restlessness and condescension. Sometimes it’s his mother, sometimes it’s his sister or his colleagues. He obviously has secrets of his own.

On face value, Kaalkoot is a brave character study that wants to leaf through the police force’s morbid ideas of right and wrong. There are moments in this show that echo a lot about the way morality is dissected through biases, both gendered and social, by men and women tasked with upholding the law. The problem with the show, however, is its sagging pace and confused sense of purpose. The case under investigation never quite feels as urgent or as painfully provocative as it maybe should have. There is maybe a comment about inaction and indifference here, but the script doesn’t quite know how to frame its accusations either. Nor does it wrest from the sleepy interludes, characters deep enough to hold a bored gaze.

The focus on Varma, his soft, unassuming self, validates the premise but fails to build beyond the setup. Even well past the midway point, Ravi is a reluctant, soft-hearted cop oscillating between bouts of anger and spasms of kindness with neither occurring with any form of consistency. There is the hint of a kind man being coaxed into becoming toxic, and even though Varma seems ideal for the job, he is seldom assisted by a script that knows not of the targets it wants to hit.

That said, despite the challenges, Varma is magnetic, his minimal, unanimated rendering of a fragile soul stuck in a hard place, affecting. Even the backpack that he curiously carries along, on his interrogations, is an inspired touch to visually embed that aura of insecurity. As a man who feels he ought to protect himself, as much as he needs to also preserve his moral centre, save it from being overwritten. It’s a clever ruse, to talk about the dehumanization of our justice system, the irreversible rust that has made crime, especially against women, an acceptable part of our social design. It’s allowed men to suspect the victim, and as Kaalkoot shows, trivialize their suffering. This lack of sensitivity, the show argues, corrupts everyone. Even the ones boldly standing with one foot outside the police station’s door. This is their story, albeit far too muddled and disoriented.

In Prime Video’s recently released Dahaad, Varma played a sociopath on the opposite end of the spectrum. Here he is part-victim of the systemic othering of the weak and the unprejudiced. Eerily, the two roles look and feel similar, their contextual distinctions exacted by a mere change in uniforms. It points to an actor’s ability, his conviction to embody diametrically opposite characters, without stretching their tonality. Humanity, after all, is deeper than the skin, wider than any conservative stereotype and as accessible as it can also feel elusive. “Khali haath gaye toh phir se mardangi pe sawal uth jaega,” Ravi claims in a scene, underlining the malignant rigidity of a culture that though set up to empathize, does anything but. Here too Varma dissolves into the scenery, into the milieu of toxic, guiltless men all the while looking for the shoes he can fill, so he can disappear. It’s a deft, studious performance that deserved a better story.

Kaalkoot is now streaming on JioCinema