‘Inspector Zende’ movie review: Manoj Bajpayee makes this chase for Charles moderately enjoyable

In the pantheon of real-life criminals that Indian filmmakers love to recreate on screen, Charles Sobhraj perhaps tops the list. The serial killer’s exploits are expounded with such reverence that the law enforcers appear pygmies in front of him. The latest being Black Warrant on Netflix.

Debutant director Chinmay Mandlekar’s Inspector Zende finally turns the tables on him by revealing what happens after his daring escape from Tihar Prison in 1986.

Though a worthy documentary on Madhukar Zende exists, it is surprising that Bollywood has taken such a long time to document the distinguished Mumbai Police officer who nabbed Sobhraj twice, without making a fuss. How it missed the attention of Akshay Kumar is a mystery!

Zende once remarked that he didn’t find Sobhraj particularly intelligent. One doesn’t know what Sobhraj thought of the police officer, but after watching Manoj Bajpayee’s portrayal, one feels that the Bikini killer underestimated the ordinariness of the family man.

Mandlekar follows Zende’s perspective of Sobhraj. He doesn’t romanticise his crime and renames him Carl Bhojraj. The reason may be legal, but the choice of name is parodic. One realises that there is a lot in the name. When Sobhraj becomes Bhojraj, the ostentatious aura somehow dissipates even though Jim Sarbh, the symbol of swag, plays the part.

It appears the makers have left Jim to fend for himself after conducting the look test. The talented actor struggles to flesh out a character that seems to have walked out of a fancy dress competition onto the film set.

However, Manoj makes the intrepid but mild-mannered cop come alive in quick time. After playing some intense roles, the actor is having some fun here. Playing Zende like a lower-rank variant of his everyman cop in The Family Man, Manoj turns the chase from Mumbai to Goa into a levitating trip without diluting the seriousness of the job at hand.

Easier said than done, Manoj aces the dual tone, and Mandlekar introduces observational humour into a police procedural to generate a series of heart-warming moments, making the predictability of the cat-and-mouse game pleasant for a weekend afternoon watch. It reminds me of the mellow, middle-of-the-road cinema of the 1970s and 80s, which has begun to feel like machine-made in the TVF era.

Zende pronounces Chantal, the name of Charles’ wife, in a vernacular fashion, and his stoic colleague corrects him. Instead of turning it into a recurring gag, Manoj and Mandlekar use it to provide a ringside view of the events in the lives of ordinary people as they solve an extraordinary case. The process of chasing a fleet-footed criminal is seamlessly segued into collecting milk from the neighbourhood booth. In fact, polishing the pretence off becomes the leitmotif of the thriller.

ALSO READ: Charles Sobhraj was cruel; wore many faces’

When the police officers have to assume aliases, Patil, the dark-skinned, portly cop masterfully played by Bhalchandra Kadam, introduces himself as Rishi Kapoor, inverting the iconography. Be it the police interrogation or the cops running out of funds in the middle of the hunt, Mandlekar sees mirth in the serious. A doting wife (Girija Oak), a supportive boss (Sachin Khedekar), the thriller is full of predictable tropes. Still, the good thing is that the makers don’t oversell, making one join Inspector Zende in this light-hearted hunt for the Serpent.

Inspector Zende is currently streaming on Netflix.