First Maharaja and now Bad Cop, Anurag Kashyap is having a moment with villainous roles. The auteur first registered in my head as an actor in 2011, when he played the schlemiel gangster Bunty Bhaiyya in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s philosophical crime-drama Shagird. The Tigmanshu film opens with Anurag getting arrested. He enters the jail compound as a sycophantic cop offers his subservience. In Aditya Datt’s pulpy, scrappy series Bad Cop, it seems like Bunty Bhaiyya never left the prison cell to meet his ultimate fate. He has rather become Kazbe, a happy-go-lucky mafioso who wields pistols atop escorts cuffed in his bed, gets bathed like an idol, and shakes his waist to the ‘Chinta Ta Ta Chita Chita’ song from Rowdy Rathore. Anurag seems to be having a blast, parodying the kind of baddies he once penned. If only the viewers of this series could share his amusement.
Directed by: Aditya Datt
Cast: Anurag Kashyap, Gulshan Devaiah, Harleen Sethi, Saurabh Sachdeva
Streaming on: Disney+ Hotstar
Bad Cop is adapted from the German series of the same name, in which a criminologist takes over the identity of his deceased criminal twin brother. Rensil D’Silva’s adaptation gives this premise a filmy spin. Karan and Arjun (both played by Gulshan Devaiah) are twin brothers on opposite sides of the law. Karan is a cop, while Arjun is a conman (think Deewar for dummies). Karan feels emasculated because his wife Devika (Harleen Sethi) has been promoted over him. Arjun, on the other hand, lets his honey-trapping girlfriend take the lead on con operations. After being falsely implicated in a journalist’s murder, Arjun seeks Karan’s help. Their bharat milaap (brotherly meet-up) happens amidst a hail of bullets as they get entangled in a set-up. They make a run for it but get shot before falling into a lake. Only one of them gets a rebirth.
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