Bhagwat Chapter One Rakshas movie review: Arshad Warsi, Jitendra Kumar break free from their image, but the film flatlines

But before he can safely settle in, he is pushed into a case which promises to rake up old, unprocessed trauma. A young woman has vanished, and her family is knocking on the law’s doors. How soon can Bhagwat promise the return of his daughter, asks a shattered father. In fifteen days, promises Bhagwat, with a dramatic flourish.

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Just how a cop can come up with that promise, the script never tells us. No serious investigator can claim that a case can be solved in a finite period, especially when he has just begun working on it. I couldn’t shake off the feeling of disbelief through the film, which takes us into dark, twisted alleys as Bhagwat and his team starts unravelling the crime. It turns out that there is more than one missing girl in the picture, and as they piece together the bits, the picture of a fiendish serial killer starts forming.

There’s mention of ‘love jihad’ (a fellow called Abdul is suspected as the culprit); there’s also a great deal of victim blaming — what was the girl doing talking on the phone so late into the night? Who was she talking to? The misogyny is most widespread amongst the cops who are meant to be solving the mystery of her disappearance: you almost hear a ‘she asked for it’, under official breath.

‘Bhagwat’ is also interesting in the way it provides the chance for a make-over to Jitendra Kumar, the affable Sachiv ji of Panchayat. Here he plays a Road Romeo who woos a shy young woman (Ayesha Kaduskar) with some nice touches: it’s been a while since the conversation between two potential lovers had this kind of feeling. Jeetu Bhaiyya manages to infuse his character’s creepy stalkiness with a kind of playfulness which allows us to smile past our unease: it’s broad daylight, and the girl seems to reciprocate, so nothing bad can happen, can it?

But those little touches in creating a town’s eco-system around how ‘good girls should behave’, and the freshness between these two doesn’t get enough play because the plot turns all too familiar and flat. We haven’t forgotten the series ‘Dahaad’, which features Vijay Varma as a serial killer who targets innocent girls, who are found dead in public toilets: almost all those details show up in, in almost the same sequence, making you wonder if those who were responsible were just indulging in a straight-up rip-off, or genuinely had no idea of the plot points of the show. The supporting cast tries hard, and there are a few sparks here and there, but not enough is made of them, and the prolonged court-room climax dulls whatever has gone on before it.

Kumar does succeed in proving that he can do more than bumble his way through Phulera, or coach aspirants with confidence. He had been getting strait-jacketed; with this role, he has broken free. Kaduskar builds on the promise she had shown in the Barjatya show ‘Bada Naam Karega’: you hope she gets the roles she deserves. As for Warsi, I’m just happy that he is not clomping about in a web series where he is a goon going by the name of Gafooooor: it may have given him the kind of visibility most of his recent films put together hadn’t, but it’s also turned him into an endless meme. Warsi deserved better than that role, as well as, for my money, this one too. An actor of his calibre needs better writing.

Bhagwat Chapter One Rakshas movie cast: Arshad Warsi, Jitendra Kumar, Ayesha Kaduskar
Bhagwat Chapter One Rakshas movie director: Akshay Shere
Bhagwat Chapter One Rakshas movie rating: 2 stars

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