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Delhi Crime Season 2 Review : Immensely Gripping And Intricately Harrowing
What: Delhi Crime Season 2 - Immensely gripping and intricately harrowing, this is a worthy successor to the Emmy-award-winning web series.
OTT web series Delhi Crime Season 2 synopsis
DCP Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) and her team are back and this time they are in the pursuit of a gang of deadly criminals who violently prey on older people by breaking into their houses, bludgeoning them and robbing them off all their belongings.
The quick successive attack on the vulnerable senior citizens confirms Delhi's worst fears and sends the entire Police machinery into a tizzy.
While Delhi grapples with the brutal murders of the Aroras and the Mongas, Vartika's team traces the criminals' roots to a notoriously infamous 'Kaccha Baniyan' gang that operated in the capital 3 decades ago.
"We only recover such mangled bodies in cases of accidents" says one of the forensic experts during a postmortem.
The cruelty imbibed in the serial killings and their grave nature adds to the havoc in the investigation, which is already suffering jeopardy due to a leaked CCTV footage from an insider, an enraged public and pressure from the top entities in the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Vartika (Shefali Shah) inducts an old timer cop Mr.Chaddha (Kuldeep Sareen), although a perennial cribber, who was intimately familiar with the modus operandi of the Kaccha Baniyan gang, and succeeds in nabbing the DNT (Denotified Tribe) suspects.
Creator Ritchie Mehta plucks an episode from the 'Khaki Files' written by Neeraj Kumar which goes by the name, 'Moon Gazer' and director Tanuj Chopra builds an impeccably tense and intriguing world with the material in hand (credited with seven writers). Chopra's observations are nuanced and astute, that goes beyond the astounding depths of the investigation procedural and delves into the troubled lives and domestic turmoil of his characters.
Vartika's daughter is slipping into gross academic irregularities, ACP Neeti (a brilliant Rasika Dugal) is facing discord with her hubby (Akash Dahiya) over an impending hill-station trip, Rajesh Tailang is having issues with his daughter's matrimony.
They are tormented souls but prioritize their duties. DoP David Bolen lenses their predicament with an unmistakable and moody atmospherics.
Delhi gets a tremendously dark setting, something which attributed to my dismay, and the background score by Ceiri Torjussen, nurtures the ominous character of its dingy by lanes.
With the expletive-spewing granny of a suspect who is brought into interrogation, Chopra successfully conjures up an authentic milieu of the lower strata of the society.
The design of the referred action sequence by Sunil Rodrigues, is unnerving and commendable - without any depiction of blood or gore.
Delhi Crimes particularly rests on Shefali's shoulders. As Vartika, she not only exudes depth and grit from every pore of her being but also conveys the rare streak of weariness with her exhausted, brooding eyes that consumes her mental balance. She is tough on her subordinates, tougher on the criminals and confident in handling her superior, played by the suave Adil Hussain.
It is the very nature of the crime that not only bewilders her but also haunts her team. Rasika and Rajesh support her in every frame. They are a troika who keep you riveted and consistently engrossed in the five episode series, each with a running time of 50 odd minutes each.
There is hardly a light- hearted moment, except one where you get to see a smiling Vartika when someone in her team becomes a butt of a frivolous prank.
But what impressed me the most was the character of Tillotama Shome. As an aspiring beauty parlour owner, she gets into the DNA of the creepy and unassumingly evil Karishma, asking the viewer to absorb her messed-up psyche. I interviewed Shome this week and when asked what excited her the most to play a character on the opposite side of the law, she replied it was the action sequence which she loved doing and the shades which contradicts a morally upright personality. Drenched in clumsiness and complexity, she delivers a surefooted performance.
"Seldom do we understand why they commit such crimes.They don't even have the answers in their eyes, it haunts us", Vartika's lumped-throat narration makes you ponder what drives those individuals to such a degree of heinous activities.
I enjoyed Delhi Crimes season 2 without batting my eyelid. I am sure, as a crime genre fan, you will also do.
Going with 4 stars out of 5. The web series is streaming on Netflix from 26 August 2022.
Ahwaan Padhee, is an IT Techie/Business Consultant by profession and a film critic/cinephile by passion, is also associated with Radio Playback as well, loves writing and conducting movie quizzes. More By Ahwaan Padhee