The new Prime Video series, Lukkhe, is the opposite of a Midas touch: every genre, every plot thread it touches turns into a dud. As a musical, it contains forgettable songs that have more "vibes" than "bite." As a show about artists, it displays no curiosity about the life or work of an artist. Sanober (Palak Tiwari) is a singer, and MC Badnaam (King) and OG (Shivankit Singh Parihar) are rappers, but as far as Lukkhe is concerned, these characters merely pick up a guitar or a mic, walk onto a stage, and start singing as if someone else had already written the lyrics for them. OG, at least, is seen exploiting writers to come up with lyrics for him, though the scene lasts only a few seconds—just enough to tell us that OG is no OG. These so-called artists don't go through drafts, rewrite songs, or search for creative fuel to make music. They just start singing whenever the series asks them to. Lukkhe is also a family drama, though once again, the details are meager. The flashbacks do little more than depict how the characters met each other. What's missing is the substance that renders such relationships believable. This includes personal confessions, intimate thoughts, subjective opinions on topics ranging from movies and music to politics and other aspects of culture.
Lukkhe elides these specifics in favor of perfunctory details that merely establish the basics so that the story can move forward. This approach is visible in the first episode itself, when Lucky (Lakshvir Saran) is sent to a drug rehabilitation center where he meets Sanober. Weeks pass in what seems like the blink of an eye, and all Lukkhe establishes is this: Lucky loves Sanober (and vice versa); she grows anxious while listening to OG's music; and, on the day they leave the center, the series heavily underlines how much Sanober loves her brother, MC Badnaam, and how far he is willing to go for her (Badnaam hugs Lucky only to warn him about the consequences awaiting him should he choose to hurt her). Predictably, all this information becomes relevant later in the plot. The series, after all, revolves around Lucky being forced to infiltrate Badnaam's "family" in an attempt to expose his drug-related shenanigans. This "family," apart from Sanober, includes Padmini (Kritika Bharadwaj) and Jazz (Nakul Roshan Sahdev). It's police officer Gurbani (Raashi Khanna), meanwhile, who sets Lucky up for this backstabbing operation.
Gurbani wants to eradicate drugs from Chandigarh, and her mission is personal. A flashback informs us why Gurbani is so hell-bent on the narcotics issue and why she sees Lucky as something of a younger brother, but again, the details are scant. Gurbani's younger sister accuses Gurbani and her father (Gireesh Sahdev) of neglecting her, and she makes a horrifying revelation. What's never revealed is why no one tried to connect with her or what the household actually looked like for the sister to seek refuge in drugs. Gurbani, during the flashback, seems empathetic; she doesn't come across as emotionally distant from others. Then again, Lukkhe merely offers fragments of the past. Its refusal to flesh out these details reflects not restraint but a lack of artistry and an intention to become just another pile of streaming junk. Director Himank Gaur tries to evolve visually after being terribly bland in Taaza Khabar and Dhindora. However, his progress, too, is—like everything else here—superficial. Colorful lights are switched on, and the sound becomes distorted whenever Lucky hallucinates about his dead friend, Aman (Sharad Joshi). What's more, Lucky's transition from the hospital to the jail and then to the courtroom is shown through dark backgrounds and a circling camera. The effect, though, never feels subjective. With characters devoid of inner lives and a director unwilling to engage intimately with them, the images become untethered from emotion and instead turn ostentatious. By the second or third hallucination sequence, I had already grown bored with Gaur's visual repetitions.
It's not that Lukkhe lacks the necessary ingredients to become engaging or emotionally involving. Given the kind of familial trust Badnaam and his gang place in Lucky, the revelation of the latter's true intentions sets the stage for a potentially grand melodramatic confrontation. As a story about a boy who loses his best friend to a drug named Demon, Lukkhe also had the potential to become a psychological drama about someone experiencing contradictory, push-and-pull reactions in the presence of the very substance that led to a reckless accident. In one scene, Lucky almost comes close to retaking Demon, but the series refuses to follow through on the temptation. Then there is the matter of Lucky working for Badnaam—the man responsible for manufacturing Demon and indirectly responsible for the death of Lucky's best friend. A more emotionally attuned drama would have made something meaty and messy out of this arrangement, but Lukkhe is so dramatically flat that, after a while, Lucky comes across as little more than a one-dimensional, morally upright protagonist who wants to end the supply of Demon and shield his girlfriend from danger.
In Lukkhe, just as the singers are never shown doing actual creative work, a student-athlete like Lucky is never shown studying or taking his passion for hockey with any real seriousness. He simply appears, disappears, and reappears for practice whenever he pleases, which makes the coach seem like the kindest individual on campus, if not on the planet. The coach briefly rebukes Lucky and orders him never to return to practice, though the threat carries no weight because Lucky is soon welcomed back into training anyway. In one episode, Lucky tells Sanober that he will gain admission into her college through a sports quota, yet what either of them studies—or plans to study—is never discussed (I'm still not entirely sure whether Sanober even attends college). One could make a list of Lukkhe's problems: 1) Padmini claims that brands want to collaborate with them and that they are receiving invitations to various podcasts, though nothing of the sort is ever shown. 2) A male cop is tasked with discovering the identity of Gurbani's informant, and he succeeds in the very next scene, even secretly clicking his photograph. 3) Lucky is terrified of speaking to Aman's parents because of the accident, but when he finally meets them, there is no catharsis, no heart-to-heart conversation. The encounter lasts only a few seconds. 4) There is an obviously AI-generated shot of cars taking a U-turn, which becomes irritating mainly because it exists within a show already overflowing with defects.
I could go on, but it hardly matters because everything points in the same direction: Lukkhe sacrifices both intellectual and emotional substance in favor of cheap thrills that aren't thrilling at all. On top of this, Gaur, rather than wrestling with the limitations of the material, surrenders to them and films the series with a showy sensibility that remains just as plain and average as the pseudo-documentary style infecting many critically acclaimed dramas. Lukkhe doesn't feel like the result of artistic imagination. It feels like a commercial product engineered to satisfy an algorithm. Its edges are neutered, and its performances are flattened to fit the script's intentions, which is why the actors merely convey what's written on the page instead of inhabiting their characters—they become live-action illustrations. Still, the actors possess something akin to a presence, and Gaur uses it not to fill out the characters' personalities but as a substitute for them. Lukkhe's failures begin with the writing and spread to its images and performances. Everything collapses like a house of cards, and all Gaur can do is employ a few flashy tricks to create the illusion of "style" and "panache." In doing a great disservice to the story's genuine potential, Gaur doesn't merely make something mediocre. He makes something actively bad. Lukkhe, in the end, is scrap.
Final Score - [2.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times