‘Black Warrant’ Netflix Series Review - A Prison Drama that is Simultaneously Good and Forgettable

The first thing that comes to your mind while watching Black Warrant is, "Wow, the actors are excellent!" Look how Zahan Kapoor, as ASP Sunil Kumar Gupta, tries to act tough. His "toughness" comes across as a performance - a mask he wears to assure his colleagues and warn the prisoners that he is strong and capable. His colleagues, Mangat (Paramvir Cheema) and Dahiya (Anurag Thakur), and his superior officer, Tomar (Rahul Bhat), are able to see through his facade. In fact, even Charles Sobhraj (Sidhant Gupta), the serial killer who is now a prisoner in Tihar, immediately recognizes Sunil's weaknesses. Gupta's Charles is a charismatic manipulator. The extra emphasis he puts on the alphabet "t" when saying "thank you" or "birthday party," for instance, sounds so seductive (and distracting, too) that you, despite the character's reputation, become his fan. When Charles, with a cigarette in hand, looks at Sunil from a distance, he seems like an attractive, powerful big shot. Should you be responding with such reverence to a serial killer? Black Warrant likes to challenge your perception. It dares you to consider convicted criminals as humans.

Consider what happens in the second episode. We meet Ranga and Billa, who are accused of murdering a 14-year-old boy and raping and killing a 16-year-old girl. A text before the end credits informs us about Ranga and Billa's crime as well as their execution (on the 31st of January 1982, they were hanged). If you were to find that text in a newspaper, you would quickly see Ranga and Billa as monsters. The episode, however, shows us two people crying, begging, and asserting that they are innocent. We learn that the police tortured them. Ranga blames Billa for the crime, and Billa blames Ranga. Who is telling the truth? Can someone like them even speak the truth? Black Warrant suggests that we can never really grasp the whole truth. A convicted criminal can be a victim of pressure and torture inflicted by police officers. The series forces us to view Ranga and Billa as innocent. It asks us to have pity on them. Only a filmmaker like Vikramaditya Motwane could have dared to touch this material (he and Satyanshu Singh are the creators). A hack could have confined the story within the boundaries of black and white or could have cheaply pushed the buttons of the audience. Motwane, though, encourages introspection. He wants us to confront uncomfortable thoughts.

When a Vikramaditya Motwane production works, you feel as if you have reached cinematic heaven. The biggest strength of Black Warrant comes from the relationship between the directors and the actors. Tomar tells Mangat, Dahiya, and Sunil to work as a team, and this team spirit seeps through the cast and crew members. The actors, instead of waiting for their cues, listen and react to the dialogue. It never seems as if anyone on the screen is simply regurgitating their lines from the script. Almost every actor, no matter how big or small the role, disappears into the skin of their characters. Zahan Kapoor occasionally converts himself into an exception. You catch him acting here and there, as there is a trace of exertion in his performance. To discover what's wrong with him, put him alongside Rahul Bhat. Bhat conveys all his feelings with subtle changes in his voice or facial expression. When Kapoor twitches his lips or moves his eyebrows, he makes sure it's all noticeable to the eyes of the camera as well as the audience. Even when Sunil pauses for a moment before following Tomar's order to join him at the lunch table, you feel that Kapoor is working according to some guidelines of acting school.

One can understand why Motwane got attracted to the book written by Sunetra Choudhury and Sunil Gupta. It contains juicy details about the routine and hierarchy that exists between the Tihar workers and the Tihar prisoners. But it's your usual you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours stuff combined with (blanket) scams, illicit affairs, family feuds, and corrupt bosses. I have not read the book, but the scene where a prisoner's leg is pulled downwards to speed up his death process rings false. The logistics of such a situation are not explained because Motwane is merely interested in making his point in bold letters. He says that the people reading the death sentence aren't different from the people who are hanged or thrown inside the prison. Inside Tihar jail, your money and your status determine your fate and your condition. Also, one can draw some parallels between the onscreen world and the real one. The jail is overpopulated (like India). The man sitting on the top promotes corruption for a "peaceful existence" and manipulates one group of people to attack another group of people. At one point, someone states that Hindu-Muslim politics is done by influential politicians for their own convenience. The man on the top doesn't care about those who live at the bottom.

An armchair activist can feel intelligent by mining these points from Black Warrant. Motwane gives the viewer enough substance to chew on, but the show isn't exactly a satisfying experience. Dahiya's affair with the SP's wife and Sunil's romance with a girl with whom he talks on the phone just happens (there is a sense of casualness - a dismissive shrug - attached to these developments). The former contains a clumsy moment involving the casual placement of an earring, while the latter is there to simply help Sunil with a lawyer-related matter later. The love story that starts between a student inmate and a college girl is half-heartedly executed (what does she exactly do during her research? How does she do her job?). It also merely ends up as a "point" about giving second chances. The roots of corruption in Tihar jail are deep, and this realization affects you dramatically, emotionally only during the scenes where Rajendra Gupta's character decides to walk on the right path without any support (things obviously conclude on a bleak note). Black Warrant, from the beginning, prepares us for an arc where a dutiful, honest Sunil would end up as amoral as someone like Tomar. The show, however, goes in a different direction. Mangat, Dahiya, and Sunil eventually behave like a team, all right, but everything feels rushed in the final episode - the execution is perfunctory and awkward.

Tomar, Sunil, Dahiya, and Mangat have familial complications. Tomar is separated from his wife, but what led to this divorce? The wife hates Tomar's job, though this merely leads you to wonder whether she didn't have any knowledge about his profession before the marriage. You can say, "Well, the wife realized how bad the job is after the marriage," but what triggered this realization? Did she go through an ugly incident? Mangat's brother apparently joins a militant group, but what happens to him after that? Does he ever return home? Mangat drinks and sobs, but his sadness is quickly brushed aside during the last episode. You feel as if Motwane has discarded many pages from the book. The result is sufficiently watchable and sometimes enjoyable - a crowd-pleasing entertainment. However, it also simultaneously feels thin and forgettable. Despite the heaviness of Black Warrant, it doesn't necessarily stay with you after it ends.

Final Score- [5.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times