Farzi, starring Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi in his Hindi film debut, follows a struggling artist who turns to currency forgery and a police officer with a murky background. Shahid portrays Sunny, who works part-time at his adoptive grandfather’s (Amol Palekar) struggling political magazine while also earning a little side income from his artwork. Michael Vedanayagam, better known as Vijay Sethupathi (or VJS), is hell-bent on putting an end to the country’s counterfeit note scam. Overall, Farzi is a gripping political drama, but there are times when the emotional and romantic threads cause the pacing to sag.
Nearly two years after the release of season 2 of The Family Man online series, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, better known as Raj & DK, are making a comeback with Farzi. The series’ dehumanising portrayal of Eelam Tamils and Samantha’s brown-faced performance as a Tamil woman garnered harsh criticism. As a result, some viewers, including the author of this review, were excited to see Vijay Sethupathi’s part in Farzi.
The show does an excellent job of establishing how and why a sideline artist becomes involved in money fraud. The complex web of criminals, dishonest politicians, and bureaucratic machinery that blurs into one another and facilitates such endeavours is also effectively weaved into a larger narrative. The programme at least tries to portray this conflict as one between loners, each of whom believes they are undermining the “system.” Even a performatively patriotic politician who is more interested in grabbing headlines that will help him win elections than worrying about the wellbeing of the country is offered as an intriguing minor antagonist. However, in its haste to devise a system that only gives the state more surveillance power, the series rapidly seems to lose sight of this message.
Then, if Farzi’s perspective on demonetisation added nothing useful to the discussion, why did he feel the need to do so? The show’s creators, Raj and DK, could have simply omitted the story’s discussion of the financial and psychological toll that demonetisation had on millions of us if they hadn’t felt that it deserved discussion. As if that wasn’t one of the few depressing comedies we had at the time while we waited in line outside ATMs at one in the morning, it instead goes lyrical about all the “security” features in the new notes. Who can forget the viral news anchor Swetha Singh’s false assertion that the (quickly discontinued) 2,000-rupee notes contain embedded nanochip trackers? It makes sense that the show’s creators did not want to imply that counterfeiting is a simple trick or something that should be tried at all. But the progression borders on ridiculous worship.
Numerous personalities in the series keep you interested. When his annoying mind voice is not almost constantly present in the programme, Sunny performs at his best. It does little to foster sympathy for him in our minds. On the other hand, it was entertaining to watch him commence his counterfeit money scam with such daring. He approaches it with a certain style and confidence that makes you want him to succeed.
Except when he is boring us with his inner thoughts, Shahid completely owns the character. It’s simple to imagine a young guy feeling defeated by the cards life has dealt him. Sunny has a simmering angst, which the performer perfectly conveys. The funny Firoz (Bhuvan Arora), Sunny’s closest buddy and partner in his new criminal enterprise, keeps up a steady stream of irreverent comedy that lightens the mood.
And it is amazing to see VJS perform his lines in Hindi while appearing to be completely at ease. According to reports, the actor insisted on doing his own dubbing after Uppena, his Telugu debut film, got criticism for using a dubbing artist. It’s challenging to replace VJS’s distinctive voice, especially for an actor used to playing complex personalities rather than cardboard cutouts. The actor’s quick witticisms as Michael Vedanayagam flow naturally into Hindi. Michael alternates between bullish tendencies to pursue his case in spite of the threats and lax taunts of powerful men. He becomes an interesting contrast to Sunny while leading a special task force. Even though Bollywood has a very low standard, it’s still gratifying to see a well-written Tamil character in a Hindi film, especially in light of The Family Man’s portrayal of Indian and Eelam Tamils.
Megha, played by Raashi Khanna, is an uncommon example of a complex female character. Megha works for the RBI and is also obsessively motivated to stop counterfeiting. Farzi focuses on the difficulties of being a single, working woman in a large city, having to avoid parental shame for being single, struggling to rent out a flat, and just being herself, in addition to her goals to halt the racket.
The show is saved by its humour and intriguing characters, such as Michael, Sunny, Firoz, or the dishonest lawmaker Pawan Gahlot (Zakir Hussain). The majority of the time, the cat-and-mouse chase is fascinating. Without resorting to the stereotypes that numerous film industries, including Bollywood and Kollywood, frequently dispense, Farzi also features Michael, a Christian character, in the lead and Firoz, a Muslim character, in an important supporting part. Bhuvan Arora delivers a funny, endearing, and nuanced portrayal that leaves you with the impression that Firoz could almost be someone you’ve just met.
However, the politics of the series continue to be disorganised. Michael’s background as a “encounter specialist” and the journalist who exposed him show how Indian film frequently celebrates acts of heroism. Filmmakers seem determined to ignore or disregard the stark reality of who is victimised by police encounters and the overlap with caste and class locations. In the end, Farzi’s message is distorted. The price of ambition and “duty” is basically an abuse of power by the numerous armed state agencies, which makes a mockery of human rights abuses.
The show’s pacing is slowed down by Sunny and his grandfather’s emotional struggle, which is an ineffective effort to give the plot more heart. Farzi, however, reaches its most tedious point when it persists on lecturing the audience about the follies of greed and counterfeit money, once more through Sunny’s pervasive inner voice. Sure, we do. It’s immoral and forbidden. Without taking the easy way out of being preached at throughout a well-made thriller, the narrative and the characters should convey to us the moral dilemmas of criminal activity. We could have tolerated Sunny’s mental speech at least if it didn’t bore us to death.
I’ll therefore paraphrase what I said about Sunny’s endless voice over in my description to a friend here, sans the profanity: It’s the tedious inner working of a man-brain child’s that is misguidedly convinced of its own brilliant intellect. For the rest of us, it appears to be a dramatised reading of a badly written, unfiltered blog.
You can watch Farzi right now on Amazon Prime.
