The real-life assassination of India’s premier, Rajiv Gandhi, in May 1991, shook and shocked the nation. After a grueling investigation, the coterie of culprits was caught. Happily, no corrupt cop was involved, though there was incredible red tape for such a prestige probe, especially towards the end of the investigation.
The story has been documented in a book named Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins, by Anirudhya Mitra, and that forms the background of this 7-episode series named The Hunt: The Rajiv gandhi Assassination Case. Procedural dramas, even in fiction or cinema, tend to be by nature plodding and stretched, and this one is no different.
The series is made for obvious reasons in both Hindi and Tamil, as the backdrop was Tamil Nadu and the culprits were affiliated to LTTE (The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers, a militant organization that fought for Tamil Eelam, a separate state in the north and east of Sri Lanka). The Tamil accents even for the Hindi version makes things authentic but quaint, but one wishes still that the docu-drama was speeded up.
Amit Sial plays the leader of the team, D.R. Kaarthikeyan, with aplomb, and heads a team of doggedly diligent police officers who put together the pieces of the puzzle with grit and rare integrity. Sleepless nights, sudden failures, official criticism from the powers above, clashes with the Tamil Nadu police—the obstacles are many and humongous. But they scythe through all these and come up trumps, nailing the one-eyed mastermind, Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa), but sadly not alive. However, Anjana Balaji as Nalini, Sai Dinesh as Murugan live to tell the tale of how things were set in place, apart from what was found out from interrogations of others and evidence that came in, sometimes through lucky breaks. The dry run conducted a fortnight earlier on Prime Minister V.P. Singh remains a chilling truth and is not known to many, though.
While the screenplay is leisured, the actors are all brilliant. Kaarthikeyan’s core teammates, Amit (Sahil Vaid), Amod Kant (Danish Iqbal), Ragothaman (Bagavathi Perumal), Radhavinod (Girish Sharma) and Ravindran (Vidyut Garg) are precise and hit the bull’s-eye in their sharply delineated characters. The ‘baddies’ are no less. Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa) is outstanding, while Anjana Balaji as Nalini and Sai Dinesh as her husband Murugan score high, especially in the jail sequence where Ravinder tricks them into a confession. Yes, the police torture scenes tend to become a shade repetitious.
Technically, the series is state-of-the-art and the most brilliant aspect of it is Sangram Giri’s cinematography, which reproduces the feel (as expressed in films of that era) of the early 1990s. Tapas Relia’s background score is excellent.
The script (Rohit G. Banawlikar, Nagesh Kukunoor and Sriram Rajan) and direction are first-rate. Kukunoor gets everything pitch-perfect and is in his element yet again after many great movies and the classic series, City of Dreams.
Another ace from SonyLIV, this one.
Rating: ****
SonyLIV presents Kukunoor Movies’ & Applause Entertainment’s The Hunt: The Rajiv gandhi Assassination Case Produced by: Sameer Nair & Nagesh Kukunoor Written by: Rohit G. Banawlikar, Nagesh Kukunoor & Sriram Rajan Music: Tapas Relia Starring: Amit Sial, Sahil Vaid, Danish Iqbal, Bagavathi Perumal, Girish Sharma, Vidyut Garg, Shafeeq Mustafa, Anjana Balaji, Sai Dinesh, Shruty Jayan, Gauri Padmakumar, Saurabh Dubey, Rajiv Kumar, Vishwajeet Pradhan & others
Related posts:
Haazri: A.R. Rahman pays tribute to Guru, Hema Malini receives Padma Vibhushan Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan Award
Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia receives first Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan award
Ustad Zakir Hussain conferred 2nd Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan Award
Sai Pariwar holds fundraising event in North Brunswick, N.J.
