The Big Con:
After two successful seasons of The Family Man, there was interest and curiosity about what Krishna DK and Raj Nidimoru would do next. Their film and TV work has been unpredictable so far.
In Farzi (on Amazon Prime), they pull off the terrific casting of Amol Palekar, Shahid Kapoor, Vijay Sethupathi, Kay Kay Menon, who provide good reasons to watch it. The subject is unusual (perhaps with A Man Of Action providing inspiration), but also a bit dry. Chasing terrorists and sundry enemies of the country is far more exciting than a currency counterfeiting operation. So the eight-part series has to be padded with family drama and emotional heart tugs.
As a child Sunny was abandoned by his father and grew up (Shahid Kapoor) with his grandfather (Amol Palekar), best buddy Firoz (Bhuvan Arora) and family friend Yasir (Chittaranjan Giri). The grandpa runs a newspaper–Kranti Patrika— that nobody reads, but it gives him a purpose in life. Sunny is an excellent artist, but has to manage with small change selling paintings on the street to haggling morons. Then, the press is in danger of shutting down due to debts and Sunny gets the bright idea of using his artistic skills, Firoz and Yasir’s printing expertise, to make counterfeit notes.
Meanwhile, maverick cop Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) makes it his mission to stop the circulation of fake currency in the country and finds a kindred soul in earnest Reserve Bank employee Megha (Rashii Khanna) who has the technical know-how to spot bogus notes and wants to be in on the special task force with the unfortunate acronym CCFART, put together to nab the counterfeiters. The man behind the racket is Mansoor Dalal (Kay Kay Menon), who lords it out in a mansion in Jordan.
Megha has helped make a machine and app to spot fake currency, but somehow Sunny’s notes are so good that they get past the gadgets. It is only a matter of time before Mansoor finds and recruits Sunny and Firoz to make currency notes for him. He charms Sunny by paying for the grandpa’s brain surgery, and after a point, when needs are taken care of, greed takes over.
While the plot (co-written by Raj, DK, Sita Menon, Suman Kumar) stays within the thriller zone, there are terrific sequences, like escaping the hawk eye of Michael and team to smuggle a huge amount of currency into India—they use the real-life incident of a ship headed to the breaking yard in Alang running aground at Juhu Beach. However, the series keeps derailing itself going into Michael’s troubled marriage to Rekha (Regina Cassandra) and estrangement from his nerdy kid he wants to “turn into a man.”
Then there is the lazy plot convenience of Sunny easily wooing Megha, so that he can keep track of what the task force is up to.
The hour-long episodes lurch from adrenaline-pumping to yawn-inducing. Whenever Vijay Sethupathi and Kay Kay Menon are on screen the show perks up; Michael gets the rage and wicked wit of the character, as he keeps blackmailing a minister (Zakir Hussain) to get what he wants, while Mansoor is hilarious as a jumped up thug with pretensions and a “Vincent Van Goog” on his wall.
It is tough to feel much sympathy for Sunny, who does not even have the excuse of being truly anti-establishment for falling into crime. It is strange that the educated, middle-class man with artistic aspirations speaks like a tapori. While the other actors, immerse themselves into their parts, Shahid Kapoor’s performance is too look-at-me-I-am-a-star, till the last episode, when he pulls his act together and captures the nuances needed; hopefully the inevitable Season 2 will throw greater challenges to his talent.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
