Gangs Of Vancouver:
This crime show is set in Canada, and is titled Kanneda, because that’s how Punjabis pronounce it. The characters are Punjabi migrants who have settled in Vancouver, after escaping the Sikh genocide of 1984. They suffer blatant racism, but most of them, like the protagonist Nirmal aka Nimma’s family, keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.
Nimma (Parmish Verma) would have had an unremarkable life too, but he did well at studies and sports, so a jealous gora wrecked his future. On the other side of the desi community are people like Sarabjit (Arunoday Singh), who runs the drugs trade in the city, and is in the crosshairs of Indian origin cop, Sanjay Rawat (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub). A respected member of the Diaspora community is Ranjit Bajwa (Ranvir Shorey), who has made it big by assimilating with the locals, and wants his wife (Supreet Bedi) to enter politics, ostensibly to help his people, but with an ulterior agenda.
Team up with his buddy Daljit (Aadhar Malik), Nimma wants to make it as an underground Punjabi rap singer, but opportunities are tough to come by for brown-skinned people. Nimma also happens to be in love with Daljit’s sister (Jasmin Bajwa).
Quick on his feet, and fearless in the face of violent crime, Nimma ends up joining hands with Sarabjit. But the Chinese gangs and the Mexicans are muscling in, and Sanjay is snapping at his heels, so Sarabjit’s business is in floundering. Nimma steps into the void.
But for the fact that Nimma is played by the popular rapper and musician in real life, Nimma has very little spark on screen and the character is written so that he is hard to like. He may have reason to be angry at the discrimination Indians have to put up with, but he enters the arena of crime casually, and has no qualms about being in the drug trade that affects people of all races, including Indians. He does draw the line at human trafficking, but has hardly any redeeming features. He is not the kind of guy a viewer can root for—he is not an innocent trapped into the netherworld of the drugs trade. On the other hand, he is not evil and ruthless enough to be fascinating.
Based on a story by Sudipto Sarkar and the late filmmaker Nishikant Kamat, written by Sarkar, Arora, Sandeep Jain and Rajiv Walia, Kanneda, is like so many Hindi films made in the past, about the Mumbai Mafia, gang wars and hidden powers pushing the buttons of the criminal underworld in a city. Vancouver offers a change of scenery, otherwise the show could well have been set in any Indian city.
The actors include familiar—and competent faces—like Shorey, Ayyub and Singh, but there is a lot of amateur acting too by other supporting actors, which gives the show an uneven look.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)