Suresh Triveni’s latest movie Subedaar is set in a fictitious Wild West-type town somewhere in the badlands of North India. Kokh is a den of lawlessness in the clutches of a single criminal family.
Babli (Mona Singh) is running an illegal sand mining racket from behind bars through her factotum Softy (Faisal Malik). The gangster’s biggest obstacle is neither a boy’s death at a sand-dredging pit nor the child’s grieving mother Ranju (Snehalata Siddharth). Babli’s ease of doing business is interrupted ever so often by the shenanigans of her step-brother Prince (Aditya Rawal).
Fond of generalised debauchery that includes needless killings, Prince has terrorised Kokh. It’s a minor miracle that Babli and Softy get anything done with Prince around. And it’s a major miracle that Army officer Arjun (Anil Kapoor) chooses this hell-hole to retire in.
The screenplay by Triveni and Prajwal Chandrasekar concocts a reason for Arjun to be in Kokh – he’s there to patch up with his daughter Shyama (Radhikka Madan) and settle private matters. Arjun appears to have been unaware of the existence of Babli and her posse. But when it’s time to channelise his inner John Wick, Arjun is able and willing.
Arjun isn’t the only cowboy around. In a parallel track, the spitfire Shyama is waging her own war against a lecherous classmate.
Subedaar is out on Prime Video. The Hindi neo-Western is characterised by random provocations and standoffs just so that Anil Kapoor and, on occasion, Radhikka Madan, can right the town’s broken moral compass. Neither Arjun nor Shyama appears to have a sense of self-preservation despite their surroundings, which suits Subedaar just fine.
Prince’s endless evilness, Babli’s futile frustration, Shyama’s questionable efforts to protect herself, Arjun’s super-human feats, the matter of the dead child and then a missing gun – the 142-minute Subedaar plots itself into a corner. The overwritten script, which proceeds on two tracks and then several, can’t quite bring all its strands together.
The main action is split between Arjun-versus-Prince, with Softy and Babli somewhere in between, and Shyama versus her tormentor. Everybody else is kept busy too, including Saurabh Shukla as Arjun’s Army buddy. Khushboo Sundar has a cameo as Arjun’s wife.
The production is slick and good-looking, the increasingly preposterous events dusted in yellows and blacks by cinematographer Ayan Saxena. The action-heavy vigilante thriller has a deus ex machina that’s a hoot for the right and wrong reasons.
Anil Kapoor grabs the opportunity to show off a mean streak and physical prowess, but Arjun’s absence of layers wears him down. Radhikka Madan’s Shyama deserved better than being boxed into one confrontation after another.
The baddies are the more memorable players. Aditya Rawal admirably throws himself into playing a hyperbolic meanie who deserves everything that comes his way. Prince toys with Arjun as might a beast with its prey – a scripting contrivance that costs him dearly, as it does the film too.
Mona Singh and Faisal Malik are striking too – Singh chilling in a handful of scenes and Malik perfectly cast as the beleaguered Softy. Their villainy produces grim laughs at times – a welcome contrast to Kapoor’s glowering hero and Madan’s tacked-on heroine.
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