‘Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness’ Review: A For Effort, Ajay Devgn, Atul Kulkarni. But Why Are Female Characters So Blah?
There’s a running joke that women’s idea of a self-care Saturday night in, most people would think, would be watching rom-coms with the girls. But really, it is pouring ourselves a glass of red wine, ordering takeout and watching crime procedural dramas and true crime documentaries. As a woman, I can vouch that this is the truth. My idea of a quiet weekend indoors while I was dealing with the monthly crime scene in my pants was to wine, dine and watch Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness, a dark crime thriller marking the OTT debut of Ajay Devgn on Disney+ Hotstar. The six-episode first season directed by Rajesh Mapuskar and produced by Applause Entertainment in association with BBC Studios India, is a remake of the British series Luther (starring Idris Elba) and has a cast that includes Raashi Khanna, Esha Deol, Atul Kulkarni, Ashwini Kalsekar, Tarun Gahlot, Ashish Vidyarthi, and Satyadeep Misra.
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What’s Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness about?
Rudraveer Singh is a cop in the Mumbai Police’s Special Crimes Unit, who has a knack for thinking like criminals. And not just your run-of-the-mill ones. As the ‘Special Crimes’ is an indication, he specialises in psychopaths and twisted minds, because, we’re told ad nauseam that Rudra often lives and teeters at the edge of darkness himself. Now, the logical question to ask here is why? What is it about Rudra or his life or his past that makes him the way he is? Why is he living in the darkness? But of course, there are no answers, and the only sane one could be that he is a sharp cop who probably studied behavioural analysis a bit too deeply.
Anyway, Rudra is fresh off a suspension because of his actions in a previous case—he tends to solve cases by working outside the purview of law, and this is just one of the professional repercussions. Of course, his boss thinks he is an asset, even if he tends to upend work desks and damage government property in the office on the regular. And his friend Gautam and junior Prabal know he is problematic, but usually leave it at that with an admiring smile for Rudra’s other capabilities. A personal repercussion of Rudra being who he is—dark, emotional, aggressive—is his broken marriage with Shaila, a humanitarian lawyer, who is already seeing someone else.
The six-episode first season has a new case in each episode where Rudra cracks cases involving some very twisted killers by delving into their psyche and understanding their modus operandi (MO). However, a remnant of the first episode is redhead child prodigy-turned-possible-psychopath killer, Aaliya Choksi. She develops a weird fascination with Rudra, and he with her, and their’s is a bizarre relationship bound by their… yes, you guessed it right, darkness.
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Rudra doesn’t bring anything new to the table. But it is new for an Indian show to go this unabashedly dark
See, I grew up watching CSI, NCIS, Castle, and Criminal Minds for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And Mindhunter, which came much later in the timeline, was pretty much a nightcap. Criminal Minds, especially, with its 15 seasons worth of psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers, rapists, terrorists, and the intense criminal profiling done by the BAU (Behavioural Analysis Unit) is a crash course on this genre. What’s more, the profiler characters in these cases are all more evolved versions of Rudra, and so are the criminals too. So for me, the cases presented in the show, how they were written, how they played out, how they were solved, none of it was new or shocking. In fact, I could predict some of it too.
That being said, what fascinated me about Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness and kept me hooked was that perhaps this was the first time that an Indian crime thriller was being this unabashed in its portrayal of crimes and criminals. There’s a lot of blood and gore, and the actors who play these criminals have done a commendable job in bringing forth that darkness. I’ve been waiting for Indian crime thrillers to come of age in this aspect, and for that, applause for Rudra for really pushing the boundaries with this one. I watched almost half of the episodes late in the night with lights turned off, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t get uncomfortable and jumpy at some points, like one involving a blood-drinking artist and another case involving an emasculated man who turns into a serial killer.
I do want to mention though that apart from the cases, the rest of what is happening in Rudra is very inconsistent. One minute, it feels intense and looks like it’s going great. The other minute, characters do some really stupid shit, which makes you wonder how are they even holding the jobs they’re holding with such questionable decision making! A lot of what goes wrong in Rudra’s life is not even his fault and has nothing to do with his darkness or a fallout of his actions. It’s just people around him making bad choices and him bearing the brunt of it. Maybe, we need better writing for these characters, but more on that later.
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Rudra Is the perfect debut vehicle for a star like Ajay Devgn because he gets to play to his strengths
Last week I watched The Fame Game, starring Madhuri Dixit. And this week, it was Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness, with Ajay Devgn. Both are massive superstars of the big screen, making their debut on our smaller, phone screens because that’s where most of our country watches this stuff. OTT is a space where the character and the story are more important than the actor, and any actor who can make themselves disappear so that the other two shine through, wins this game. I saw that happen with Aranyak, Raveena Tandon’s OTT debut. However, it’s interesting to note that when stars like Madhuri and Ajay make their debut, keeping their larger-than-life personas intact actually worked in their show’s favour, if it was played well.
Ajay Devgn as Rudra is pretty perfect. He has played a cop before, but one who is mostly macho style and swagger, and big on the theatrics of it all. In Rudra, he doesn’t make an entry atop two vehicles, but he still manages to bring the intensity of his big-screen persona to his character. His smiles rarely reach his haunted eyes, and h walks around as if he is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has often played roles where he is a man of fewer words and more intense glares, and it’s the apt look for someone like Rudra, who gets his knowledge about what makes people tick by observing human minds and people’s behaviours than by talking them up.
The character’s name, Rudra, indicates the association with the deity Shiva, and all the traits are embedded well in the character. His rage, how he is a destroyer too, how he treads the line between good and bad, how as one of his colleagues pointed out, there’s enough ‘zeher’ in his life. And of course, his ability to use his sixth sense, or teesri aankh, to see what others cannot see. So you’d think that when Rudra is angry, it would be a terrifying sight. However, IMO, that was the least appealing part of Devgn’s performance for me. It is almost comical when he is shouting at people, as opposed to when he is just exhausted, disappointed, or silently glaring at them with a piercing stare.
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The cast does its best, but why are the female characters so blah?
If the big screen is being lit up with an Ajay-Atul jodi this week, as their music for Jhund gets major love, the small screen also had its Ajay-Atul jodi. Ajay Devgn and Atul Kulkarni as co-working cops and BFFs have a nice no-nonsense chemistry that I wanted to see more of. Kulkarni is always such an indomitable presence on screen, and one of my favourite actors from this lot. The rest, like Ashish Vidyarthi and Tarun Gahlot too do a competent job. But my biggest complaint is with the way the female characters are written. Ashwini Kalsekar, another brilliant actor who is capable of so much more, barely gets screen time.
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Raashi Khanna as Aaliya is impressive (I love that hair; it’s kaafi cliché to give the negative female character red wavy hair, FYI), but again, that fascinating relationship they’re trying to build between her and Rudra is never effective, mainly because they never spend enough time convincing us why she’s interested in him. She keeps talking about it, in so many words about darkness, our old friend, but I too am not convinced why she does what she does, threatening people, hurting them, taking big criminal risks to her person just to help this random dude. Aisa kya obsession hai bhai? Isn’t she a child prodigy working on some space project? How is she always around?
The heaviest bit of criticism, I reserve for Esha Deol and her character Shaila. My God, she is boring, and once again, I don’t get why Rudra is obsessed with this woman who has absolutely nothing to offer. Her dialogues make me yawn, Esha can’t deliver them properly, and there’s not a smidgen of the lawyer she is supposed to be in the way she conducts herself. I can say that because I studied to be one. She’s so… ordinary, so blah, that I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Rudra, let alone the other dude Rajiv, would want to be with her this bad, even after she was literally cheating on them both with each other. I couldn’t watch most of those scenes because of her and because it made Ajay’s Rudra super emotional and breaking-things wala angry, and as I told you before, that was just comical to watch.
Verdict
Have I mentioned that the title track ‘Inaam’ performed by Ananya Birla, composed by Salvage Audio Collective and penned by Rajan Batra is kaafi haunting and effective?
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Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness, despite its components being predictable, managed to be a pleasantly surprising package to me as a whole. I give it an A for effort, by the director and his team, because the show does look good and keeps you hooked, even if it doesn’t do justice to the city it is set in oftentimes. Also, an A for the two A-ces it has in its cast, Ajay Devgn and Atul Kulkarni, and another A that deserves a little more effort in terms of character writing, Ashwini Kalsekar. With a little fine-tuning of its characters, who really need to get smarter, and its female characters, who need to get more to do instead of being so uni-dimensional and blah, this could be a show that really adds a new chapter in Indian crime thrillers.
I hope the next season gives us more on what makes Rudra, Rudra. The show is teetering on the edge of greatness. Just a little push!
Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
