The Netflix series leaves you gasping, even if you have read the novel by Vikram Chandra.
When I heard that Netflix wanted to break down Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games into a series, I knew they were up for a huge challenge. But Varun Grover and his team of wonderful writers, backed by two directors (Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap) who have changed the way cinema is perceived in India, have delivered and how!
The narrative does not stray too far from the book – the gory image of a dead white pomeranian shocks us in the beginning, and the series picks up from there. Tracing honest cop Sartaj Singh’s (Saif Ali Khan) 25-day mission to protect his city, with the help of gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the series is gripping and true to the novel. It leaves you gasping, even if you have read the novel.
‘Sacred Games’ is the perfect choice for Netflix to bring out its first original series produced in India. No regular feature film could have let Motwane and Kashyap spread their wings and fly with such ease.
Violence, sex and abuses are in plenty in ‘Sacred Games’, but sometimes the scenes get too Bollywood-ish. The narrative is filled with cliffhangers and yet, at times, the series feels like a long Hindi film, with no end in sight.
The characters are cast in the Bollywood mould – an honest cop whose integrity has cost him promotions and personal relationships, a gangster whose rule is on the decline, and a team that is running against time to save a city. I felt my attention dip during scenes which showed policemen in dance bars or actors consuming drugs. These tropes are done to death by Bollywood and ‘Sacred Games’ could have avoided them.
The dialogues, however, are the big takeaway. Lines like “Bhagwaan ko maante ho? Bhagwaan ko l**d pharak nahin padta” (“Do you believe in God? God doesn’t give a f**k”), or “Guns, drugs, murders – these are small-time crimes, the big game is politics” will stay with you. They leave you chuckling in agreement, and also give a peek into the minds of the characters.
The soundtrack is phenomenal, and the background score manages to catch you right when your attention is dipping.
The series is multilingual, and the characters speak colloquially, mixing Hindi with English, Marathi, or Punjabi, just as we do. The language, therefore, helps the viewer become a part of the scene.
Pace, however, is a problem area. Given the fact that the entire plot revolves around a 25-day deadline, there seems to be no urgency in the script. There were times when I walked away from my laptop to get water, came back and realised that I haven’t missed anything significant. The narrative picks up pace in the last few episodes, but one wonders if an international audience would be so patient.
While many are drawing comparisons with ‘Narcos’ or ‘Fargo’, ‘Sacred Games’, for me, is a series that has its own unique appeal. Despite the viewer getting a ‘been there, seen that’ feeling every now and then, it is worthy of a binge-watch. ‘Sacred Games’ shows that India is capable of making top-notch cinema, and all it needs is the right platform.