‘Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web’ Series Review: New Wine In An Old Bottle

A Neeraj Pandey-created film or series comes with a specific aesthetic: neither television plus nor streaming pulp. Or perhaps both at once. To be fair, this treatment has remained consistent over the years. You know what to expect from the filmmaking: physical momentum is used to manufacture the illusion of narrative intellect. There are those long tracking shots of characters walking importantly from one space to another and one mood to another. The camera and background score move faster than the plot; they work overtime to defeat inertia and convey a sense of coolth and cleverness. Even if people are merely looking at one another, the lens rotates around their bodies in circles and sometimes follows their gaze as if there’s a reveal of Big Foot at the end of every shot. There’s the fake-flashback formula; an incomplete scene or conversation plays out at first only for the story to later show the full scene/conversation that conveniently omitted the twist. And there’s the ‘cultural’ colour-grading: the Middle East is yellow-sepia, Europe is blue, India is yellow-blue, Africa is green, the sky changes tones like an errant disco ball rather than AQI markers.

Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web proudly subscribes to this aesthetic. It contains all of the above — and more. If not for the dozens of walking-talking and over-the-shoulder takes, the seven-episode series would’ve been two episodes lighter at the very least. The subject is notoriously unsexy: the Indian Customs Service at Mumbai International Airport. On the surface, it’s just a lot of scanning, waiting, glaring and paperwork. So the storytelling is perfectly primed to act sexy and racy to offset said subject. I don’t mean Emraan Hashmi and others strutting around in tight white uniforms like the terminal is a bachelorette in disguise. I don’t even mean the fact that Hashmi has such a self-assured and starry walk; it’s like watching an endless punchline in motion. Or maybe I do mean it, a little. But it’s mainly the way the series unfolds, employing every gimmick in the book, short of an item song featuring a gold-bricks-clad dancer slithering off a skyscraper. A detailed voice-over, spoofy backstories, establishing shots, re-establishing shots, intro sequences, a ‘Bella Ciao’-scored set piece in Italy, montage-sized episodes, slow-motion smirks, Ocean’s 11-shaped music — you name it.  

Taskaree revolves around a few good men and their battle to dismantle a global smuggling syndicate run by a Milan-based supervillain. (Milan shamelessly stands in for Rome at some point, and it’s a sub-par performance). A no-nonsense Mumbai Customs team is put into place by a panicked finance minister to make an impact before the elections. Honest and hungry new assistant commissioner Prakash Kumar (a suitably stoic Anurag Sinha) cuts through the rotten eggs and assembles a squad of 3 sharp officers: SI Arjun Meena (Hashmi) and his two old friends Mitali Kamath (Amruta Khanvilkar) and Ravinder Gujjar (Nandish Sandhu). One of them even gets a romcom-styled intro. Their mission is to take down the fabled Bada Chaudhary (Sharad Kelkar, playing a Hashmi-type character) and his vast empire, which has most of Mumbai’s finest on the payroll. The setup is extensive. It’s Smuggling-101 for the first few episodes, where entertainment is derived from the adventures of tense drug mules, human couriers, corrupt officers, flight patterns, systemic loopholes, and Prakash Kumar looking disapprovingly at everyone through his Charles Sobhraj-coded glasses.

The series stays busy here: curious and brisk in parts, distracted and campy in others. It’s a bit like that enthu-cutlet student who’s done so much research for the class project that he can’t help but flaunt it at the drop of a hat. The relentless staging suggests that Taskaree loves showing off its understanding — and its kitschy dramatisation — of the ecosystem. Call it vanity or indulgence, it’s hard to blame a series for overselling a theme that has seldom been explored in the mainstream before. Hashmi’s Arjun Meena is no white knight; the characterisation tries to riff on the greyness of the actor’s roles as cops and crooks over the years. Arjun is strangely introduced as someone who doesn’t mind earning a cheap buck when not on duty. We aren’t told why he was suspended, but the implication is that he bends the rulebook. This reputation is useful when we learn of Priya (Zoya Afroz), an air hostess (and platonic interest) he’s recruited as an informer to infiltrate the syndicate. At first Arjun’s intentions look shady, thanks to Hashmi’s turn in Gangster (2005), where he honey-traps an outlaw’s girlfriend only to betray her. But Arjun forges a sincere bond with Priya, and you almost forget about how easily she agrees to do the deadly work of a professional spy. In short, I like that Arjun is supposed to be noble without seeming so; he’s more street-smart than his colleagues, and therefore an interesting ‘hero’.

It’s normal to expect the production value of an elaborately-mounted show to be convincing, if not authentic. But I found myself admiring Taskaree’s use of airport spaces, crowded terminals, duty-free shops, runways, officers and airplanes in a deeply bureaucratic country. It’s never easy to simulate or recreate bustling environments to shoot in, never mind packing the frames with the energy of strangers transiting, arriving and departing. Taskaree may not look great, but that’s more of an artistic flaw than a logistical one; it puts in the hard yards and doesn’t skimp on the details. I also like that Prakash Kumar is technically the protagonist of the show. He’s the one who comes in to break the rot and defy his superiors; he’s the one who inspires his officers to do more than stare suspiciously at baggage belts. Basically, he’s the backbone without being the guy they tell stories about: reminiscent of the editor that Liev Schreiber so elegantly plays in Spotlight. For a while, it almost feels like the casting of Hashmi is a red herring and it’s more of an ensemble cast where everyone is equally responsible for the mission. Until he’s not. 

In terms of screen presence, it’s impressive that Hashmi hasn’t changed his style over two decades (the gag in The Ba***ds of Bollywood feels true), but the constant flux of commercial acting around him makes it look like he’s having a comeback moment. He’s ‘new’ and vintage at once, a testament to his durability as well as the directors who have finally learned how to milk his alternate-star charms. The show isn’t too political (it ignores the caste identity of Arjun’s surname), but it has timely things to say about preserving integrity in difficult vocations, about being the “minority” in a compromised landscape, or about sacrificing one’s ideals in a system rigged against truthsayers. Given that modern journalism and storytelling are in the same boat, it’s almost ironic that the series judges those who choose money and survival over courage and duty. It’s hard not to admire the baddies, who are at least clear about where their priorities lie.  

The problem with Taskaree is that, like many crime thrillers of its ilk, it refuses to quit while it’s ahead. Its nature is different from its personality; there’s that inevitable itch to stop trusting its world and instead resort to plotty theatrics. The second half of the series is just this: predictable twists and random betrayals and stretched suspense and unnecessary turning points. It insists on spinning a web when there’s no need for one. There are signs when a high-stakes bust at the halfway stage messes up the moral transformation of a corrupt Gujarati officer (Hemant Kher). Across a chase and near-abduction, it’s never clear if he’s still murky, is forced into honesty, or chooses to change for the sake of his colleagues. Taskaree goes downhill after this. The syndicate, for instance, never seems slick or competent enough. Bada Chaudhary and his boys (including the underrated Jameel Khan) make the most rookie errors: whether it’s trusting a new girlfriend, integrating her, falling for a Customs’ fakeout, or re-trusting that same girl later.

The series could have ended with the culmination of that halfway bust, but what’s a Hindi thriller without the Bollywoodisation of its material? So you get Bada Chaudhary vowing revenge and making 1980s-level threats. You get a primary character doing all the things a person does before they’re about to die tragically: be happy, get emotional, find closure, earn a resolution, smile a lot. You get another primary character breaking bad only for the sake of a cheap twist; it blindsides not only the viewer but the series itself. You get the storyline bending backwards to make Hashmi the sole protagonist. You get people who start behaving like antagonists only once they are outed by the script. You get a humbled woman going back to her ex-boyfriend after dumping him for being too honest. You get a shady minion turning out to be a solid mole. You get a cat-and-mouse game, where even a real mouse seems to be capable of outsmarting the dreaded syndicate. You get Arjun Meena seeing visions of a late friend offering advice when he hits a roadblock. You get a cameo that could’ve been an email. And you get a hurried climax that deflates hours of character-building.

There’s a special kind of disappointment reserved for shows and movies that fumble the novelty of being first-movers in a genre space. You only have one chance to tell a story about Indian Custom officers, just as you have one chance to tell a meta-fictional romantic thriller (Roy) or a Mumbai firefighting drama (Agni). It’s often a privilege and a burden. Originality is a rare beast in the age of remakes and revisionism, so tempering it with formula is committing to neither side: much like the aesthetic of this series. I now call this special kind of disappointment the ‘Taskaree Syndrome’. It has nothing to do with actual smuggling, but everything to do with the smuggling of flashy tropes into the cautious confines of new-age streaming. Sometimes, being bingeable isn’t the endgame; being watchable is.