‘The Buckingham Murders’ Review: Kareena Kapoor Khan Rescues a Shaky Crime Thriller

Director: Hansal Mehta
Writers: Aseem Arrora, Raghav Raj Kakker, Kashyap Kapoor
Cast: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Brar, Ash Tandon, Keith Allen
Language: Hindi/Hinglish

An investigative thriller is gripping by nature. It is defined by its relationship with the audience. The film poses a question; the human desire to seek answers does the rest. But this is also a curse, since we often mistake curiosity for engagement. The mystery becomes everything. The logic being: if it keeps us guessing, it must be good. The Buckingham Murders keeps us guessing, too, but that’s not the reason it works. In fact, as a whodunit alone, it’s pretty bland. A grieving detective is assigned the case of a missing child. The twist is corny; the red herrings are plenty; the least likely suspect is the killer (everyone else is shady); and the killer starts acting deranged the moment they are revealed.

That’s where director Hansal Mehta comes in. Not for the first time, the question he poses is ideological: What is this story really about? As in Faraaz (2022), its geopolitical context lies in the eyes of the beholder. The setting is Britain, but it’s actually closer. At first, the presence of Jasmeet Bhamra (Kareena Kapoor Khan) — a British-Indian detective who has just lost her son — feels like a narrative surrogate. She opts for a transfer, but her grief has no time to breathe. Her arrival is meant to unlock the commentary surrounding this new town. It’s meant to explore the religious unrest in the South Asian diaspora community.

The missing child is a Sikh boy named Ishmeet Kohli. The father (Ranveer Brar) mentions a “batwara” (partitioning) of his transport business with a Pakistani business partner. It’s not the most subtle metaphor, but it’s a necessary one. He now refers to his former friends as “woh log” (those people). The prime suspects turn out to be two Muslim teenagers. Gruff local officer Hardy (Ash Tandon) is a Gujarati NRI (non-resident Indian) man with a confirmation bias: he has no doubt that the Pakistanis did it. The air is ripe with communal tension. Even the veteran police chief, Miller (Broadchurch fans might pronounce his name differently), is convinced that the suspects are guilty. It’s an open-and-shut case. Especially when one of them confesses.

Stills from Kareena Kapoor in The Buckingham Murders

The premise evokes a show like Kohrra (2023), where the police procedural as well as the discourse are driven by natural prejudice over cold facts. There are no fathers, brothers and mothers; there are only Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. We see this through the eyes of outsider Jasmeet. She’s the only one attuned to probing deeper. She senses that the deeply ingrained biases of the town — whether it’s xenophobia or casual racism — are colouring the case. The implication is that the tragic murder of her own son has awoken her to a world beyond cultural violence. The “hate” of a hate crime is a plural emotion; it isn’t necessarily limited to tangible things like names and complexions.

There are inklings of this scattered across the film. For instance, the opening scene shows the public shooter responsible for the death of Jasmeet’s son on trial. His use of the word “invisible” foreshadows the central case. He is a victim of a larger societal malaise; killing simply became his device to be seen. There are hints in not only the misogyny enveloping Ishmeet’s family, but also the traditionalism within the Pakistani household. Their manner of conflict is palpable; it counts on seeing and perceiving people differently. There's a clue in how a suspect would rather be in prison for murder than face the consequences of his sexual orientation and substance abuse. The film follows these clues in an environment where patriarchy is so normalised that faith is the only medium worthy of noise. Jasmeet notices these signs because of her dwindling faith in humanity. For her, something like gender discrimination is not as visible as racial and religious discrimination. It’s always there — at the corner of every frame, every conversation, every home. She is alert to chauvinism because even her grief is not allowed to be seen.

In theory, then, the twist makes sense. Credit to the writers for that. The problem is often the execution. The background score, for one, is terribly jarring. It does that quintessential Indian thing of labelling each scene as a feeling: dark, nostalgic, melancholic, edgy. Every cut feels like a change of mood, creating the illusion that different movies — rather than moments — are stitched together. A lot of this stems from a tonal dissonance between the protagonist and the film. The Buckingham Murders treats Jasmeet as a character played by Kareena Kapoor Khan, the superstar. It’s why the soundscape is so mainstream. At one point, she goes for a drink with a colleague and a nightclub track threatens to play. Memories of her son are accompanied by the kind of music that conveys the commercial pressure of an album.

But Jasmeet is actually played by Kareena Kapoor Khan, the actor. The Mare of Easttown (2021) brief is apparent. It’s a mature performance, except it’s in a film that feels insecure about how restrained she is. She doesn’t talk a lot, so it’s as if the film-making tries to make up for it. Her reaction shots, in particular, speak volumes about Jasmeet’s cumulative grief. Much of the movie is just her listening to people lie and hide and tell stories; you can tell that their fictions pale in comparison to her reality. The way the film is shot, too, is more in sync with this character rather than the narrative she occupies. It’s not exactly Nordic-true-crime gloomy, but it’s atmospheric enough to suggest that the light of her life has recently been extinguished.

Stills from The Buckingham Murders

There are a few other false notes. Like a queer encounter in flashback, where the clumsy musical cue makes it look more sleazy than forbidden. Or the muddled nature of the crime, where early scenes are awkwardly edited so that they can tie into the final flashbacks. For example, a detective is shown stopping in his tracks. It’s clear he has found something important with his flashlight. But the scene jump-cuts to an underwater shot. The effort to obfuscate the viewer is too obvious.

The script also cushions a character’s bigotry by supplying him with a backstory of family trauma. It’s as if he can’t just hate the other community for the heck of it; his reason is that their drug habit almost killed his sister. Granted that it’s a tricky theme, but the smokescreen need not scramble the voice of the film. Similarly, the staging of Ishmeet’s dad — a man whose broken morality is supposed to make him a suspect — lacks ambiguity. Sometimes, thrillers give themselves away through the sheer detailing of the supporting cast.

In other words, The Buckingham Murders is the sort of crime drama that’s more rewarding to think about than experience. The subtext is easy to appreciate in hindsight. In real time, however, it feels generic. There is no dearth of tropes and gimmicks. Even the mistakes are familiar. It’s hard to be original, but it’s harder to be derivative, and still stay relevant. Maybe that’s what the genre means today. Perhaps the real suspense is no longer in the identity of a person. It’s in the identity of the film.