Taish
Ratings: 2.7/5
Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Producers: Nishant Pitti, Deepak Mukut, Bejoy Nambiar, Shivanshu Pandey, Rikant Pitti
Genre: Revenge Drama
Language: Hindi
Release Date: 29 October 2020
Streaming on: Zee 5
No. of Episodes: 6
Star Cast: Pulkit Samrat, Kriti Kharbanda, Jim Sarbh, Harshvardhan Rane, Ankur Rathee, Zoa Morani, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Saurabh Sachdeva, Abhimanyu Singh, Armaan Khera, Saloni Batra
Plot:
Rohan Karla and Sunny Lalwani are best friends from their childhood days. Sunny goes to attend Rohan's younger brother Krish's (Ankur Rathee) weeklong wedding in a scenic country estate in the UK. The boys look at this as an opportunity to catch up and let loose - unabashed and fun revelry dotting the weeklong affair. Somewhere else in the dark grimy corners of South Hall London, a violent criminal family of moneylenders is headed by Kuljinder with his two brothers Pali and Jassi (Armaan Khera). Pali has been planning to quit the family business and start life afresh with Kuljnder's wife Jahaan with whom he has been having an affair. But fate has other plans for him. Both these worlds collide when Kuljinder comes to attend the wedding in the countryside. A past secret connected to Rohan and Kuljinder sparks an incident of violence, which then kicks starts a chain of violence changing all their lives drastically.
Review:
Taish is a six-part limited series, with under 30-mins episodes each. This Bejoy Nambiar directorial doesn’t offer much originality, both in - concept and treatment.
The three male leads of the film - Sunny, Rohan, and Paali are all flawed male characters who are busy fighting huge male machos and care less about how it would affect the people around them. Rohan deals with his trauma with lazy acceptance. Sunny needs an outlet to let go of his own past guilt. And then there is Paali, who is violent and unpredictable, and yet a tragic figure in his own life. While Sunny and Rohan portray shades of the elite, meanwhile Paali mostly speaking Punjabi, is dark and gritty, dealing with mob violence.
The women in their lives try soothing their anger and egos and in turn damage their own peace. Jahaan who rebelling against her marriage to Kuljinder by sleeping with Paali loses her convocation mid-way. Aarfa, who suffers emotionally for being a supportive girlfriend. Sunny’s pregnant sister has her own past trauma.
Jim Sarbh as Rohan is layered and delivers a nuanced performance. His character finds an edge over others not just because of the way it has been written, but also with the finesse Jim slips into his part.
One of the biggest problems with the series is the character development and their arcs. There are so many instances that question the logic behind the plot twist. For instance, Samrat's character of Sunny enters jail to serve a sentence and gets out of it in a mere few days so easily with the help of a lawyer. The plot conveniently changes to move the planned story forward. More than logic, there is no surprise factors or a proper flow to the story!
As for the narrative, there is expectedly a lot of violence and fuel to seek revenge. The film’s suburban London setting and background score is mellow and compliments the moody tones well.
Talking about the screenplay of the film, the end of the film is told at the beginning and one may keep thinking about the motive behind it, and when the reason comes, it is certainly disappointing; followed by the amount of build-up. To make the movie more interesting and thrilling, the movie runs in different time zones: the past and present. However, this experiment seems to have contributed nothing to the film. Editing is also a bit weak. The film eventually becomes quite slow and predictable.
