Blood, Bullets, Bombs, Bullies & Bahubalis: My quick take on Amazon’s web series “Mirzapur season 2”
Much hyped and much-awaited season 2 of the desi “Game of thrones” ( no there is no comparison with epic series of GOT, it’s the title I am referring to) rather the “Game for Gaddi” is back with its usual mindless Bloodshed, meaningless encounters of Bullets & Bombs & and uncouth Bullies & Bahubalis. It’s a sheer coincidence that very recently I came across the term “sunk-cost fallacy” which is nothing but a tendency where one continues to invest time, money & energy into a losing proposition because one knows that he is already sunk. We do this with a ‘hope’ that we will get to see/get something better a second time. Similar to sacred games season 2 the Mirzapur’s sequel too, traces the graph of disappointment. To put it in typical ‘Mirzapuri’ lingo, the potency of the series is as potent as the sperm count of its protagonist Tiwari.
Thank God that Anurag Kashyap made GOW before the dawn of the OTT era hence our torture which was thankfully diluted by the censor board and the writers wrapped up the plot in just two parts. If GOW had been released on the OTT platform, I am confident that we would have been watching GOW season 8 or 9 by now. Mirzapur is an offshoot of the GOW school of movie-making, set in UP town Mirzapur ruled by a second-generation Bahubali whose third generation is waiting in wings to sit on the gaddi.
This desi “Corleone” family of Mirzapur who is into carpet weaving business which is more of a façade gets into trouble as they rub lots of guys on the wrong side in the quest of retaining the “gaddi” of Mirzapur’s crime syndicate. Season 1 ends with mayhem at a wedding reception which is reduced into a bloody carnage by Munna Tripathi, and season 2 begins where season 1 had ended. Season 2 is the bloody revenge saga as the Guddu Pandit (played by Ali Fazal) who survives a bullet wound in his leg and the Golu, a love interest of Bablu Pandit (younger brother of Guddu) who is fatally shot in this gunfight, these two join together to seek the ‘badla’ and take nearly 10 long episodes to do it.
Unlike season 1, which had a tight storyline and the editing was sleek, this season 2 lacks the finesse of the flow in the storyline, as there are too many subplots introduced, resulting in the slackening of the story and the 10, one-hour episodes seems a drag. Secondly, the gun battles between goons are very amateurishly shot, I am sure even a “Bhojpuri” movie would be having better stunts and gun battles. Season 2’s storyline needlessly meanders from rustic crime to UP state politics making it look more like a Prakash Jha movie (AArakshan, Gangajaal …..)
On the performance front, talented Pankaj Tripathi does a Brando effectively, his son Munna who is a loose cannon is played beautifully Divyenndu Sharma, Ali Fazal as Guddu Pandit whom at times I felt like mimicking Sunjay Dutt did an ok job, there were others like Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rajesh Tailang who were damn good in their respective roles. The only misfit character according to me was that of second Tripathi (Shweta) in the series she had a meaty role of kick-ass revenge-seeking dame in this season but somehow her personality did not suit this role. In the unwanted sidetracks, we get to see Liliput and his two sons (double role played by talented Vijay Varma), I am not sure why this track was introduced in S2, maybe it is a ploy to dovetail it into S3?. There is one more character of Madhuri (played by beautiful Rita Talwar) introduced, I am sure she is going to play a very important part in S3.
On the positives, it is the wonderful camera work, witty dialogs (if you can bear profanity), beautiful outdoor shots, the impressive architecture of Havelis, and of course the performances of each character.
Looks like the makers of series thought anyway the covid effect will prevent us from Diwali firework hence they compensated us with a mindless firework on the screen released during Diwali. If you want to ‘enrich’ your vocabulary of profanity and love mindless item songs & meaningless bloodbath then the series is worth a binge-watch else, it is ought to be a ‘cringe’ watch experience. Just remember it has lots of blood, bullet, boobs & buttocks hence take care with whom you watch this series.
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