While watching Kartavya, one can spot a pattern in the films Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment (RCE) wants to champion. After Atul Sabharwal’s Class of 83 (2020), Shanker Raman’s Love Hostel (2021), Pulkit’s own debut, Bhakshak (2024) comes the upstart director’s latest release – a cop procedural set in a faux-Haryana town called Jhamli, centered around a notorious Godman, a murder and the village elders set on avenging their humiliation with corpses. Given how the space for the political film has been severely curtailed in the last few years, RCE’s films seem built around the socially vulnerable: orphaned girls, runaway lovers, kids imprisoned in service of Godmen. In a time when the studio could be making anything, props to RCE for picking these grim subjects and lending adequate gravitas to them. SHO Pawan (Saif Ali Khan) gets an unusual assignment on the eve of his 40th birthday. A senior journalist, coming from Delhi, is to be picked up from the railway station by Pawan, along with a security detail, and safely escorted to her local accommodation. Probably having spent a large part of their careers being lax, none of the security detail’s spidey senses go off as a motorbike pulls along the journalist’s car, which is barely a few feet ahead of Pawan’s jeep. Both men on the bike unload their guns through the windshield of the journalist’s car, killing her in the process, and injuring Ashok (Sanjay Mishra) – Pawan’s trusted subordinate. Pulkit’s movies remind me a bit of the hopelessness in Prakash Jha films on Bihar’s jungle-raaj. It’s the wild, wild west – where an argument could get you killed. As he showed in his debut too, Pulkit has a good eye for atmospherics and physical spaces. However, I wish he also had Jha’s ability to land thunderous dialoguebaazi or Sudip Sharma’s keenness for sociopolitical minutiae. As Pawan sets off on his quest to find the perpetrator behind the journalist’s assassination, we know scarcely little about the man except his penchant for sprinting (he tells Ashok he can run 100m in under 14 seconds) and white sneakers. How is Pawan such a white knight, so certain of values and justice while emerging from a crooked, toxic society? We never find out. Saif Ali Khan in a scene in ‘Kartavya’. Photo: Screengrab from Youtube/Red ChilIt’s apparent that few actors in Hindi cinema today love the challenge of a new diction as Saif Ali Khan. He’s committed and sincere. However, no amount of effort can conceal the feeling that he continues to look like a tourist in the setting. Especially surrounded by earthy actors like Zakir Hussain, Sanjay Mishra and Durgesh Kumar. A Saif Ali Khan performance needs a degree of ruthlessness in the way it’s directed and edited. Over here, I sensed a degree of awe and reverence between Pulkit and Khan – often detrimental to the work. It’s a nice little reunion between Khan and Hussain, who last worked together in Agent Vinod (2012) and more memorably in Ek Hasina Thi (2004). As father and son here, the duo play off each other nicely, even though Hussain’s role doesn’t chart new territory. Sanjay Mishra playing the pliant constable, the undisputed survivor in the wild west, is one of the two best characters in the film. Mishra is good at performing even within a performance, without making it too obvious. The other off-centre choice in the film is Vidyut Ahlawat, who had earlier played a similarly eerie character in Love Hostel. Ahlawat’s Harpal wears his feral trauma on his face throughout the film.One of the most glaring false notes is the antagonist, Anand Shri – a self-styled Godman. The stunt casting of a recognised journalist Saurabh Dwivedi playing the part doesn’t work like it should, because it also appears that the role has been drastically edited. It might be unfair to deduce Dwivedi’s acting ability from a performance that is cut short by the film’s edit. There’s the “twist” that is perhaps something most will sense 45 minutes before the film’s climax. Or maybe it’s designed in a way to be an anti-twist, to exhibit how betrayal is all around us.Rasika Dugal in a scene in ‘Kartavya’. Photo: Screengrab from Youtube/Red Chillies Entertainment.One of the plot threads – of Pawan’s younger brother eloping with a girl from another caste – runs parallel to the murder investigation. In a state, where a mortal threat looms over his brother and newly-wed wife, I would imagine Pawan to be a bit more discerning about sharing information on their whereabouts. However, he does it – and I remember audibly cringing in that scene, because he seems to have his wits about for the rest of the film. It’s a terribly contrived moment, where I could imagine the writer-director jumping into the screen, and bracing his audience for that finale. Also read: The Sheep Detectives Glimmers with its Sweetness, Sincerity and Sharp WitKartavya might have made more sense as a limited series, if it took its time with the characters. The world itself is ripe enough for exploration, and there’s just no doubt that Pulkit assembles a fascinating group of actors, willing to go that extra mile. Unfortunately, in this 105-minute film, the characters of Rasika Dugal (playing Pawan’s wife) and Manish Chaudhary (as Pawan’s shifty superior) are shortchanged. Some plot-lines seem to be missing the diligence that one expects from a grounded cop procedural. A handful of choices feel confounding, and the eye for details is far from impressive. However, there’s one radical idea at the end, which coaxes its hero to stand up to near-and-dear ones and do one’s duty to humanity at large. In a slowly disintegrating society, where previous generations burden us with archaic morality and biases, it’s our duty to use our objectivity for future generations. Like charity, Kartavya insists, standing up to fascists begins at home.Kartavya is streaming on Netflix.