Language: Hindi, Tamil and English
"Have you ever been to Kashmir?", one character asks another in the fifth episode of the second season of Amazon Prime Video's The Family Man. They're inside a car on a rainy day, driving to the Southern coast of Tamil Nadu. If this were to be the first scene of the show, the viewer might even be forgiven for not understanding why it's such a loaded question. A man, who considers himself a Mujahid from Kashmir, Sajid (Shahab Ali) poses the question to Raji (Samantha Akkineni), a member of the rebel army for the Sri Lankan Tamils. The question is posed with innocence, something that's completely at odds with the personality that the show has built around Sajid till then. "Nahi", quietly responds Raji. "Kashmir is beautiful. I've heard even Sri Lanka is very beautiful?", Sajid asks Raji, and the silence hangs in the air for a few seconds. It's a terrific moment where both characters, branded as 'outsiders' by their respective nations, share something tender. It's a moment where they can put away their facade of 'killing machines' for a great cause, and allow themselves to be humans. Even if just for a fleeting moment. It's something that doesn't seem pretentious in the Raj & DK enterprise, that mocks itself for sentimentality each time it finds itself becoming even remotely 'soft'.
However, that's the beauty of Raj & DK's The Family Man realm. It does the enviable job of seeming adequately grounded while being a relationship drama between Srikant (Manoj Bajpayee) and Suchi's (Priya Mani) gradually dissipating marriage, a track around Srikant's (Manoj Bajpayee) IT job that appears to be the director-duo's deft homage to Office Space, action set-pieces that seem straight out of a Bourne film, two 'extremists' sharing a poignant moment, or even a subversive moment where Raji snarls "Uncuff me and fight like a real man". To which Srikant responds with "I have no interest in proving my masculinity (to you) in this moment". With the first season, the duo seemed to have cracked a way of confidently amalgamating popular genres, something they only further exploit for a highly-anticipated second season. The good news? The second season delivers on its promises. The ho-hum news? There are fewer surprises, something one has come to expect from anything bearing the names of Raj & DK.
The Family Man S02 takes off a year after the events of the first. During the first episode, in a somewhat hurried flashback, we're told that Zoya (Shreya Dhanwantary) and Milind (Sunny Hinduja) averted the chemical attack planned on the city of Delhi, narrowly escaping death themselves. Zoya has lost movement in her lower limbs, and Milind is battling trauma and guilt of being capable of return to duty, while Zoya (who saved his life) is stranded on a wheel-chair for life. The mitigated attack has been termed a 'gas leak' due to a technical failure, and Srikant has quit TASC to take up a more conventional 9-to-5 job in an IT company called Cache Me. Even though he's doing his best of typing up 'TPS reports' and tolerating an overbearing boss, who insists Srikant is a 'minimum guy', he also has one eye on National Security through his persistent phone calls made to JK (Sharib Hashmi) during office hours, much to Srikant's boss's annoyance. The one-liners come thick and fast, Srikant is able to devote much more time to his wife and kids, but as we already know - it's only a matter of time before he goes back.
The second season also sets up new antagonists - a rebel army outfit (based on the LTTE) demanding an independent state for the Sri Lankan Tamils. The leader, inspired by Prabhakaran, is called Bhaskaran (Mime Gopi). After an attack by the Lankan army forces Bhaskaran and two most-trusted aides to flee to London in the first episode, and it's over there that he joins hands with ISI's Major Sameer. Feeling betrayed by the Indian govt, the rebel army chief sets a plan in motion to assassinate the Indian Prime Minister, Ms Basu (a terrific cameo by Seema Biswas where she channels her inner-Mamata Banerjee). Srikant Tiwari and his TASC colleagues' mission, should they choose to accept it, is to stop Bhaskaran from carrying out his mission. Lest we forget, there's also Srikant and Suchi's flickering marriage, that takes its toll on the teenage daughter, Dhriti (Ashlesha Thakur), pushing her into the arms of an older boy, Salman, who is actually an operative recruited by Sajid. It's an intricately plotted show, with the makers' eyes on the little details, which make the overlapping narratives seem efficient rather than simply convenient.
The acting is first-rate too, with Bajpayee's Srikant and Hashmi's JK Talpade holding the fort as the film's lead-pair, instead of Srikant and Suchi. However, one of the highlights of the second season is Samantha Akkineni's intensely physical performance as Raji. A human version of a cobra, Raji seems mostly benign when outside of one's peripheral vision, until using a swift set of movements, she uproots one's neck off their shoulder. Akkineni, who after playing the manic-pixie dream girl for long has recently ventured into exciting territory like in Super Deluxe, sinks her teeth into a role that seems like a cocktail of Seema Biswas (from Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen) and Manisha Koirala (from Mani Ratnam's Dil Se). However, Akkineni brings her own personality and a righteous rage to the character. So assured and optimised is Raj & DK's film-making, that it offers us only one scene around Raji's trauma, to make us buy into her relentless pursuit for vengeance, justice and arguably some dignity in death (something she wasn't afforded while living).
The Family Man S02 is a stellar continuation of a homegrown spy franchise, one that seamlessly switches between Tamil, Hindi and English. One that seems to toe the line of being topical, as well as being damn good fun. Most of what 'worked' in the first season, seems to have found its way back in for the second season, including an on-foot chase sequence through a fish village, a single unbroken take during a bloody confrontation between local police and rebel sympathisers, unexpected deaths, and a cliff-hanger of a climax.
The Family Man S02 is reminiscent of the densely-plotted Rajeev Rai films from the late 80s and 90s (like Vishwathma, Mohra), where the villains are seemingly insurmountable, and unlikely heroes emerge in unexpected places. It's good to see Raj & DK, and director Suparn Varma (who directed five of the nine episodes) infuse such old-school thrills, with something as thoughtful as an exchange about beauty between two of the most violent characters on the show. Now, that's a pretty sight.
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