PremiumBlack Warrant Review: Vikramaditya Motwane said, ‘Coming of age but make it brutal’ and a stellar Zahan Kapoor obliged
Black Warrant Review: With Zahan Kapoor Vikramaditya Motwane manages to bring back that unapologetic fierce Scared Games tone to the OTT space.
Last Updated: 01.48 PM, Jan 10, 2025
Black Warrant Story: Sunil Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) joins Delhi’s Tihar jail and is instantly announced as a misfit for the ruthless world that he is about to set foot into. But there is no way he is losing this job that will bring food to his home. So with the help of Charles Shobhraj (Siddhant), he gets into the system only to realize what mess he has signed up for. As days pass, some new problems arise, the political landscape takes its toll, and the Tihar ecosystem only keeps getting darker. How will Sunil sustain that goodness in him while trying to bring order to this lawless place that is placed in the center of the law system?
Black Warrant Review
The advent of OTT in India and its bloom happened because Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Varun Grover, and the team decided to partner with Netflix India and give us one of the most prolific streaming shows, Sacred Games. A series that was unabashed in nature, unapologetic in tone, and said what it had to without the clutches of a censor board taming voices and chopping out things. It worked because it resonated with a wide mass that saw these problems, and while they did not take the route Gaitonde did, they somewhere wished for a Sartaj and Gaitonde to bring order to this city, and country at large. The idea of losing hope in the system only to realize it was always the system that was fueling the problem but also with no filters is what made Sacred Games what it is right now.
Cut to six years, Motwane returns to Netflix to make another show of the same nature, but the landscape has changed completely for streaming. We are talking censorship, the audience’s sentiment is more fragile than it ever was, and there is no tolerance for any new idea if it even goes close to something that is sensitive in the real world. Black Warrant, the new offering, stands right in the center of it all. A man is coming of age in the most brutal environment and one where his worth and capability is being questioned every single day on the job until he ‘acts’ like a stubborn man with no heart. The germ of this idea is beautiful in itself, and that it is inspired by a true story is even more fascinating.
Created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshi Singh, with Arkesh Ajay on the writing team, Black Warrant plays out in episodes. While Sunil Gupta with his fresh jailer mates enters the world of Tihar, you see a new episode unfold every single day. One after the other, criminals walk in, and some of them are even hanged, and Sunil grows through it. The beauty of the writing is how the show subtly shows Sunil’s growth as a human and his tolerance increasing with each hanging that happens in the prison. But all of that tolerance is flushed in the very moment he sees a dear one die for a petty joke the seniors played on him. It reminds us that some good people may need to hold on to the good a bit and not let it go completely.
The character becomes real because his graph is unlike the montages you see in films where the heroes suddenly become something else and never show their initial selves in the span of a song or some seconds. Sunil goes through a complete graph where you see him being supremely confident (or at least acting to be) in the second episode itself, but all of it breaks in the next moment, and now he must start finding his voice in this loud jail yet again.
The fact that every single person in the frame calls him a misfit and tells him to do a job that suits his goodness is what makes him even greyer because you know he is somewhere wanting to be ruthless, but his upbringing stops him. Every single time Sunil becomes a prototype jailer in his decisions, conversations, cuss words, or attitude, someone around him affectionately calls him ‘Baby’ (his nickname) and breaks that mold the poor guy built for over days. But he is no upright righteous man. He is also a pressure cooker dying to vent out the excess air, and he does, and it all becomes the final act.
Just like you would expect it to be, Black Warrant, if not out and out like Sacred Games, is still a very accurate history lesson of the times the show is set in, Motwane, though very subtle this time, makes sure the political tension of times makes it to Tihar because it should, and it did in the real world too. A character saying ‘Ye Chacha Nehru Ki Jail Hai, Yaha Sab Kuch Milta Hai,’ to the class divide inside the jail itself. The power hierarchy, everything that led to Operation Blue Star, to the assassination of former PM Indira Gandhi, everything in a way affects the narrative of the show, and it weaves seamlessly.
Google the real cases that Black Warrant taps into as the criminals are brought in to complete their death sentence. Charles Shobhraj (a pitch-perfect casting of Siddhant) is roaming around casually being the most luxurious prisoner. There is so much of our recent history casually placed in the show that all of it is fascinating. Zahan Kapoor as Sunil is perfect. For a clueless man to the man in control, he has the range to climb that hill. Rahul Bhatt’s panache as a police officer is pretty impressive as he commands your attention. Paramvir Cheema as the jailer gets a complex part to play, but we never get to understand his dilemma and personal trauma in a way we connect to that story. We know his brother went the wrong way, but we never get to see that. Anurag Thakur is enjoying his time playing a Haryanvi jailer who is the most untamed of the three.
However, Black Warrant could have been even better if the show probably ventured out of the jail for some more time to develop the contrast well. Some characters do not really get placed well in the scheme of things. Like Priya, a girl who randomly calls Sunil in the jail and suddenly starts meeting him. While it feels like she has some dangerous motives, nothing comes out of it, and it just becomes a passing plot which has no bearing on the end. The balance between Hindi and English in the dialogues is very bizarre. I understand it is for the global audience, but why would a jailer in the late 70s and early 80s talk to his team in English in Tihar, Delhi?
Black Warrant Verdict
The power of Black Warrant lies in the fact that it doesn't want to be Sacred Games but at the same time successfully has a strong voice that cannot be shaken, which a lot of shows lack these days. Vikramaditya Motwane knows how to teach the kids, and he does that well periodically!
Black Warrant will be streaming on Netflix onthat, likecastanuary 10, 2025. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.