Despatch review: Kanu Behl’s investigative thriller has its moments but fails to emotionally engage!

In this review, justonemovie aka Amrik writes down his thoughts on Kanu Bhel's film Desptach, which stars Manoj Bajpayee as the lead and had its Indian premiere at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival! 

Anyone who is familiar with Kanu Behl’s filmography would know that the filmmaker ventures into secretive and dark areas of the human consciousness. His last two features, Titli and Agra, dealt with themes like patriarchy and repressed sexuality, among many more. In Despatch, writers Ishani Banerjee and Kanu Behl broaden the canvas and explore the world of crime journalism. Set up inside a news organization called Despatch, we follow a journalist, Joy Bag, played by the ever-brilliant Manoj Bajpayee, as he hunts for his next big story.

The film starts with a meeting in his office, which indicates the gradual beginning of the digitalisation of media and we see a quiet Joy in a corner, slowly realizing the threat it poses to his job. Several interactions with his employees tell us the lack of sensationalism in the stories he brings to the table. On the other hand, his personal life is full of secrets as well as he is involved in an extra-marital affair with one of his co-workers, Prerna. And a peek into his house, when he returns from work, tells us that his married life is clearly in shambles. For instance, when his wife, Shweta (Shahana Goswami), insists he stay at the house party for a while and engage in conversation with her friends, he misbehaves and rushes out of his house. Upon his wife asking him what would happen if he spends some time with her, Joy says, “It's good that we don’t spend time with each other, at least we don’t have to pretend as a happy family!”

As he gets a tip-off from one of his informers about a smuggling racket in the docks, Joy informs the police about this and insists on tagging along with them to the crime scene for his “story”. What starts with chasing a small-time criminal leads to Joy finding out about a much bigger scam involving some of the country's most significant politicians and bureaucrats. Despite the people around warning him not to chase the story because of its potential dangers, Joy’s desperation to prove his worth in the face of the digitalisation of news and a mid-life crisis leads him to a whirlpool of darkness.  

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During the Q&A, director Kanu Behl said it was a conscious choice to make this a character-driven drama instead of a plot-driven one, which shows. We see Joy for all his desperation, misogyny and misery. He not only turns a blind eye to his wife’s wants but also isn’t very faithful to his girlfriend. Behl is as interested in the internal as he is in the external, and just as a cloud of gloom and despair hovers over the cities his last two films are located in, it does even in this with his depiction of the underbelly of Mumbai.

In Despatch, the humour emerges from the danger. When he goes to cover the smuggling racket story, he gets his nose broken because of his overconfidence. When Joy’s disguise as a vigilance officer blows, and he gets chased, it's very clumsy. He blocks the doors using any random things he sees in front of him - from a chair to a mop. During a crucial scene when we know a life-threatening force is behind Joy, a supposedly inspirational quote written behind him on a wall says, “Live as you were to die tomorrow”. In many scenes, Behl, along with cinematographer Siddharth Diwan, tries to stay away from Dolly Shots (a technique where the camera physically moves towards or backwards from the subject). Instead, they employ what we call a Zoom In, which can be done either optically or digitally. This worked very effectively for me and gave a more unsettling and surveillance-like feel to the film. 

But despite some good moments and the film's attempt to look inwards and outwards at a decaying world, the film didn't really work for me. I failed to empathize with the characters. A lot of scenes felt half-baked, and some continuity errors throughout the film constantly took me out of the story. Emotional engagement heightens the film-watching experience and also sometimes makes one forget about all the flaws in a film. Hence, the lack of it in Despatch brings it down even with some of its cinematic achievements!

Despatch had its Indian premiere at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival this year! 

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