Tanaav review: Serviceable Indian adaption of Fauda lacks spunk

Language: Hindi Director: Sudhir Mishra, Sachin Krishn Cast: Arbaaz Khan, Danish Husain, Ekta Kaul, Manav Vij, M. K. Raina, Rajat Kapoor, Satyadeep Mishra, Shashank Arora, Sumit Kaul, Sukhmani Sadana, Waluscha De Sousa, Zarina Wahab In a scene from SonyLiv’s Tanaav, Kabir played by Manav Vij tells his superior about the dicey mental state of a colleague who has gone off the rails after suffering a personal loss. “Nice Jacket”, the superior responds, copping a feel of Vij’s leather vest before walking away. It’s possibly intended as a moment that underlines the steely detachedness of our unsung heroes. These are, after all men, playing with life and death as a matter of routine. But so lethargic, unconvincing is the execution of this scene that it hints at precisely what is wrong with this desi adaptation of the cult international hit Fauda. Tanaav, rather serendipitously, relocates the Israel-Palestine conflict to Kashmir, and while everything about that shift sounds promising, the adaptation lacks the spunk and the humanity of the original. _Tanaav_ , like _Fauda_ , is a sprawling narrative that moves with both steps on the accelerator, at ease with embracing a narrative that really just tumbles from one event to the next. Fauda literally means chaos, but in its Indian adaptation, it stands for tension. Here the protagonist is Kabir, a secret operative who is called out of retirement to catch a rather uninteresting antagonist as part of what is called a Special Task Group. Vij looks rather stiff, and even though he is ingeniously cast against type here – we have seen him on the other side quite often – he can’t quite pull off the entirety of this complex character. His conversations, his inability to weld himself to the idea of man who lives a conflicted personal life, simply doesn’t fly. Vij is supported by a cast of decent actors, all of whom do okay. Rajat Kapoor, as he so consistently does, stands out in the leader of a squad that can often prove difficult to manage. Fauda and possibly Homeland before it, are good examples of loose wiring, the kind of narratives that prize themselves on discovering the random, the unforeseen rather than anticipating the expected. There aren’t too many mysteries to uncover, just a hammer-roll of events that punch you from the chest down as the series progresses. It’s possibly called chaos because the pursuit itself feels unending, the challenges far too many and the humanity stretched to the point where purpose begins to gnaw at the templated stubbornness of perseverance. Neither of that really translates to Tanaav, where the pace never quite kicks in, the characters struggle to hold their own and the political subtext is, every once in a while, coyly whispered into the plot. You’d think the story around a secret squad operating in the hull of a sinking Kashmir would be resoundingly breathless viewing, but Tanaav, is on the contrary dull and flat. The show isn’t really helped by casting choices that though they seem inspired on paper, fail to translate on screen. Arbaaz Khan is a robotic enunciator of dialogue in this show that is crying out for a handful of actors with proven mettle. Other than Kapoor, Shashank Arora, as the lean but intellectually wieldy associate of Umar (the antagonist), shines. His presence on screen imports the kind of menace that is quite simply missing from most characters on offer. The other antagonists, though they evoke private, worth-fighting-for-lives, rarely intrigue beyond a superficial examination of their relationships. Unlike Fauda, the lines of conflict in Tanaav aren’t as prominently drawn. It robs the antagonists of cultural agency, beyond the bare minimum show-and-tell exposition around rule and revenge. These are obviously conservative choices and despite Sudhir Mishra’s experienced hands at the driving wheel as Director, they undermine the setting of this serviceable show. Without that flawed, possibly provocative emotional core, the series can often feel slight in its attempt to create friction where none, it often seems, exist. After an officer loses his girlfriend to a bombing attack, his decline is one of heretical missteps, significant but performed neither with conviction nor gut. The script, the acting, and the direction are all at fault here. Possibly the biggest let-down in Tanaav is the fact that like its name, it rarely manages to extract tension from the landscape it is set in. Not all actors and characters command the immediacy of impact that a Manoj Bajpayee can, but here, most of them come across as generic spy dudes with little to no inner life of their own. Even in moments where the series desperately attempts to convey that hidden, but evidently conflicted inner life, there is little to write home about a sense of rootedness that feels earned rather than designed. Tanaav isn’t inept or brazenly shallow, but it simply doesn’t carry itself to a moment of truth, from where the view of the Kashmir valley is supposed to at once be as sombre as it is so obviously beautiful. Tanaav is produced by Applause Entertainment Tanaav is streaming on Sony LIV

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.