It’s all back in black, more pickled and snazzy than before. The third season of Mirzapur takes us over that bumpy murderous road which we have travelled before. There are no surprises this time. But director Gurmeet Singh quickly sets the tilt right when the pace threatens to slacken. Laden with bestial violence and lurid subplots, with characters who swear revenge like junkies snorting cocaine, Mirzapur is the pulp equivalent of an over-the-hill whore powdering her nose and puffing up her chest to look younger than she actually is. But it is nonetheless a brutal if brittle but enjoyable revisitation of the badlands.
The characters, sans the volatile Munna, are still doing the same things that they were in the last and well-received seasons of Mirzapur. But a lot more of it. And a lot less confidently. Pumping bullets into anyone who crosses their way. It could be someone overtaking the car of one of the self-appointed baahubali of the area or someone fornicating with one of their wives…the price is the same for all crimes.
The language this time in Mirzapur is far less picturesque and graphic. The content and mood remain predominantly unstoppable. Everyone wants to grab a piece of the unconstitutional siyaasat. Every character is incurably corrupt and bloodthirsty, barring a lawyer Ramakant Pandit(Rajesh Tailang, excellent) who remains a paragon of virtue in a country of badasses.
Tailang’s Ramakant chooses to go to jail when all the deviants of plunderland offer to bail him out. Instead of taking the offer as any sensible man would do, Ramakant rots in jail and bears terror attacks and taunts like, “Nanga hoja, dekhe tumhara kitna lamba hai.”
Cheesy, yeah. But that is the way the cookie crumbles in this part of the world.
There is a routine kind of raunchiness in Mirzapur. Characters curse, abuse, release bodily fluids anywhere they fancy, including people’s faces. If you recall the first season there was the scandalous Beena Tripathi(Rasika Dugal) who gets impregnated by the househelp.
Unrepentant, Beena had declared about her impregnator, “He does it(the sex act) for such a long duration!” Househelp is sure a help.
Yes, I remember your words Beenaji. Scandal sticks. Mirzapur thrives on shock value. At one point during a street fight in Season 3, a man’s head is severed on camera: none of that discreet turning away. That’s for the ninnys This is no place for the squeamish. Hurling into the violence of rural Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur shows us a world completely liberated of the law.
There is a paunchy ineffectual cop (Manu Rishi) who is like a band-aid on a gaping wound. Pankaj Tripathi’s Kaleen Bhaiyya remains largely under the weather. He has little to do except moan in pain and make ineffectual protest noises. This character has clearly had its day.
Shweta Tripathi’s Golu and Ali Fazal’s Guddu are all over the place, building for themselves the kind of coarse karma that can only take them one way. Strangely Golu, after strutting around in denim jeans and her intimidating swag (she remains unfazed even when at one point, a sleazy politician threatens to rape her) she disappears . Officially she is ‘kidnapped’ and Guddu goes berserk in trying to find her.
Ali Fazal gnashes his teeth so hard, you fear for his jaw. There is too much of him and Shweta Tripathi , too little of Rasika Dugal, Pankaj Tripathi, and Ishita Talwar who is as convincing as a chief minister as Rakhi Sawant would be as Joan Of Arc.
The most interesting character this season is Bharat Tyagi (Anjum Sharma) who stays sinister without resorting to paan masala uncouthness. Quite often we don’t know what Bharat is up to.We even see him flirting discreetly with the aforementioned Madame CM . I suspect the show’s writers are still figuring out what to do with Bharat next.
Munna is much missed, though. Probably because Divyendu was the best actor in the series.
