In Netflix’s Sector 36, director Aditya Nimbalkar’s outstanding crime chiller (it would be an insult to all the little victims who were chopped to death, to call it a thriller) the one aspect of the gripping (again, not thrilling) presentation is the image volte face of the two principal actors.
Vikrant Massey who has lately scored distinction marks in 12th Fail in the role of a naive godfearing innocent and uncorrupted young man trying to compete in the civil services, transforms into a human embodiment of unmitigated evil. His Prem in Sector 36 is as far removed from Manoj in 12th Fail as Aamir Khan’s Munna in Rangeela from Dilnawaaz in 1947 Earth.
Massey as Prem Singh is sly and slimy, diabolic and unctuous. He kidnaps and chops up little children for his monstrous master’s (Akash Khurana) pleasure. Nethra gone netra-heen.
Massey plays a man whose moral compass was messed up during his childhood . This justification of the vile monster-man’s sociopathic behaviour seemed unjustified. To give cause to turpitude is to take away the edge from evil.
Sorry, you don’t do that.
Massey’s portrays monstrosity with a serpentine slurpiness. If he was exceptional in nobility in 12th Fail, he is just as effective in vileness.
The other transformative performance is that of Deepak Dobriyal. A fathomless artful actor, Dobriyal has wrongly been typecast in comedic roles. There is so much more to this scene-stealing master-craftsman than meets the eye. Sector 36 proves it. As a morally ambiguous cop Ram Charan Pandey(no relation to Chulbul Dobriyal inhabits much more than the khaki uniform. Indeed this is a supremely praise-vardi performance.
There is a deftly assembled sequence where Dobriyal playing Raavan in an open-air staging of the Ramayan, has a life-changing experience. One can actually feel the actor’s innerworld struggling with extraneous ethical inconsistencies.
There is not a moment in the film where Dobriyal and Massey slip out of character. Their cat and mouse conflict imbues the plot with an ennerving immersive arc. If actors make or break a film, then Sector 36 stands tall as a crime drama for its two principal actors.
Knives and chopping of meat occupy a large part of the narration in Sector 36.The crime chiller is not for the faint-hearted. Be prepared to be off-meat for a while after watching this demonically disturbing drama of a disembodied mind.
