It was exciting to see what Krishna DK and Raj Nidimoru, who directed The Family Man’s first two seasons, would do next after the show’s huge success. So far, their performance in films and television shows has been erratic.
Farzi is worth seeing for its excellent performances by Amol Palekar, Shahid Kapoor, Vijay Sethupathi, and Kay Kay Menon.
The subject is novel, but it lacks excitement.
Because chasing terrorists and various enemies of the country is far more exciting than a currency counterfeiting operation, the eight-part series requires padding with family drama and emotional heart tugs.
Sunny (Shahid Kapoor) was raised by his grandfather (Amol Palekar), his best friend Firoz (Bhuvan Arora), and a family friend Yasir (Chittaranjan Giri).
Even today, the grandpa’s daily newspaper, Kranti Patrika, gives him a sense of purpose and fulfilment.
Despite his talent, Sunny can only make a living by selling paintings to bargain-hunting idiots on the street. Sunny devises a brilliant plan to create counterfeit currency by combining his artistic abilities with those of Firoz and Yasir, both skilled printers, in order to keep the press from going out of business due to mounting debts.
Meanwhile, rogue cop Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) is determined to put an end to the country’s counterfeit currency circulation. He meets a like-minded soul in Reserve Bank employee Megha (Raashii Khanna), who has the technical knowledge to detect counterfeit notes and wants to join the special task force with the unfortunate acronym CCFART, formed to apprehend the counterfeiters.
Mansoor Dalal (Kay Kay Menon) is the operation’s mastermind, ruling from an opulent mansion in Jordan.
Sunny’s notes are so well made that they fool the machines and an app that Megha helped develop to detect counterfeit currency.
Mansoor will eventually discover Sunny and Firoz and hire them to create counterfeit currency notes for him. Sunny is won over when he pays for her grandfather’s brain surgery, but once her basic needs are met, his greed becomes apparent.
The plot (co-written by Raj, DK, Sita R Menon, and Suman Kumar) stays in the thriller genre, but there are some great sequences, such as when the protagonists use a true story about a ship on its way to Alang running aground at Juhu beach to smuggle a large amount of currency into India (north west Mumbai). Michael’s nerdy kid is the one he wants to “turn into a man,” but the show is distracted by his troubled marriage to Rekha (Regina Cassandra).
In order for Sunny to be aware of the task force’s activities, the plot also relies on the lazy convenience of Sunny easily wooing Megha.
Each episode lasts an hour and alternates between exciting and boring.
When both Vijay Sethupathi and Kay Kay Menon appear in the plot, the show’s energy level rises.
Mansoor is hilarious as a haughty thug with pretensions and a ‘Vincent Van Goog’ on his wall, and Michael captures the character’s rage and wicked wit as he blackmails a minister (Zakir Hussain) to get what he wants.
It’s difficult to sympathise with Sunny because he can’t even blame his criminal behaviour on being anti-establishment.
It’s strange that the middle-class man aspiring to be an artist sounds like he’s straight out of the tapori.
Shahid Kapoor’s performance is too showy until the very end, when he finally gets it together and captures the nuances required to carry the role.
We can only hope that Season 2 will put his skills to the test even more.
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