With this, Gaitonde sets Sartaj on a race-against-time to save Mumbai, a city whose every corner Sacred Games romanticises - every shady dance bar, every cobbled street, from the slums of Dharavi to the high-rises of Worli.Īnurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane - who share directing duties - have made a classic noir story, complete with layered central characters, a damsel in distress of a city, and corruption that goes all the way to the top. It is a city he loves, he tells Sartaj, and in 25 days it will fall. Gaitonde wants to tell Sartaj a story, about himself about how a poor son of a beggar could rise from the trash heaps of Mumbai and build an empire. Ganesh Gaitonde tells Sartaj a Goodfellas-esque origin story. On the other end is the mythical boss of the G-Company, a gangster who has been missing for the last 17 years, a man who, it is whispered with a combination of respect and fear, has over 150 murder charges against him: Ganesh Gaitonde.
His phone rings a voice, worn out yet stubbornly holding on to once-formidable power. While others around him rise to the top - inept idiots who have no shame in licking the boots of the powerful - he finds himself alone in his plain apartment, the memories of a happier life still clinging to its walls.īecause finally, after years of toiling away and remaining - as his SI describes him - ‘a low-performing officer’, fate presents Sartaj with the opportunity he has been waiting all his life for. He is an ideal hero - perhaps too ideal - despite a failed marriage and little to show for his many years in the Mumbai Police. He disobeys direct orders, he is suspended for not supporting his department in the cover up of a murder, and he is shackled when he should be celebrated. He is tempted - by money, by women and by success - but he never gives in. There are several moments in which Inspector Sartaj Singh’s moral compass is shaken. Is there any place for decency in this world, the show asks, especially if the world itself is a casualty of crime, corruption and communalism? And if there isn’t, is the world worth fighting for? Saif Ali Khan plays the idealist cop, Sartaj Singh. It is also, as corny as it sounds, a story about good versus evil - perhaps the most resilient theme of all. It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller about two men who appear to occupy opposite ends of the spectrum - one is a weathered cop and the other a powerful gangster - but upon closer scrutiny reveal more similarities than either would be comfortable acknowledging. Se7en is just one of the many films that I was reminded of while watching Sacred Games, Netflix’s first Indian original series. He had seen murder, he had lost a friend, and most wrenchingly, he had witnessed defeat and yet with the faintest whiff of optimism he continues, “I agree with the second part.” Somerset, played by Morgan Freeman in the film, had just seen firsthand the cruelty people are capable of, and learned how no amount of decency is enough to counter true evil. “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for,” says Detective Somerset at the end of David Fincher’s noir masterpiece, Se7en.
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