Rudra: The Edge of Darkness that blunts quickly and blandly

I always wished to watch Luther. But somehow, the depressed look of Idris Alba on its cover had resisted me starting that. Now, that I watched Rudra, which seems to be completely based on Luther, the status may remain unchanged.

I'm not saying that the series is bad to watch. Infact, thrilling instances abound, the series will keep you interested towards its convergence, but there seems to be lack of interesting twists that makes the theme deceptively bland.

Crimes are committed that are sometimes too violent to be dealt with. But these serve as just the right platter for DCP Rudra Veer Singh, who specialises in nabbing psychopaths and insanely crooked killers. But here, disappointingly, the mystery stops as each time the identities of the peepetrators are revealed and what remains is just a cat and mouse chase between the perpetrator and the police without sufficient detail to clarify the profiling of the killers. Added to this is the family life of Rudra that is portrayed as tensed but again, the detail is only vague. Headed by Deepali Handa, Jt Commissioner, the members of Special Crimes Unit (SCU) deals with dark crimes, but sometimes the setting is too unreal for the metro city of Mumbai and seems more like Gotham with justly impulsive Rudra reflecting, at times, the cop version of the Dark Knight himself. Though promoted already as a super-cop, but sometimes it becomes unrealistic to the extreme. Adventure predominates in the web series and the thrill is retained though the actions sometimes borders the signature Bollywood extreme.

The thriller drama is directed by Rajesh Mapuskar but the thrill seriously compromises the drama. With his debut OTT series, Ajay Devgan excels as the darkly charismatic Rudra but playing the part of his estranged wife, Esha Deol is linguistically stiff and the character casts irritating artificiality in Indian setting. On the other hand, Tarun Gehlot portrays the gradual maturity of PI Prabal Thakur with the monotonous "on it Sir" attitude of the learner in the starting episodes to the responsible decision taking colleague with authenticity. Critical and typical in their assigned portraitures, Ashwini Kalsekar and Atul Kulkarni, being two of my all time favourites, portrays two very interesting and important characters and breathes naturality which was so required in the otherwise fictitious setting.

Culminating in a slight cliffhanger, the series promises more seasons, which we sincerely hope will be better composed while retaining established theme.