Kareena Kapoor rocks as the investigator in The Buckingham Murders

By

Sharada Iyer

Kareena Kapoor is on a roll. Following up with her convincing portrayals as the troubled single mother in Jaane Jaan and the charming air hostess in Crew, she comes up with yet another superb act, this time as an investigator in the recently released murder thriller – The Buckingham Murders. She was always a very talented actress but never got many opportunities to display her full prowess and somehow got slotted more in glamour-oriented roles. But that seems to be changing, and in this film, it was a delight to watch her play the investigator with a rare fervor infused with restrain and dignity.

She plays a British-Indian detective Jasmeet ‘Jass’ Bhamra. The beginning scenes show us a tragedy which has happened in her life. She is coping with the sudden loss of her son in a meaningless shootout at the hands of a maniac. To escape the thoughts haunting her, she gets transferred to a new place- Buckinghamshire, and is the new DI at their station. She is immediately put on a case of a missing boy belonging to a Sikh family staying there.

Soon the boy’s body is found and the murder investigation gets engaging. For those looking for edge-of-the-seat type of thrills, the film can be a little slow-moving for this plot has an undercurrent of emotions as the base. However, though the film is slow-paced it manages to keep us glued to the screen till the end when the identity of the killer is revealed.

As she is fighting with her own emotions, Kareena has a lot of suppressed anger, turmoil and sensitivity towards the case which works both for and against her as at times she gets jumpy and at other times become oversensitive. At one point her senior even removes her from the case but of course our lady uncovers something significant and is then handed over the reigns of the case once again.

The story does not stop with just one murder and there are more deaths that follow when we are not expecting and the twists are interesting. Many skeletons tumble out of the cupboard and all is not what it seems like. Some religious conflicts between the Sikh community and Muslim community amongst the residents of the area also play an important backdrop of the story.

The whole setting is in Buckingham and hence many actors are foreigners and even the Indian ones are not familiar faces. Overall, the run time of one hour 50 minutes is not too long but viewing the film gave us a feeling of watching a Netflix show on the big screen. With a plethora of foreign actors and a large portion of the dialogues being in English with English subtitles, the film can neither be slotted as a Hindi film nor an English film, which is perhaps why when I was booking the tickets for the film, for the first time the app gave me an option of ‘Hinglish’!

Having a truly unconventional plot and devoid of any typical Bollywood masala like fights, songs and dances, the film can attract only a certain section of audience and the promotions become difficult in today’s time as the outcome then depends only on word of mouth. The film then becomes suited for a niche audience who are used to watching this type of films and web-series on OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Hotstar, etc.

The film premiered on 14th October 2023 at the 67th BFI London Film Festival and was also the opening film at the Mumbai MAMI festival held on 27th October 2023. It had a theatrical release in cinema halls only on 14th September 2024. Kareena Kapoor is also one of the producers of the film along with Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor. The film is directed by Hansal Mehta who is known for intense films like Shahid, Citylights, Omerta, Aligarh, etc., and web-series Scam 1992 and Scoop.

Kareena Kapoor has really worked hard to live the role and her acting is indeed laudable. The no-make-up look also works in her favour and suits the character she plays. As the grieving mother, we can feel the raw emotions passing through her mind and as the investigator she lends a quiet dignity. There is a scene when she packs a solid punch on a fellow officer’s face when he tries to get over-smart and makes some insensitive remark. That felt good to watch and she was so convincing!

Whatever may be the box-office collection of the film, there is no doubt it is a good one-time watch especially for those who like crime shows and of course Kareena Kapoor fans will enjoy even more. The only other known face in the film is that of Chef Ranveer Brar who does a super job as the missing boy’s father. This is his second outing after his role in the web-series- Modern Love Mumbai (2022) where he teams up with Prateik Gandhi as his gay lover in the story titled Baai.

For those not interested to step out and watch on the big screen, do catch up when the film is released on OTT. You won’t be disappointed.