Dharavi Bank review: An interesting cast makes a stale story watchable

Suniel Shetty has been up to a lot lately. Not all of it you could argue has been conventional for an actor who once starred in Dhadkan and Hera Pheri. He is now an influencer on Linkedin, a corporate guru of sorts and he has, quite recently, started to make his way back to our screens through the odd advertisement or too. Photos of Shetty, his late-age ruggedness, the glued-in white mane jutting out of his head, have obviously preceded his return to the acting fold. The anticipation, some would say, has more to do with the method in which his middle-age scruffiness would be cast rather than the modest tools with which he would approach whatever came his way. The result of that experiment, is both fascinating and frustrating. MX Player’s oddly titled Dharavi Bank is a mix of many things – inspired casting choices, able performances, some good direction and yet it feels painfully redundant in a world where good and bad guys, at least on streaming, are being written with far more nuance.

Dharavi Bank teases its tone up front. A man witnesses a human being chopped in the basement of a slum dwelling. It’s a decorative ruse to build a myth around Thalaivan, Dharavi’s most illustrious, and brutal, don. Shetty is mesmeric to look at and never not interesting to listen to. He is a self-avowed henchman of sorts who is frustratingly never quite unpeeled for the many layers of humanity within. “Ye shanti layega” he says, after his son proposes their business, its money especially, must be invested and grown systematically.  It’s one of the few moments where the character opens up about the uncertainty of his life, but never to the extent to reveal the fragility behind the brutal, if fascinating front.

Thalaivan must be taken down, the bureaucratic powers in the state believe. The man tasked with doing the job is Gavaskar, played by the reliable Vivek Oberoi. Gavaskar, it turns out, has a history with Thalaivan making the battle between the two more personal than is initially suggested. Oberoi has always been an able actor, and here too, he is largely adept in a series that doesn’t necessarily allow him a lot of rope to package a broken generic police officer with. Despite that predictable line of narration, Oberoi is a valuable asset to the story – feisty, flawed and not without a degree of guilt. His altercations with Thalaivan are entertaining, framed within that pan-India film mode that believes in training its eyes on the men it must consume without ever really reading. There is thus, enough vigour here but without the depth that an episodic series could have gone for.

The interesting casting choices don’t end here. Luke Kenny is a nefarious, almost unnerving presence as the show’s unknown quantity. His slimy, but exceptional eloquence has this unique quality to calm a noisy narrative about guns and drugs. Shooting in Dharavi isn’t new territory for our cinema, but Samit Kakkad does a decent job of mining the location for thrilling chase sequences and some equally poetic night-time shots. The mythical world-building around a mysterious antagonist could have been a challenge, but the metaphors and symbolism is largely on point. To not use Shetty’s body, his obviously chiselled figurine is a bit of an intuitive masterstroke as well. There is all that machinery under the shirt, and yet he is asked to emote rather than perform. It’s an examination he mostly passes.

But while a lot is commendable about this series there is a lot that feels stale, dated and frankly uninspiring. A lot of the side-actors come across as untrained amateurs, their character arcs askew. Of the central conflict, there isn’t a lot to write home about in terms of depth, as both Thalaivan and Gavaskar, don’t appear to be anything more than their radio-quality backstories. Who are they as people, or personalities is never quite unwrapped the way gradually escalating conflict would have. The plotline, as a whole, moves with the steady but ultimately predictable pace of a Gangster v Police war where betrayals, rats and spies abound. The problem is that none of these smaller pegs, except with the case of Kenny’s character, is allowed enough heft to faithfully anchor one end of this determined, but superficial war between two men.

Dharavi Bank is watchable despite the gangster fatigue that seems to be creeping into the world of streaming. Nothing shouts out at you here, except maybe watching at least three underseen actors, clutch at new roles with commitment and at times, veritable authority. The series in fact doesn’t go anywhere you’d not expect it to, but it is ably bodied, and confident enough about what it wants to be. The only problem is that wants to be so very little of everything it could have been.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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