Disney + Hotstar’s ‘Sultans of Delhi’ review: A totally unremarkable historical drama

Post-independence Delhi’s turf wars have more merit than this familiar mafia metaphor.

“Dost koi hai nahi, aur pyaar se koi braata nahi.”, Disney + Hotstar’s rather mild-mannered protagonist Arjun sultan of delhi, Tells a man he just helped shoot a group of fake cops. It’s the kind of banal dialogue that has become a given as the gangster geography of Hindi cinema expands. The Mumbai mafia has long captured her imagination and she has given us some of the best stories to her credit. It has also given rise to imitators that follow a similar manual, albeit anatomically different. That is, an outsider invades a traditionally distorted business and rises dramatically before becoming its biggest enemy and ultimately collapsing.Disney+Hotstar sultan of delhi Forge a new battleground between disaffected royalty and bloody elitist rags. It has the visual scale and look of a period drama, but it’s packed with ideas that are frustratingly tired.

We follow the story of Arjun, played modestly by Tahir Raj Bhasin. Arjun, a descendant of the generation that migrated to the national capital after Partition, is clearly stubborn and brave. From an early age, he turns to violence in order to even out the balance between fortune and fate. In order to free himself from the clutches of his abusive father, Arjun goes so far as to literally snap his scruff and take his life, turning it into something he happily accepts. Arjun meets RP Singh, played by Nishant Dahiya, a scion of the prince’s fortune. For Singh, Partition means the loss of the autonomy and privileges that pre-independence India represented. Both sides look to the tar-stained soil of post-Partition Delhi as a kind of introduction to their future showdown.

Also read: Interview | Sultan of Delhi actors Tahir Raj Bhasin and Anjum Sharma talk about working with director Milan Luthria

To embellish Arjun’s homely gangster image, he is assigned the care of a sister and the support of an equally sassy Bengali friend (Anjum Sharma). In contrast to this friendly villain with a good heart, Shin becomes a vile, lecherous jackal who cannot breathe without looking down on those around him. He has a puppeteer named Shankari (Anupriya Goenka), his late father’s mistress. Shankari is a perverse and erotic woman who is willing to have her own way. Shin’s relationship with her is sneaky but slightly exaggerated, reminding us again and again of the shaky moral foundations on which he operates. It’s a bit of narrative policing to quantify the good against the obvious evil. As with all gang war outbursts, his two rivals compete under the guidance of a common father figure, played here superbly by Vinay Pathak.

It is based on the book of the same name by Arnav Ray and directed by the returning Milan Luthria (dirty picture), sultan of delhi It has a good sense of scale, a visual palette that fits the charred landscape of 60s Delhi, and an endearing battle over class differences. Where it fails is to actually draw these distinctions into clear and humanistic insights into post-independence Delhi. Gangs operate outside the metropolis with little cultural guts, except for a tertiary structure to separate one from the other. Weapons and ammunition appear to be the business, but little information is provided about cause and effect or consequences. Why a three-piece-wearing royal scion would have to sell illegal weapons to make money in post-independence India should have been better contextualized than moaning about forced evictions.

The eagerness to visually construct a bygone era here seems to have taken away from the sociopolitical education that could have established the series as an introduction to the post-partition metropolitan area. But a show that just shows you a postcard so simply and then suddenly flips it over and makes you read a boring essay explaining it, shows none of its seriousness. Even if visual authenticity is a strength here, it doesn’t do much. And while the narration gives a broad picture of the characters, it doesn’t leave the entire history of the city to the whims of speculation. Delhi remains contested, never recognized or established as a real place (aside from countless survey shots of the Qutub Minar). At least the Mumbai mafia genre knows a city where battles are fought on a daily basis.

sultan of delhi Not poor or miserable, but healthy and unremarkable. Brings the soapy language of ‘Saas Bahu’ Tiff to the gangster genre. Period pieces incorporate a sense of urgency, something imitative and unoriginal. There is little interest in studying or capturing post-independence life in Delhi or contextualizing it for an uneducated audience. Instead, it wants to go the cheap route of a scandalous turf war with generic characters who could have actually fought this battle anywhere. There are some pleasing visual touches, but the struggle for post-partition Delhi’s identity and foothold deserves more recognition. If nothing else, sultan of delhi That story still needs to be told.

sultan of delhi is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar.