Class of 83 features rookie cops and their worn, wearied but straight of spine mentor. A book of the same name has been written by an author who has known this scenario well. S Hussain Zaidi had done writing and reporting of real-life crime and gang-warfare in Mumbai for a long period of time.
His writings have been adapted by Bollywood especially Black Friday which focussed on tumultuous fallout and runup of 1993 Mumbai blasts. It was made by Anurag Kashyap in the best docu-feature of India. Class of 83 takes us back to the decade where Bombay was going through a huge churn.
Cotton mills and their workers were grounded to dust with the combination of powerful real estate players and political trickery with an eye to buy the vast spaces in the heart of the city where the mills were located. An endless stream of illicit money was made through smuggling of drugs, arms, fake currency, property and gold.
Various gangs of Bombay were fighting to reign their supremacy over the market and they were stopped by policemen who still believed in law and order. The film starts in 1982 when Vijay Singh played by Bobby Deol is on a punishment posting at Nashik’s police training academy.
He is facing a double blow of professional setback and personal loss when his attention is focused on five backbenchers Jadhav, Shukla, Surve, Aslam and Varde. All the five are loyal, smart and independent in their own way. This class moves from the cadets to police officers on the grounds of Bombay. The movie earns fame for being honest and hard-hitting.
The five policemen quickly become obstacles for the corrupt cops and greedy netas especially CM Manohar Patkar played by Anup Soni. Slowly, they also find themselves getting attracted to this filthy system. Easy money and dirt go hand in hand because even the most honest cop is also a human.
The film is fictional but the references to real-life characters and events make it realistic and bold which is the characteristic of Zaidi’s fiction that has been translated aptly on-screen by Sabharwal. The movie also has a mention of Punjab terrorism and AK 47s finding their way to Mumbai. There is a mention of Datta Samant and the struggle of unions and millworkers.
Along with this, we also hear about Kalsekar and Naik gang and Dubai becoming the favourite hotspot of underworld dons. The above-mentioned incidents form the backdrop of Class of 83 and the treatment combined with smartly executed action, muted background music and unshowy acts makes it difficult to separate fiction from reality.
The strong sense of realism of time and place colours the film. There is a tint of ochre-yellow colour shown in the past and the shootout on streets reminds you of 80s Bombay. The performances are also upto the mark. Deol gets a hero-like entry and is shaky in some places but pulls off the greying lion role perfectly which is the centre of the film.
A terrific cast surrounds Deol which is topped by Joy Sengupta as DGP Raghav Desai whose scenes with Deol make the latter look good. Vishwajeet Pradhan as a tough instructor at the academy can be heard churning hapless recruits after their shooting test and rejoicing at the same, Anup Soni who knows how to play his game and should be casted in movies often.
The young cadets turned cops are also good except there could have been a little more detailing for each of them. One of them is given a Dirty Harry joke, another a nifty but not highly over dramatised chase and their joint outings where they engage in debates and occasionally quarrel. A little more detailing could have filled the film and the group.
Class of 83 still works as an entertainer as well as well-realised but small sketchy hardback of an interesting era. Though we have so many repetitions of gangsters vs honest policemen in the movies there is always a scope of another especially today when we need stories of cops who believe in protecting the good and destroying the evil. Class of 83 is streaming on Netflix.
