Despatch Review | Manoj Bajpayee Does the Heavy Lifting in a Film That Struggles to Strike the Right Balance

In Kanu Behl’s movies, one can see a very peculiar and unusual amount of time spent on setting the world of the protagonist, even though the conflict and drama may not have anything to do with it. The disconnection of these tracks sort of bothers us while we are watching the film as we are more curious about the main track. But, the conclusion of these films will leave us thinking about those characters even when the film is over. In Despatch, Kanu Behl leaves the spicy part of the idea, which is the uncovering of a mighty scam and focuses on the life of the journalist who went after that story. Finding a compelling balance in such a story is a tough thing to crack, and I feel the movie faces some jitters in that aspect.

So the story here basically focuses on the life of the journalist named, Joy Bag, who works for this newspaper named Despatch. A shootout that leads to the death of a gang leader in Mumbai grabs Joy’s attention, and he sets out to do a catchy story about that. But while doing the investigation for the story, Joy realizes that something big is happening that has certain links with the newly formed T20 League (IPL, of course) and the 2G spectrum auction. Joy’s efforts to find the truth behind this big-scale fraud that has major people involved in it is what we see in Despatch.

Even though the finale of Despatch is not necessarily your high-octane commercial template, there is that sense of high you get seeing slow-paced investigative journalism, like what we saw in Spotlight. But Kanu Behl does not want to follow the path of conventional journalism thrillers. In fact, one of the most underwhelming aspects for me while I was watching the film was seeing how seemingly easy it was for Joy to crack things with his connections. The psychological state of the character, due to the kind of work he does is actually portrayed very impressively in the movie. From relationships to taking favors, Joy is shown as this vulnerable journalist.

Manoj Bajpayee, as Joy Bag, is very much doing the heavy lifting here. The character, as I already said, is an extremely flawed and problematic one. He is not satisfied with his marriage, he has a workplace affair, and there is another woman too who is interested in having him around. And you sort of know that he is not the man of ethical journalism. The opportunistic shade of the character, along with the depiction of his fears, Bajpayee cracks the character with great conviction. Out of the three women who are around Joy, Arrchita Agarwaal’s Prerna Prakash gets the meatier part. Shahana Goswami is very much underused as the wife character. The desperation of both the wife and the girlfriend to stick to such a guy is discomforting to watch, but let’s face it, we have all seen red-flag lovers. Rituparna Sen as Noori Rai is the third woman in Joy’s life, and compared to the other two, her character had clarity, and in terms of performance, it wasn’t really a demanding role.

The film’s title and even the posters that emphasize the big story in the movie may give you a feeling that it is a thriller. But apart from a slightly mission impossible-ish sequence in a server room, everything else in this movie is a setup to show a character drama. There are no explanations about the character of Joy Bag in the film. At one point, we will think it is his wife’s attitude towards his family that took away the joy from his marriage. But the way he treats her at a later stage would make us think otherwise. Even in how he treats the girlfriend, one can sense his ultimate opportunitism. The villains of the story are so powerful that we sort of know that if this movie is made and released, then it is very obvious that there won’t be a clear conclusion to the investigative story in this movie. Gradually, the film skims through the parts that we will be most excited about, and it is basically a series of characters talking about the scale and untouchable hold of the scam, and the director perhaps wants us to find real-life people who would fit the mold. Siddharth Diwan’s cinematography follows a style that shows us the rougher edges of Mumbai, and the blue and warm color palette, with shots that zoom in on a static frame, also sets the mood on a subconscious level.

Creating a sense of numbness at the end of the film is something Kanu Behl strives to achieve in all his movies, and even in the case of Despatch, the journey of the character is so elaborate that, when you backtrack the whole story, you can sort of see the eventfulness of that journey. But the narrative isn’t able to maneuver the viewer to look at it as a character study, and hence the drama feels half-baked and unfulfilling.