Refugee is a thriller TV series directed by Imtiaz Hossain and starring Shohel Mondol, Sharif Siraj, Zakia Bari Mamo and Afzal Hossain, alongside other cast members.
Hoichoi describes the series as:
A drug dealer from the Geneva Camp of Bangladesh gets involved in a spine-chilling conspiracy of the third generation of freedom fighters. How far will he go to prevent a catastrophe and save the people who don’t consider him one of their own?
– Refugee review does not contain spoilers –
In the chaos of the Geneva camp and in the midst of a refugee mess, there’s an operation happening that probably not a lot of people know about. Iqbal, a Bihari drug dealer in said camp, must pull out all the stops in order to save his brother.
In the dark underbelly of crappy lives and crappier opportunities and with no end in sight, you understand Iqbal’s life choice. It’s a crappy life choice, but he will literally have no choice in any matter around him – there’s not much choice there, to begin with. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Iqbal’s fate seems almost apparent.
The series takes its sweet time to let us know what exactly is going on in the Hoichoi’s Refugee world. It’s a bit confusing at first, with Iqbal and Wasim constantly getting into verbal spats and the former meeting a shadowy law enforcement officer who promises to help him out… if he does one more thing. However, there’s no end to these. As Iqbal continues to play with fire on both sides and gets entangled in the worst ways possible, there’s an air of thrill missing from the situation.
True, it’s sad and tragic and desperate at times as well. But you don’t relate or empathise with Iqbal as he digs his grave deeper and deeper. The sad storyline that you witness unfurl in front of you seems too convenient and simple to actually make you feel interested. There are so many ways this could’ve been a gripping thriller, however, it doesn’t do any of these things. Plus, the lukewarm and slow pace makes it a chore to sit through.
As it drones on and on, you wonder what’s going on in this series and when there will be some end to the repetitive storyline. A faster pacing and some better dialogue delivery would’ve gone a long way to add some interest to the watching experience. The latter, weirdly, is just so stark that I wonder how no one had a problem with it. Zakia Bari Mamo, playing Maria, is the only interesting and somewhat lively character in this lukewarm show but isn’t enough to save it.
Meanwhile, Shohel Mondol, as our protagonist Iqbal, is also good at playing the role of someone desperate to go the extra mile to save his family. Unfortunately, the baddy of the show, who is supposed to be an international terrorist, has the scare meter of James P. Sullivan from Monsters Inc. He only looks at young women sleazily and plays Jenga, and that’s about it.
Summing up: Refugee
Hoichoi’s Refugee 2022 tries its level best to be a very shocking and intimate crime thriller but gives us a show that we’ve seen too many times before. It’s repetitive, slow and all too familiar. How tragedy strikes in the narrow lanes of the Bihari refugee camps is sad but it doesn’t leave much of an impact or hold much of an interest. The problems and their solutions are too simple, achieved too easily for a series that is desperate to leave a gritty mark in our minds.
Refugee is streaming on Hoichoi.