Cat, starring Randeep Hooda, Suvinder Vicky, Hasleen Kaur, Kavya Thapar, Gurinder Makna, Geeta Agarwal and more, released on Netflix with its 8 episodes, each with a runtime ranging between 40-48 minutes. The crime thriller is directed by Balwinder Singh Janjua, edited by Umesh Gupta and written by the director himself alongside Rupinder Chahal, Anil Rodhan and Jimmy Singh. It’s restricted to the adult audience due to its depiction of mature themes involving substance abuse and sexual violence.
Netflix describes the political thriller series as follows:
Living under an alias, a former police informant is summoned to infiltrate a major drug empire but uncovers a dangerous connection to his dark past.
-Cat Review Does Not Contain Spoilers-
It always feels good to watch a series or a film that probes into people’s morality and conscience, especially when it’s set in a realistic backdrop with pressing issues unsettling the peaceful status quo. Netflix’s latest thriller channels the same theme of politics and leaves the viewers with one question to ponder about – Does the end justify the means?
Hooda’s Gurnam Singh is challenged by the same question throughout the series as we witness both his younger as well as adult selves dipping their toes into a lethal territory as a police mole. Fuelled by the urge to free his brother from the clutches of the drug empire plaguing Punjab’s youth, Singh is pulled back into his old ways of covert life by the police, who once saved him from the horrors of the militant Punjab Insurgency in the past.
As soon as he joins the mission, he starts questioning the basis of it as the killing spree is set in motion. However, the same pushes the audience back and forth as his character is further developed through his connections of the past. When binge watching the episodes back to back, the chronology of events can start clouding your assessment of them due to the lack of timestamps or the dearth of shift in colour schemes on the screen, the typical markers of flashbacks.
Endless characters are introduced throughout the race, and the ones who initially seemed insignificant, get roped into the plot with more revelations surfacing on the clock. However, these multiple additions of subplots become a bit messy when taken in all together because balancing them out to connect the dots in the end is a heavy task. Moreover, not all of these subplots may hit you with the same intensity. Geeta Agarwal’s Madam Aulakh, on the other hand, is one such entry in the mayhem whom I wished to see more of, especially since her story carried way too much weight. Unfortunately, it’s only briefly touched upon and it never became one of the prime focuses of the overall storyline.
The show’s pacing is otherwise quite balanced, presenting us with a good thriller that normalises the Sikh community’s portrayal without throwing in their representation as a token punchline. Hooda is an experienced gem, always keen on reinventing himself, and it shows. He doesn’t unleash over the top reactions to draw attention to theatricality, rather simply opts for making the character feel like his own. The intelligible allusions to the Lady Macbeth stance of regret are put on by him offering his voluntary services to the gurudwara after every sinful execution, which comes across as an interesting touch to the character and his psyche.
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Without inserting any unintentional jokes to slander the Sikh community or disparage them with the usual stereotypical image that pervades through the Indian mainstream, Gurnam Singh’s visage is brought on as a plausible morally grey main character, while the antagonist’s reveal shines as both expected and unexpected at the same time.
Cat: Worth the Watch?
In today’s age, the overspilling OTT content tends to take away the attention from good quality quotient. Cat, on the other end, is one of the better Hindi releases this year, especially with ample number of Zee5 and MX Player series in the same category coming out in the blink of an eye. It’s a well-paced thriller, which eventually ties all its loose threads to form a whole that keeps you coming back for the next episode. Although it pops up as something similar to Udta Punjab in its initial phases, later it fleshes out various subplots under its banner, maybe a bit too many, but the labyrinth still entraps you in its puzzling countenance.
In a conversation with The Hindu, Randeep Hooda spoke up about the portrayal of Sikh people and destabilised the derogatory stereotype associated with them being “thigh-slapping, paaji-paaji-spouting comedians or pseudo-macho people as they are often portrayed”. And, in a way those words are justified in his act as Gurnam Singh, as he leads the character with a calm poise despite the turmoil he’s been shrewdly planted within.
CAT is now streaming on Netflix.