Indian Police Force Review: Rohit Shetty’s series has a stale story with dull performances

Rating: 2 stars on 5

When the director, who has made masala blockbusters like Golmaal and Singham, comes out with his debut web series there are high expectations.
Director Rohit Shetty’s ‘Indian Police Force’, a seven-part series, dropped on Amazon Prime on January 19, and true to his sensibilities revolved around cops. The series is directed by Rohit Shetty and Sushwanth Prakash, and features Sidharth Malhotra, Shilpa Shetty Kundra and Vivek Oberoi.

As the series unfolds, Delhi police officer Kabir Malik (Sidharth Malhotra) and his boss IPS Officer Vikram Bakshi (Vivek Oberoi) are called to action as Delhi is rocked by a series of blasts.

The story revolves around how the police nab the terrorists and how a Muslim police officer – a first in Shetty’s cop universe – takes on the enemy. Malik and Bakshi are aided in this endeavor by senior cop Shilpa Shetty and makes her presence felt sporadically through the series.

As expected, the Rohit Shetty series is full of action – chases, the cat-and-mouse game, shootouts, explosions, flying cars – and the three cops showing off their prowess and skills in every aspect. Unfortunately for them, the storyline in Indian Police Force is stale and offers nothing new to the audience. It is not an engaging police drama that is fresh and riveting but run-of-the-mill with dull performances and poor writing. Of course, the show is not realistic, or meant to be either one thinks, but many of the scenes are just laughable.

There are flashes of brilliance in some scenes thanks to the novel setting but it is just not enough to make Indian Police Force watchable. At seven episodes, this series is just a few episodes too long and given the hint of season two, one hopes the writing and performances are much better the second time round.