Mirzapur Season 2 is explosive and a triumph of cinematic art. It is a show in which the script sits on the bloodied throne and the direction is a crafty wazir.
*Spoiler Alert* The season opens with a scorpion walking on a towny road with its tail slung high in the air and therein hangs a tale, a diabolical tale at that.
Mirzapur is back and how, stinging as sharp as a deadly scorpion bite! In the badlands of Mirzapur and its bleak neighbourhood, local satraps continue with their internecine battles for guns, liquor and opium. But this time there is a little more method in their madness. Their murderous games are more modulated and first plotted on a chessboard. They seduce, marry and kill for an aphrodisiac called power. It gives their fragile egos, their sordid lives, their flaccid libido a sustained megalomaniac erection.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. It burns in the heart of a brawny man. Oh, make that two. A man and a woman. Another woman, a clan insider, also plots to avenge her honour. Sorry, not sure about the honour part, as she uses the cook to meet her carnal urgencies. But who’s judging! She makes a choice. Her abuse wasn’t a part of that choice! Once the old lion with girded loins had tasted blood, he needed to have regular mounds of flesh. Soft, unsatiated, fecund female flesh would work like a charm. The same woman, a wife, plots to financially cripple her sexually emasculated husband. And bides time for the big kill.
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The narrative, pace and performance of the lead players is almost perfect in this Tarantinoesque rendition of rural crime baroque opera. Ali Fazal, with a crutch in early parts and a walking stick later — ornaments for the daredevil, seethes with anger, speaks in an anachronistically genteel voice and delivers a superlative act.
Pankaj Tripathi, uber cool and clinical, a master of his craft, kills with a detachment that almost borders on innocence. Munna grows dangerously and Divyenndu performs sharply comparing guns to a human penis. In his world, both are a joy to behold when they explode. And in a war, the king and the prince are saved and a lowly soldier is sacrificed. Such is the law of natural selection. Now, wait, it’s that Darwinian selection that the women of Mirzapur are determined to turn upside down! And what can I say about the denouement without spilling the proverbial beans. Many rivers come together to flow into the sea and the sea rises and paints the sky red. Red because it gets sliced with a cleaver!
Conclusion
Mirzapur Season 2 is explosive and a triumph of cinematic art. It is a show in which the script sits on the bloodied throne and the direction is a crafty wazir. Take a bow, you shining quartet of Puneet Krishna, Vineet Krishna, Gurmmeet Singh and Mihir Desai, the crimson kings of gothic gore. And oh yes, the fifth star, director of photography Sanjay Kapoor shoots like a man possessed. Mirzapur.
There must be a Season 3. For a sapling is being nurtured by a woman and she, essentially a survivor and a schemer, is waiting in the wings, a dowager, a queen mother. For a kingmaker is more powerful than the king! In another land, a sinister plot brews as a ring falls.
And who knows a woman politico may avenge her husband.
But that’s for another day, another time…
By Sanjay Trehan
Rating: 4.4/5
Watch Mirzapur Season 2 on Amazon Prime
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