‘Officer’ review: This Nagarjuna-RGV cop drama fails to impress

Officer is a thriller. The most thrilling question in the movie is why Nagarjuna said ‘Yes’ to working with Ram Gopal Varma, who has probably been a man on a mission over the last decade, systematically destroying every piece of legacy he has created in the early part of his career. For those who still think of Shiva when they think of Ram Gopal Varma, Officer is a reality check. Even the not-so-critically-or-commercially-acclaimed Govinda Govinda feels like a great movie when compared to Officer.

The movie, written and directed by Varma, revolves around a Crime Branch cop, Sivaji Rao, played by Nagarjuna, who is pitted against a corrupt officer, Pansari. The movie starts with Sivaji coming to Mumbai to investigate allegations against Pansari. The dirty cop drama takes a U-turn when Pansari is acquitted for lack of evidence (obviously?). Once the man who cleaned the Mumbai streets off mafia (we are told, we are not shown anything, in case you are excited), Pansari starts his own ‘company’ recklessly murdering big-shots – scenes that remind you of the climax of Varma’s last decent movie, Sarkaar. That’s a good way of describing the movie – a psychopath going on a shooting spree.

Officer wants to be a cat-and-mouse game between two cops, except both the cat and the mouse didn’t have their daily dose of Bournvita. Or even coffee. The movie has all of Varma’s recent trademarks – crazy camera angles (around the shoes, under the tyres, below the chair) and sounds so loud you miss TV news channel debates. The ‘Officer’ in question, Nagarjuna, is trying to prove himself innocent and his strategy is simple – a terrace fight after asking a trusted colleague, a lady cop whose role in the movie is hard to fathom, to tap phones.

So, technically the movie can be summarised as – ‘Cops don’t safeguard their prime witness. The main culprit gets acquitted, frames a sincere guy by tapping phones and in turn gets trapped when his phone is tapped.’ The ending of the movie is crazier. It just ends; period. Like when you put your hands inside the packet and get air instead of chips. No tying of threads, no closure, no explanations. It was almost as if Varma got bored of his own script. Or maybe Nagarjuna woke up from his nightmare and said, ‘Enough’s enough!’.

The low-budget flick is short at two hours, but such is the level of mundaneness of the plot and such is the tragi-comedy of the serious characters in the movie (Ajay gets shot in his head – supposedly to remind us of the murders in Shiva, but all we can do is yawn) that even that feels like long drawn. And then there is always the Varma flicker of madness – chopping the finger of a child, a drunken-people song, crazy bumbling fools trying too hard.

The movie is almost a corollary of the Einstein equation – boredom getting transferred from the movie-maker to the audience. Varma will have a bigger audience if he takes motivation classes and explains how he gets funds to make these feather-brained movies. And also how he manages to convince stars like Nagarjuna!