Titles like Sacred Games will be key to their success. As a whole however, it’s a haphazard, hamstrung morality play that can’t seem to balance its moving parts.Sacred Games represents a push for Netflix to become more relevant in a region (India) with increasing competition for Netflix. Its imagery is propulsive, when divorced from any larger context. Unshackled from the censorious constraints of Indian cinema, it’s an often ambiguous, unapologetically violent work set against Mumbai’s criminal underbelly. It bleeds street-level authenticity seldom seen in the Indian mainstream — characters speak Hindi, Marathi, English and Punjabi, though the series’ default audio setting internationally is its English dub — trading in the polished poetry of Bollywood dialogue for uncouth, often hilarious swearing.
References to Sartaj’s late father, a former policeman, and vague threats about some humungous danger to Mumbai that will unfurl in twenty-five days send the good cop on a solo mission to catch the elusive don. 4.7k.Saif Ali Khan in Sacred GamesGaitonde, a self-professed deity, speaks to Sartaj in riddles. Please make sure to read the stickied post with basic guidelines, as well as the rules.
As if from beyond the grave, Gaitonde, a man who fancies himself a god, unravels the past — his own, and that of Mumbai — and creates dueling narratives that result in a fundamental disconnect. While the first chapter features flashbacks narrated to Sartaj by Gaitonde, the remaining seven feature a similar structure, sans narrative motivation. It’s impossible, however, to talk about the rest of the series without revealing how episode 1 ends.MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE END OF EPISODE 1 AHEAD.Gaitonde, who choses Sartaj specifically for of his moral fortitude, waits until the two lock eyes before shooting himself in the head, leaving Sartaj in the blind, though with a newfound sense of urgency. This cat-and-mouse game makes up the majority of the first episode, a thrilling introduction in which characters reflect (at times literally, through mirrors and water) on the building blocks of their very selves.
When forced to change his statement on a police shooting, his other investigations exist independently of this compromise he’s told, repeatedly, that he’ll receive backup if he plays ball, but he spends half the series going rogue anyway. For Sartaj, this doesn’t end up meaning much. In Sacred Games, good men molded by corrupt structures are forced to question the ways in which they do good. Sartaj and his peers play what feels like an entirely different game involving people plucked from Gaitonde’s past who, in the present, may as well be different characters.Nawazuddin SiddiquiThings even end on a cliffhanger, promising answers sometime in the future, but neither the present plot nor the characters forced to wrestle within it traverse interesting waters in the meantime. His proximity to Mumbai’s real history makes him a cipher, though Sartaj’s decoding of his conspiracy in the present lacks any moral or religious grounding, at least until the season’s final moments. Gaitonde claims to be above religious conflict, though he can only go so long without being dragged into the communal violence he continually ignores.
If there’s a breakout character in Sacred Games, it’s Katekar. Sartaj’s unaddressed divorce woes, more lip-service to character than actual ethos, pale in comparison to the brief glimpses we get of Katekar’s story: His inability to balance Sartaj’s demands with his wife and two kids in a crammed apartment his selective nobility, taking on whatever case Sartaj tosses his way his initial apathy towards a Muslim immigrant in search of her missing son his sense of humor despite his circumstances, and his eventual drive to do good despite the lack of reward. Sartaj’s loyal Constable Katekar (Jitendra Joshi) is the beating heart of the show.
Similarly, Radhika Apte’s Anjali Mathur exists to facilitate the plot’s progression rather than unravel it through motivated action. Parulkar and Majid, too, are defined by their proximity to Sartaj, robbed of interior lives that could’ve painted a more complete picture of the world they inhabit. Sartaj’s peer Majid (Aamir Bashir) falls closer toward Parulkar’s side of morality and corruption, though he’s ready to help Sartaj at a moment’s notice when things go awry. His ties to Gaitonde feature in the series’ flashbacks, though they have little bearing on his present. Neeraj Kabi’s stone-cold DCP Parulkar, an equally enticing facet of the story, has a sordid past.
She too ends up a victim of Gaitonde’s world, in ways meant to flesh out the stakes of his journey.Saif Ali Khan and Radhika ApteThe fate of the show’s women is almost comically predictable by the time the season wraps up — not just in terms of where their journeys end, but how and why. A high-profile dancer, Kukkoo is involved in a tender romance with Gaitonde, who first views her as a stepping stone to power before claiming to see her as a human being on her own terms (the audience is rarely given the luxury of this perspective). The one female character who comes close to being an exception is Kukoo (Kubra Sait), a transgender woman played with verve, although, disappointingly, by a cisgender actress. This is a point that series attempts to make — everyone in these men’s orbit is a victim of their hubris — but like the supporting cops, rarely are Sacred Games’ women given their due as people with lives of their own. The same is true for most of the series’ women, often collateral damage to the stories of men.
But the show still plays their narrative like a mystery, one whose answers rarely (if ever) impact the characters themselves. Sartaj and Anjali chase phantoms that we, the audience, are often aware of via the flashbacks. On the other hand, Zoya Mirza (Elnaaz Norouzi), an actress separated from the plot by several degrees, ends up with her own narrative about a coke-snorting, dog-murdering boyfriend and her own mysterious past, though her story doesn’t begin to impact the plot until the second-to-last episode. That’s a hell of a tally for an eight-episode season.
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Gaitonde is Sacred Games, though Sacred Games does neither him nor Siddiqui justice. The appeal of Gaitonde is both the self-righteous violence he inflicts — even if the show’s use of religious conflict is mere window-dressing — as well as watching his plans come to fruition despite the tumultuous consequences. His schemes begin deep in his mind, like a fire raging behind Siddiqui’s eyes. Watching Gaitonde ascend is a fascinating journey. Gaitonde is a man with a fascinating past, born out of violence at the nexus of poverty and privilege (his father was a beggar, but belonged to the Brahmin caste), and he knows exactly how to find people’s weak spots in a world consumed by religion. Siddiqui carries himself with a cunning intellect when his wheels are in motion, you feel every turn.
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