The Night Manager Review: This ambitious remake creates intrigue but fails in execution
The story doesn’t differ much from its English counterpart with a few bits localised to suit Indian sensibilities
Hyderabad: If you are looking for suspense and thrills, Disney+HotStar’s ‘The Night Manager’ may not be the ideal fodder for that. The Hindi adaptation of John Le Carre’s eponymous novel, and based off the 2016 limited series starring Tom Hiddleston, is an ambitious remake with the narrative moving across Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India.
Speaking purely from an aesthetic point of view, the cast looks really good, the styling of the series has been done really well, but perhaps the makers should have paid equal attention to the screenplay.
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The story doesn’t differ much from its English counterpart with a few bits localised to suit Indian sensibilities. Aditya Roy Kapur’s Shaan (terribly miscast) is the night manager at a hotel in Dhaka around the time Rohingya refugees are fleeing Myanmar seeking refuge in Bangladesh.
The former soldier unwittingly crosses paths with black market arms dealer Shailendra Shelly Rungta (played by Anil Kapoor) while trying to help a 14-year-old child bride, instead of a world-weary mistress from the original.
Shaan is recruited by intelligence agent Tilottame Shome (a saving grace) into spying on Shelly. He manages to penetrate Shelly’s inner circle by rescuing his son Taha during a staged robbery. While he is trying to gather intel on the guy, he is also trying not to get tangled up with Shelly’s girlfriend Kaveri (Sobhita Dhulipala) with secrets of her own. Her sole job in the four episodes seems to be looking pretty in slinky outfits, maybe we may see more of her in season 2.
The first episode creates enough intrigue for a while, but it’s downhill after that. There are some major loopholes in the story. Like the fact when Shaan is trying to break into Shelly’s safe, he does so by cutting off the house’s electrical supply.
It’s kind of unbelievable how easily he gains entry into the safe of an arms dealer, who is supposedly untouchable by intelligence agencies.
Anil Kapoor portrays a chilling menace as the immoral Shelly who doesn’t think twice about killing innocents as long as he makes money, but it’s Aditya’s monotone acting and poorly written screenplay which are the problem.
Although Sandeep Modi has tried hard to adapt the multiple sub-plots and backstories of the characters, he fails in execution. ‘The Night Manager’ comes across like a drawn-out Bollywood movie trying very hard to generate some false thrills, it fails to be either.
