Stream It Or Skip It?

One of the craziest real-life criminal sagas gets a weirdly wacky Bollywood-comedy treatment in Inspector Zende (now on Netflix), one of many cinematic and television dramatizations about serial killer Charles Sobhraj. This is the rare one that focuses on the man that captured him, celebrated Mumbai police officer Madhukar Zende, and the even rarer one that makes light of the pursuit of Sobhraj, who was nicknamed The Serpent for his ability to escape custody (five prison breaks in multiple countries) and The Bikini Killer for his propensity for targeting women (he killed at least 20 people, although the final number remains unconfirmed). Manoj Bajpayee forgoes his typical serious roles to play Zende in a film that aims to split the difference between hilarious and gruesome, with predictably mixed results.

The Gist: Opening narration labels what Inspector Zende as a story that’s “true but seems like a fantasy” and “inspired by true events but looks like a fairy tale,” and the repetition and hyperbole of these two statements is highly indicative of what follows. We will see slapstick and nasty murders, and everyone works a little too hard for the twain to meet. Anyway: MUMBAI, 1986. Madhukar Zende (Bajpayee) is a humble family man, loyal to his wife and two kids, and to his job as a Mumbai policeman. He calls his wife Vijaya (Girija Oak) “the commissioner” and she seems to like it. It’s super cute! 

Zende learns that Carl “The Swimsuit Killer” Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh) – names are changed for… some reason – has just escaped from prison, so we get a flashback to 15 hours prior, when Carl dosed the prison rice pudding with a sedative and gave ’em the slip, and then we get another flashback to 1971, when Zende first captured Carl after a lengthy footchase. We will eventually get back to the story’s present. Don’t worry. Please be patient.

OK, we’re finally back to regular-ass 1986. Carl has a crew of a few pals with him, and the chief (Sachin Khedekar) sics Zende on him. Debrief: Five prison escapes in four different countries, 32 murders, on Interpol’s most-wanted list. Carl is not a nice guy, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look like the love child of Borat and Prince, specifically on the cover of his self-titled 1979 album Prince. Zende and his fellow inspectors shake down shady guys, participate in montages, strut through town in slo-mo, etc.; meanwhile, Carl slits a throat here and smothers a woman there, and looks like a discomonger straight outta 1979, and I think we’re supposed to find his hairdo quite amusing. Eventually, he flees to Goa and Zende assembles a posse to chase him down. Hilarity ensues! And the same goes for death! 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Naked Gun is back in the zeitgeist, so Zende’s spinning a cop saga into satire inevitably begs the comparison. Netflix also released The Serpent back in 2021, which takes a very different tone than Zende but is also about Sobhraj.

Performance Worth Watching: Bajpayee cuts through the silliness with a razor glare, which fits the satirical tone (and inevitably forces we Americans to invoke Leslie Nielsen). 

Memorable Dialogue: It takes an animal to catch an animal:

Chief: You know how to catch a snake, Zende?

Zende: Irrespective of how venomous a snake is, sir, a mongoose always beats the snake.

Chief: So you are our mongoose?

Zende: Without a tail, and with two legs.

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: The tonal gambit Inspector Zende attempts requires blending serial murder and cartoonish gags into something palatable, and the result is predictably discordant. The film’s approach to Carl’s killing spree is strangely grim; meanwhile, Zende interrogates an informant with a foot massage. The Mumbai cops don’t rough up their detainees – they prefer to beat the jokes to death in drawn-out sequences that have all the comic timing of a half-speed orgy of tree sloths. 

Such lack of comedic snap results in a drawn-out affair that, at nearly two hours (the new Naked Gun? Eighty-five minutes), wears out its welcome. The film is repetitively structured as a series of montages and elongated jokes with occasional cuts to Carl’s miscellaneous nastiness. Zende and his cops track him to hippie pot parties and nightclubs, the bland set pieces boasting near misses, cowardly turns, dopey disguises, misunderstandings and other various mishaps; a dispute between Goa and Mumbai police, who engage in a jurisdictional tug-o-war, and a gag about how Zende’s crew blows their budget on bribes for corrupt officials is the closest the movie comes to real laughs – and even then, they’re near-misses.

Bajpayee does his part like an old pro, bringing a deadpan, winking gravitas to the tonally cacophonous proceedings, and a recurring narrative thread about his dedication to his family adds an earnest sentimental component to this oddly flavored cinematic soup. It’s a visually colorful yukfest that might hit home with Indian audiences who can butterfly-net the nuance here, but that feels like the words of an apologist. Funny is funny no matter who or where you are, and Inspector Zende just isn’t funny enough.

Our Call: You have to admire the effort, but the tonal marriage of slayings and yuks in Inspector Zende results in irreconcilable differences. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.