‘Gajab Raat’ movie review: Manoj Bajpayee lights up a night to remember

A corrupt yet efficient cop is a lethal paradox but a rare breed in Hindi cinema. Most films give us clean heroes or cartoonish villains in uniform, even though our police stations have plenty of specimens like Ajay Nivrit (Manoj Bajpayee). Few Indian filmmakers understand the inner workings of our law enforcement agencies as well as Neeraj Pandey. He operates in a fertile space where raw reality meets gripping fiction. In Gajab Raat, the writer-producer collaborates with director Ritesh Shah to look beyond cinematic stereotypes and show the power of an investigating officer if he decides to follow procedure.

Originally titled Ghooskhor Pandat, which sparked controversy, the makers shifted the title to the generic Gajab Raat, pulling the character out of a specific identity to address broader institutional corruption. A chameleon, Ajay, regardless of surname, is a quintessential Delhi cop who could have spent his formative years in Darbhanga, Kochi, or Pathankot. He doesn’t compromise on law; he negotiates to mould it according to his interests. Together with his immediate boss, SHO Rana (Rajiv Gupta), he manipulates the system to nurture his farmhouse dreams. One night, even before the dust settles after a raid in a cheap hotel, the dynamic moves from a lucrative extortion plan to a dark, high-stakes national security crisis.

Conscience comes calling when a young girl jumps off a moving SUV in Delhi’s Connaught Circus. As the news spreads on social media, Ajay is assigned the case because he was close to the scene. Things take a turn when a series of high-profile characters start taking interest in the case. When a social activist (Shraddha Das), a CBI officer (Akshay Oberoi), and an NIA (Saqib Saleem) operative converge on the hospital, standard police protocol goes out the window. They swoop into the much-maligned sub-inspector’s territory with a mission to strip him of his authority and oust him from the investigation.

But Ajay doesn’t fold under administrative pressure, first for greed, then for justice. Deploying his knowledge of the systemic leverage, he stands his ground. Soon, Shah turns an institutional ambush into a chess match where everyone hunts everyone else to survive the night.

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Loaded with stinging dialogue, it isn’t just about a rogue cop trying to make a quick buck. It gradually becomes a clinical dissection of how greed functions as a currency that changes form depending on which rung of the ladder you occupy.

Between the lines, Shah argues, fish rots from the head down. While the rot starts at the top, the lower rungs smell it first and get tossed in the trash to protect the head. That the system functions as a transactional marketplace in which justice is treated as a commodity, and evidence and legal procedures are not tools to protect whistleblowers but are weapons used by pillars of democracy to maximise their leverage or protect their own skins.

For anyone who has seen the working of the system from close quarters, the conversation between SI Ajay and SHO Rana hits with a ring of truth. Playful but terrifyingly realistic, watching two seasoned operators feels like eavesdropping on an actual negotiation between two North Indian cops.

Bajpayee breathes a human soul into an otherwise commercial archetype. Here, he abandons slow-burning intensity for a rapid-fire, breathless dialogue delivery. Sharp and unyielding, his brisk, fast-paced cadence brings out the internal panic of a lower-rung policeman whose scheme spins out of control over a frenzied night.

A competent supporting cast helps create a credible atmosphere. Rajiv Gupta has built a career playing different shades of cops from the Delhi-NCR belt, and here he embodies a system too exhausted to be shocked, yet too smart to be outmaneuvered. Nushrratt Bharuccha is pitch-perfect in a high-impact cameo, and Shraddha nails the bindi-wielding stereotype of social workers. Akshay Oberoi is believable as the smooth-talking, deceptively mysterious CBI officer. So is good old Suneet Tandon as the corrupt colonial fossil of Lutyens’ Delhi.

After Last Man in Tower, Bajpayee and Divya Dutta deliver another riveting face-off. Here, Dutta embodies a restrained, cold power centre. Her control is absolute, providing a strong counterweight to Bajpayee’s manic survival instinct. An engaging plot and an electric ensemble make it a night to remember.

Gajab Raat is currently streaming on Netflix.