Sacred Games is a Netflix series, based on a novel by Vikram Chandra with a similar name, Sacred Games. The good thing is, Netflix has released the entire first season of it, consisting of 8 episodes, so you can binge watch them like I did!
Initially, when I heard about Sacred Games from my friends who had watched the initial episodes of it, I thought about skipping it. Because they said it was good but full of vulgarity. And while there is sex, nudity and a lot of swearing, I didn’t find it vulgar, having watched all 8 episodes.
Sacred Games is a story of Mumbai and of India, the sort of India we like to digress from, except when talking about the rising crime graph. And although it encapsulates some of the events which took place in the recent history of India eg. Babri Masjid Demolition and the riots that followed, it is a work of fiction.
If we talk about characters, then the leading role belongs to Inspector Sartaj Singh, played by Saif Ali Khan.
Sartaj Singh is an honest inspector, caught in the midst of a corrupt police force headed by DCP Parulkar (Neeraj Kabi) and is ridiculed and shrugged off by his colleagues, who feel he is good for nothing and a liability, who is hell-bent on testifying against them in a case of extrajudicial killing of an unarmed Muslim boy.
However, his world is turned upside down, when he is contacted by Ganesh Eknath Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a wanted Don that had fled India a long time ago.
Sartaj finally manages to track Gaitonde down (throughout talking on the phone about the circumstances leading to this point and impending doom) and just as Sartaj is about to apprehend him, Gaitonde commits suicide and tells him, everyone is going to die in 25 days, except, Trivedi!
With that suicide, the story forks out into two parts, one the current one involving Sartaj and his quest to uncover the sinister plot and other from past, of Gaitonde’s life leading up to this point.
Even though initial parts of it seem to be borrowed from Scarface and a few other Hollywood movies (especially the rise of Gaitonde as a criminal), the story, on the whole, seems original with detailed characters and a storyline that is quite engaging.
In fact, it gets more interesting with each episode and while you can predict at least parts of it quite easily, it is difficult to predict what will happen next.
And this is the reason, why I loved Sacred Games so much and I can’t wait for the next season of it. Add to that, I am also tempted to buy Sacred Games the novel, just to see how good or bad the adaptation is and uncover the mystery.
The acting of the majority of the characters is quite good and for the first time it seems, India has a series, which can rival the International Series and Movies!
Though the English dubbing of it isn’t as engaging as the original Hindi dialogues and if you can understand Hindi, my suggestion would be to watch it in its native language!
The only thing that I am left wondering is, why isn’t Netflix promoting it as much as Lust Stories?
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