Culture

From Dabangg to Simbba – Everything Wrong with Our Filmy Cops!!

April 2, 2020November 18, 2020 by Anjali Pillai

Our filmy cops have taken it to their shoulders to provide justice to the damsel in distress and enforce law and order. No matter what side of the law they may be, everything they do is justified. They enforce the law by breaking the law and it is all cool. As Sangram Bhalrao from Simmba said- beimaani with full imaandaari(Dishonesty with full honesty)!

For cops like Bajirao Singham from the Singham series, even the judiciary lies below them. Shooting down the ruthless drug-dealers and rapists earn them the messiah medal and frames them as a powerhouse of hypermasculinity.

By clapping hands and whistling to these scenes in the theatres, we somewhere glorified violence. Yes, the extra-judicial killing is an answer to the slow-paced judicial system of the country but circumstances do make a difference. In movies, this extrajudicial killing looks fair enough but at times reality holds a different scenario.

Not everyone accused is the culprit. With power and rank, it ain’t difficult to push and manipulate innocent people into this de facto encounters. This is exactly what Jolly LLB 2 tries to prove. The policemen we dearly celebrate as heroes for enforcing ‘justice-on-spot’ and giving the aggressors ‘what-they-deserve’ need not be the real heroes.

With movies like Wanted, Dabangg, Suryavanshi, and Simmba we are totally diverging from the reality of a cop to a quixotic savior with superpowers. We can never deny that these movies are nowhere close to the actual circumstances that cop hoards through.

The leading men in such cop films have a larger-than-life swag and mostly turn out unrelatable to the common man at times. They are capable of performing stunts that may defy the laws of physics. But what is the real-life of a cop? How do they spend their 24 hrs a day? They are just human beings assigned to ensure law and order in the country. Action Hero Biju reminds and convinces you of this statement.

A real cop is SI Biju Paulose (Nivin Pauly in Action Hero Biju) and not Bharathchandran IPS (Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi’s much-celebrated cop role) who leaves you dumbstruck with his unmatchable proficiency in the English language. Biju Paulose has a hectic day dealing with petitions and solving cases, just like any other cop in our country.

You see him deal with every situation with commitment, with a will to help out people and ensure law and order in the city. And for this, he is even willing to put his life at stake, nothing bothers him. Action Hero Biju is indeed one of a kind.

Films with cop heroes often turn out to be mere pot-boilers. We have the heartthrob cop like Chulbul Pandey from Dabangg who does not shy away from catcalling and shaking his pelvis to item numbers and Bajirao Singham who has his own signature dance move. So much like how a cop would do!! I understand the necessity for entertainment quotient in films but redefining the profession in a way that harms the reality and common sense must reconsider their entertainment quotient.