Saif Ali Khan has spent the better part of the last decade trying to outrun the ghosts of his own charm. The floppy-haired romcom prince of the early 2000s has slowly traded cocktail banter for moral exhaustion, and in Netflix’s Kartavya, he once again walks into the darkness with remarkable ease.
Directed by Pulkit and backed by Netflix and Red Chillies Entertainment, Kartavya is the kind of gritty hinterland thriller Indian OTT platforms have become increasingly obsessed with. Dusty towns. Missing children. Corrupt babas. Broken systems. Men with tired eyes and heavier consciences.
The setup is instantly familiar. SHO Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan) is a small-town Haryana cop investigating the disappearance of teenage boys, a case that slowly opens up a festering nexus of caste violence, political rot and exploitation hiding behind religious respectability. The film wants to talk about duty not as heroism, but as burden. And to its credit, it largely avoids turning Pawan into a massy saviour figure.
AT A GLANCE:
- Film: Kartavya (NETFLIX)
- Director: Pulkit
- Producers: Gauri Khan, Shah Rukh Khan
- Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Mishra, Rasika Duggal, and Manish Chaudhry
- Rating: ★★★☆☆
Saif Ali Khan does the heavy lifting
But what keeps Kartavya from becoming yet another algorithm-designed “serious OTT thriller” is Saif Ali Khan himself.
There is a weariness to his performance that feels lived-in. He plays Pawan like a man constantly negotiating with his own helplessness. Not angry enough to become rebellious, not compromised enough to look away. It is perhaps Saif’s most restrained performance since Sacred Games, carrying echoes of the vulnerability and unpredictability he once brought to Omkara.
And honestly, Saif carries this film on his back.
Because around him, Kartavya often struggles to decide what exactly it wants to be. Is it a social commentary? A crime procedural? A family drama? A caste critique? A psychological breakdown of a policeman? The film keeps dipping its toes into all these territories without fully immersing itself in any. The result is a thriller that remains engaging but rarely devastating.
Atmosphere over adrenaline
Pulkit creates atmosphere exceptionally well though. The film looks perpetually suffocated, narrow lanes, dim police stations, faded homes and dusty religious gatherings. Haryana here does feel exhausted.
Anil Mehta’s cinematography gives the film texture, while Anurag Saikia’s background score smartly avoids melodrama for most parts. Silence does a lot of heavy lifting here.
Rasika Dugal, despite limited screen time, once again proves how effortlessly she elevates scenes with minimal dialogue. Sanjay Mishra has presence, but the writing underuses him. This film also marks journalist Saurabh Dwivedi’s flat and underwhelming debut. The bigger problem lies with the antagonist track, which slowly slips into caricature territory. After a point, the film starts spelling out its politics instead of trusting viewers to absorb them.
A thriller that pulls its punches
And that is where Kartavya loses some of its sting.
For a film dealing with caste, abuse of power, and institutional complicity, it often feels strangely cautious. It wants to provoke without fully offending anyone. The anger never truly explodes. The rage remains sanitised. Even structurally, the film begins stronger than it ends. The first half builds tension patiently, but the climax arrives too hurriedly, almost as if the film suddenly remembers it has to wrap things up within runtime constraints. Some character arcs feel abandoned midway, and certain emotional payoffs simply don’t land with the impact they should have.
Yet despite its flaws, Kartavya remains watchable throughout because it understands one crucial thing many thrillers forget: mood matters. And Saif Ali Khan understands mood better than most mainstream Hindi film actors today.
There’s something deeply compelling about watching a star grow older on screen without desperately trying to appear younger, louder or cooler. Saif has quietly become one of Hindi cinema’s most interesting late-career actors, someone more interested in internal collapse than external swagger.
Kartavya may not reinvent the crime thriller wheel. In fact, at several points, it feels assembled from pieces of better shows and films we’ve already seen before. But even within its familiarity, it manages to hold your attention.
Mostly because Saif Ali Khan never lets the film completely slip away.
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