WHAT LURKS UNDER THE GROUND?

Always been irked by the police officers shown on screen. One-dimensional. Either righteous and arrogant or corrupt with no sense of morality. The good cops have six packs and the bad ones have paunch bellies. There is no in-between.

That is why Hathi ram from Pataal Lok is so endearing, an imperfect cop who is striving to be good but not always. And Jaideep Ahlawat plays it to perfection. A middle-aged cop, a father of a teenager who hates him, an average guy who can’t catch a break.

Pataal Lok on Amazon Prime Video addresses Islamophobia in administrative circles, rampant caste-related violences in UP, custodial violence. Even if it has just touched upon all of them, the impact was definitely there. Too many swear words and racial slurs. Do movies reflect reality or is real life influenced by movies? The writers may have written it to lend authenticity but somewhere there should be a line.

On one hand, it talks about cow vigilantes and also portrays political mobilisation of dalits like goondaism. Maybe they wanted to say both exist or they wanted to avoid the wrath on Twitter. Grey characters always come off well on-screen. The idea that everybody has a story and reasons for why they are the way they are is refreshing.

The title Pataal Lok ( hell) is an irony. He calls his shady neighbourhood as the Pataal Lok and even changes schools so that his son can stay away from the neighbourhood miscreants. But what if Pataal Lok is Pataal Lok only because those above ( Darthi Lok – Earth) want people for their dirty work. And they don’t want them to get out of that vicious circle of crime, hunger and poverty

https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0G9IEOHCN8KMY6COD9ILGH7IY5/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r