The brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on 21 May 1991 is a national wound that never healed. Recreating the entire timeline from the assassination to the investigation to the closure (for whatever it may have been worth) is not an easy task.
Applause Entertainment, never known to stay in its comfort zone, has achieved the near-impossible. In The Hunt—The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, authenticity is quintessential but not stifling. That the series succeeds in being much more than a political thriller is a measure of its architects’ ability to adhere to the truth without losing a firm grip over the narrative.
Seldom, if ever, has a political thriller projected such propulsive energy without missing a single beat of the heat of that moment in the past when a nationwide hunt for Mr Gandhi’s killers was the most talked about real-life crime since Rajiv Gandhi’s mother’s assassination.
The nervousness and anxiety of the moment is effectively conveyed by the team chosen to hunt down the killers. The actors chosen as team players are intuitively immersive. None of them tries to make his presence felt, though Vidyuth Gargi as Ravindran has some startling sequences, including the interrogation of a suspected terrorist-duo that involves some disturbing unconventional tactics.
These jolting moments never seem out of place. Director Nagesh Kukunoor and his associate director Ranjeet Jha leave no room for humbug in the political pastiche. The police procedural is as meticulously planned on screen as it is off screen. If the investigative team seem to be doing its job so efficiently it is because the writing and the characterisations convey a heart-clutching immediacy.
There are times when we, as the audience, feel we are right at the vortex of the tension, especially when a terrorist couple Nalini and Murugan, are desperate to make their escape. The climax, when the mastermind Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa) is finally hunted down, doesn’t feel like the climax: the closure is so authentic and inevitable that we, the audience, do not get the space to perceive the proceedings from a distance.
Other than the precise but unpunctuated performances (Amit Sial, who is usually such a scene-stealer, chooses to fade with fatality into the fabric of the storytelling) the authenticity of the locations is a primary incentive to give this series a standing ovation.
Every location feels enormously authentic.
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There are nailbiting chase sequences which are not designed as such. The interrogation sequences are disturbing in unexpected ways: are the LTTE militants any less committed to their task than those assigned to apprehend them? There are many questions far beyond the Rajiv Gandhi assassination that beg for a closure after watching this historic series.
The Hunt knows which side it is on, but gives us the room to decide where we want to be, not only while watching the series but in the larger picture.
