Dabba Cartel - review

 Of all the OTT's Netflix is hell bent on infusing drug culture as the way of life in India i guess. Every other series they come up with, not just glorifies the narcotics and its effects, it makes the police who chase the criminals as bad or even more eviler than the sellers themselves, there by giving more credit to the actual antagonists, painting them as better amongst the two evils!! 

This series is so downright blatant in its attempt to make drug peddling common place that, right from first scene, the leading lady or at least one of the quartet, secretly peddles some local drug for curing impotence amongst her customers who orders home made food from her. The famous dabbawalas whom every management firm wanted to study for their greater than six sigma level of performances should actually protest and put a case against the makers of this series for defaming their good name and their very line of business as something so murky!! What starts as a within the apartment activity, slowly branches out into across the district sale, with the introduction of real time drug agents dealing with Ganja and slowly maturing into MDMA and it goes to such an extent that they make a mini Breaking Bad setup of their own, coming up with their own flavored version of the drug, inviting the wrath of the big ass bad guy, who makes them fall in line, taking over their business in the final episode. 

The series does boast of stellar star cast to say the least. Jothika, for all you know, this series really show cases why she left Sivakumar household in a rush to relocate to Mumbai. Every puff she takes from every cigarette or join available, seems she visualizes her father in law while exhaling!! Shabana Azmi has nothing but stare blank and deliver dialogue kind of a role. Either she has too much Botox that prohibits any facial movement or may be this is how she had made a name for herself all these years!! The mandatory gay couple in the form of lady constable who is more Holmes than Watson and the big fat real estate agent lady alongside the Marathi maanoos of a house maid, forms the rest of the gang. The original hero, the actual good person who is hell bent on proving the bad guys wrong, is depicted as a bald headed sparsely haired, about to be retired person, who shivers at the very mention of suspension yet still manages to fly under the radar in achieving his mission. While the evil doers who spread drug menace in the society for their own materialistic gains are shown in every glamorous way possible, escaping from one tricky situation and other, the actual hero who tries to set things right, gets caught and suffers at every possible situation. So much for the message being conveyed!!

There is hardly any thrill in the series to term it a thriller. Like Jothika mentions, it tries hard to be Narcos: Thane but fails miserably despite boasting of such a powerful cast!!