Taskaree Web Series Review: There exists a stark contrast between thrillers in streaming and on celluloid. Those that make it to the big screen – more often than not – are slick, cool, visually stunning
and spiffy. Those in the OTT space can best be described as the former’s less fortunate cousins. They’re rough, rugged, grimy. But Neeraj Panday and Raghav M Jairath’s Netflix series, Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web, set against the backdrop of high-end airports, global metropolises and high-profile smugglers, is polished, sanitised, slick to quite an extent and smart in an urban way.
Mounted on a massive budget and some picturesque locales, Taskaree is the story of Superintendent Arjun Meena, a sharp customs officer at Mumbai Airport. His mission: tackling global smuggling rings and cleansing corruption once and for all. The series begins with a chase sequence between a woman named Swati and a couple of nefarious Afro delinquents. Arjun arrives right on time to nab Swati. He hands her over to her boss and takes Rs 50 lakhs in cash from him as a bribe.
The righteous man in him suddenly awakens when he gets a call from the customs department that wants to revoke his suspension. ACP Prakash Kumar gets inducted into the customs team at Mumbai airport. He takes charge and wants Arjun and his suspended teammates Ravinder Gujjar and Mitali Kamat back so that they can curb smuggling, which is led by kingpin Bada Choudhary, the leader of the infamous Choudhary Syndicate.
This syndicate is responsible for bringing the maximum contraband to Mumbai airport. Swati is a ‘popat’, a colloquial term for a courier, and works with Bada. Bada, who resides in Italy, has offices in Bangkok, Addis Ababa and Al Dera. They smuggle luxury watches, cocaine and gold plates. Pilots, airhostesses and customs officials are also in cahoots with Bada. So, emasculating Bada and his ring is no cakewalk. The result? Honest seniors and subordinates constantly try to one-up each other amid red-tapism and bureaucracy.
Till the very end, you’ll not know who’s an informer and who’s working silently with Bada in exchange for crores of money as rewards. For the most part, this unpredictability is what keeps Taskaree going. This seven-episode series is packed with a lot of action, strategising, cross-cutting, ticking clocks, dual timelines, split narratives and conspiracies. The screenplay by Neeraj and Vipul K Rawal is taut. The show thrives on a sense of unease. The tension is slow-building, steeped in moral ambiguity. The world feels lived-in and alert to danger.
Taskaree is ambitious but doesn’t quite crumble under that pressure. It understands that a thriller doesn’t need constant twists. Maybe that’s why episodes don’t end with spectacles or cliffhangers, but with revelations. Some stretches may feel indulgent, but the makers immediately make up for it. What’s refreshing here is that it doesn’t treat crime as completely inhuman. It explores wrongdoings as economy and survival. Case in point: there are ample instances that reinforce that crime isn’t always born out of a twisted mind, but that bribes often become the last resort to pay medical bills and facilitate higher education.
Cinematographers Parth Navle, Sudhir Palsane and Arvind Singh also deserve credit for rendering this narrative its chic look. And thankfully, the women also impart some substance to this story. No time is wasted in showcasing the challenges of Mitali’s single motherhood. She’s a woman with a voice and agency. She gets to do as much action as her male counterparts – Arjun and Ravinder. But who truly drives the narrative ahead is Priya, an airhostess turned informer.
As for performances by the cast, Emraan Hashmi as Arjun Meena shoulders this narrative about the underbelly of smuggling with ease and restraint. His performance relies less on bravado – typical of uniformed heroes in the world of thrillers – and more on contained intensity. He’s a man who seems permanently caught between instinct and consequence. His charm and swagger are muted, replaced by calculation. Yes, he’s fearless, but he doesn’t rely on his testosterone, baring his biceps every time a criminal arrives at the scene.
Having said that, unlike most other characters here, he has a rather straight arc. But thanks to the morally dark and ambiguous characters that Emraan hasn’t shied away from playing in the past, till the very end, you’ll keep wondering if he’s the bad guy. Needless to say, some troughs and crests in his arcs wouldn’t have harmed the narrative. Amruta Khanvilkar as Mitali and Nandish Singh Sandhu as Ravinder do a good job, and so does Zoya Afroz as Priya. Priya, perhaps, has the most interesting character graph, and she understands the assignment well.
It’s good to see Virendra Saxena back. Jameel Khan and Anurag Singh also deserve a mention. Freddy Daruwala, however, suffers due to a lazily written character. Sharad Kelkar, on the other hand, as Bada Choudhary, seems like a case of miscast. Meant to project menace and moral rot, his performance remains curiously vanilla, never quite landing the threat the role demands. His villainy lacks unsettling presence and is underpowered. As he locks horns with Emraan’s Arjun, it hardly feels like a showdown.
Taskaree’s final climax ultimately falls flat. When a COIN officer in Al Dera joins hands with foreign agencies for a final showdown to erase the omnipotent smuggling ring, you end up asking yourself why such a plan didn’t occur to Arjun many episodes ago. But credit lies where it’s due. Following a string of middling efforts like Auron Mein Kaha Dum Tha and Sikandar Ka Muqaddar, Neeraj seems to be back in form – revisiting the strengths that once defined his cinema. You could give Taskaree a watch, as it’s novel and realistic and has a seasoned Emraan headlining it.
