The news continues to be bad for journalists. Struggling to keep body and soul together, they also have to contend with screen depictions that either valourise them impossibly or turn viewers off the profession entirely.
In Despatch, Kanu Behl questions the notion of the noble newspaper correspondent striving to bring readers the information they need to become more effective citizens. The Hindi film, which is out on ZEE5, is set in a seedy corner of the Fourth Estate from where a dodgy specimen champions the ideal of honesty in a fashion that is entirely his own.
It is 2012. Joy Bag (Manoj Bajpayee), a star at the Despatch newspaper in Mumbai, stumbles on a fraudulent scheme unlike anything he has ever seen. Joy is unable to make sense of the crores involved. He can scarcely believe the personalities behind this.
Joy begins to unravel the mystery behind a company called GDR which is involved in an IPL scam so large, it even overshadows the 2G spectrum case. Ever so often, Joy appears to be drowning in this alphabet soup of iniquity. Viewers too may be unable to keep up with the exact nature of what Joy has found.
Joy’s private life is as hectic as his muckraking. His affair with Prerna (Arrchita Agarwaal) has widened the fault lines in his marriage with Shweta (Shahana Goswami). Yet, Joy soldiers on, driven by a murky sense of ethics. If the film wasn’t so unyieldingly grim and desperately sad, it might have been a satire.
The screenplay, by Behl and Ishani Banerjee, is based on the murder of Mumbai crime reporter J Dey in 2011. Despatch selectively borrows elements from the Dey case even as it puts its own spin on the death of journalists – and journalism itself.
Dey had started his career with Mumbai’s Afternoon Despatch and Courier and at the time of his killing was working with Mid-Day. Although the gangster Chotta Rajan was convicted for ordering the hit on Dey, questions linger about the actual motive for the murder.
Among the casualties of the Mumbai Police’s shoddy inquiry was Dey’s former colleague Jigna Vora. Charged with conspiring to kill Dey, Vora was imprisoned, only to be acquitted seven years later.
Vora wrote about her horrific experiences in her memoir Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison, which inspired the Netflix series Scoop (2023). Despatch includes a character who not only resembles Vora but also doubles down on the debunked canard that Vora had an affair with Dey.
For ZEE5 subscribers who know nothing about the Dey episode, Despatch operates as a bilious exploration of journalism. However, the film is not interested in newsroom dynamics or the story behind the story that Joy is chasing, but something else altogether.
This something else loops back to a theme that Kanu Behl has repeatedly explored since his brilliant debut Titli (2014) and the provocative Agra (2023): the bedroom as a transactional space, where sexual needs and self-interest thrash about under the sheets.
The sex in Despatch can never be confused for love-making. It’s compulsive, dreary and borderline abusive, noteworthy only for the implication that Joy gets it when he wants it.
Joy’s dealings with the women in his life say a great deal about him – and them. Shahana Goswami, who has only a handful of scenes, is terrific in a showdown with Joy that belongs as much to films about rotten marriages as it does in Despatch.
Arrchita Agarwal, in her feature debut, tries to make the most of a hopeless situation, like her Prerna. Rii Sen has a memorable cameo as Noorie, among the women who mysteriously pants for Joy.
Manoj Bajpayee with near-parodic intensity plays a severely uncharismatic character. He strips Joy down – quite literally at one point – to his basest self.
For all his para-bedroom sweating, Joy is often clueless about what he’s involved with – just like the detective from Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974). Despatch is in the mould of American conspiracy thrillers, in which ordinary individuals get embroiled in high-level rackets beyond their pay grade and understanding.
Like Jake in Chinatown, Joy injures his nose and is always a few steps behind the plotters. The reality that Jake eventually confronts is more shocking than the bribery scandal he has been pursuing. In Despatch, Joy’s epiphany is vague to the point of being abstract.
Having executed a hatchet job on journalism, Despatch recovers to suggest that when a crime itself so mind-boggling, no one comes up spotless. Put another way, despicable men can be heroes too.
Fair points, but delivered after wandering through a confusing thicket of events. Cinematographer Siddharth Diwan’s claustrophobic visual schema deftly captures Mumbai at its oppressive worst. The miasma that clings to Joy infects everyone around him.
A journalist is in peril and nobody knows why. Should we care? The proudly unpleasant Despatch makes it very difficult to.
