Ram Madhvani and Sushmita Sen were once a force to reckon with. When Aarya was first streamed ,this was much more than a portrait of a woman trying to get into the mafia manspace, cigar and all.
All that now remains ignited is the cigar. The series has lost its sheen rapidly over three seasons. Now as the soggy sterile serial comes to a closure it is crystal clear that no one gives a damn which way the story goes.
The concluding episodes, now streaming on Disney+Hotstar as ‘Antim Vaar’(I do hope they mean it) are clumsy tacky and repetitive. Worse still, the actors seem to have lost interest. The protagonist Aarya Sareen is a clear victim of her own overweening image. In her final screen appearance she wants cultivate opium on the land forcibly brought over from reluctant landlords to whom she makes an offer they cannot refuse.
Brando, I am sure, is flattered. When one of the landlords refuses to sell, she orders a birthday cake into her living room , cuts it and feeds the frightened farmer who quickly signs with his blood after he tries to excuse himself saying his pen is run out of ink.
Bloody liar.
The above sequence is supposed to show how menacing Aarya has become.In reality, it shows her as the spoilt bratty self obsessed criminal that she actually is.
What was once a fascinating study of a widow’s determination to keep her husband’s legacy alive, is finally reduced to a defiant demonstration of shallow chicanery.
The action scenes are so badly staged they look outtakes from a Vidyut Jamwal starrer.There is a desperate attempt to shock us at the end. But all I could feel is a numb relief at the end of this dumb demonstration of ditzy derring do.