Kartavya (2026) Movie Review: Saif Ali Khan Drives Banal and Derivative Heartland Mystery In Circles

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“Kartavya” is a bland, reheated version of the small-town cop template. Saif Ali Khan fronting it invites undeserving reminders of “Sacred Games.” Step in with no such delusion. Pulkit, who seems to be steadily churning films with vengeance, has made something strictly middling, which is guaranteed to blur into a mulch of derivativeness the more time rolls by.

Khan’s melancholy grounds the film. Yet, “Kartavya” flails in finding something solid and well-structured to hook its anger and cynicism onto. Pulkit doles out scepticism aplenty about how rigged structures of justice are in India. But it’s limited by its own inability to zoom into specificities. Thus, the chance to be searing is wholly missed. This film is yet another of those Netflix outings that will be forgotten swiftly.

“Kartavya” opens with Pawan’s (Khan) fortieth birthday. As a cop, he is assigned to protect a journalist who is killed right before him. Of course, the fear of suspension and being slighted publicly looms. It’s what pushes him to hastily declare that he’ll nab the killer in a week. It’s a narrative move to bring urgency, but one that doesn’t really help matters at all. Pawan gets embroiled in the crosshairs of a local orchestration. There’s a godman, Anand Shri (Saurabh Dwivedi), pulling strings. He has the local authority in his grip.

Pawan ruffling feathers naturally attracts greater trouble than he could have expected. Pawan is instructed not to question or challenge the godman. His investigation strikes directly at the rotten heart of complicit mechanics, which he’s supposed to just accept and ignore. He’s also beleaguered on the family front. His brother has eloped with a girl from a lower caste. The Khap Panchayat is determined to dig them out and retrieve their lost “honour”. Pawan has a lot to worry about.

However, “Kartavya” merely inherits a structure and forgets to add its own bristling personality. You keep looking for gravitas, which is mostly absent despite a sincere Khan. Neither do the women fare better. The ever-reliable Rasika Dugal is shamefully frittered as Pawan’s endlessly supportive, encouraging wife. Dwivedi, too, is bizarrely miscast. You can see the intention to be subversive.

However, the cheeky casting of a journalist as a conniving godman doesn’t land. There are several reasons. Besides a mismatch of person and material, the script doesn’t care to flesh out the antagonist. Pawan finds himself battling choppy waters as he wades through a sea of reprehensible men. His own innocence seems a tad too neat.

The problem with “Kartavya” is its persistent template-y feel. Too much feels familiar and consequently jaded. The setup itself feels rehashed. It’s one thing to take a template for subverting, quite another to work it into a base and then build on it with no further fresh angle. As politically assured and biting as it is in snatches, that doesn’t cancel out the more routine passages that fill the film. There’s a nagging realisation that Pulkit is skimping on the more pointed details, opting instead for broad brushstrokes and reducing the film’s capability to sharpen a cogent critique.

Such a crime drama relies on every tiny detail to come together and achieve something powerful. This film strives to be unsparing, ruthless in its eye, but it frequently slouches into generic beats. The rage feels borrowed. There’s the same tired spiel about resisting and defying skewed structures and toxic hierarchies that engender, enable, and set in motion honour killings. Caste and small-scale fascism loom as monsters in this tale, inextricable to standard Indian reality that’s towed under the carpet. Khan’s lone warrior is the bastion of conscience that pushes back against such viciousness and demands justice and accountability.

Khan’s Pawan is doggedly righteous. His oblivion to the wrongs around him seems a tad contrived, implausible. If he’s really sincere, how can such clearly horrific things dawn on him so late? Such missteps mar the film, which does gather some effective moments here and there. Khan is a capable actor. His desire to experiment and fling himself into new risks is admirable, a rare sight among his ilk, which tends to fall back on established paths of success.

Khan does get the emotional intensity right, but the accent is all over the place. Diction classes seem to have been direly missed. There are palpable signs he’s struggling to render authenticity, despite his best intentions. Khan heroically keeps attempting, only to be thwarted by the bare fact that it’s not shaping well together. There are jarring lapses.

Khan leans more into the distress and predicament. But when the situation calls for rage, he stumbles. He cannot be entirely blamed, though. The screenplay is unable to tether meaning and momentum to its grim subject, throwing it in limbo. As events gather speed, the film fails to match in spirit a pulse in inquiry. “Kartavya” gets caught up in a mesh of panchayat politics and public disaffection. None of it is traced with requisite patience and care. Instead, the film scampers ahead. For all its trenchant concerns, “Kartavya” never gets soberingly essential.