Taskaree review: Sly and slick but ultimately uneventful with nothing new to say!

Neeraj Pandey’s Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web bears his signature twist-heavy touch but it’s a thriller we’ve seen one too many times to spark surprise or curiosity!

A national crisis looms. A domestic gangster turned international smuggler threatens the country just as elections approach. Panic grips politicians, who respond the only way Indian thrillers know how- assembling a team of incorruptible officers whose loyalty to the nation supersedes everything else. At the centre of this operation is a street-smart officer tasked with forming the team while battling corruption that runs deep within the system. As the mission unfolds, syndicate moles, betrayals, corruption and power hungry ambition surface. Sounds familiar? It should. Neeraj Pandey’s brand of thrillers has, over the years, turned into a comfort watch that is recognisable as well as reliable but also increasingly stale. Taskaree fits snugly into that mold.

If Special Opsexplored the world of Indian intelligence, Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web merely shifts the lens to the customs department, offering little beyond a change of uniform. The beats remain the same; the setting is the only novelty. Then what makes you curious and hope that there is more to the story is the fact that Himmat Singh's (Kay Kay Menon) echoes can be seen in Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha), decidedly not played byEmraan Hashmi. He is a tall, spectacled, detached, no-nonsense customs officer who disrupts a well-oiled smuggling racket operating out of Mumbai International Airport as he reinstates three suspended officers: SI Arjun Meena (Hashmi), along with his old comrades Ravinder Gujjar (Nandish Sandhu) and Mithali Kamath (Amruta Khanvilkar). Together with a team, they set out to dismantle smuggling kingpin Bada Chaudhary’s (Sharad Kelkar) empire that stretches from Europe, Africa to Dubai.

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In sync with Pandey’s signature style of diving deep into a universe to stage a thriller that is as exciting as it is well-researched, the focus on customs officers, whose job is to detect crime hidden in plain sight, offers genuine promise on paper. Observing behaviour, reading body language, trusting instinct over evidence - it’s a profession ripe for a tense, observational thriller. This comes through in Arjun Meena, introduced as second fiddle but quickly emerging as a street-smart, morally flexible officer who doesn’t shy away from questionable side hustles, unlike Ravinder, whose absolutist hatred of corruption borders on self-destruction.

But in constant pursuit of sounding oversmart than actually being one, the show stretches itself thin across seven exhausting episodes, drowning its most interesting ideas in confusing gaps in the story and overfamiliar tropes. The constant voiceover explaining every move, the endless slow-motion walks in crisp white uniforms and the repetitive slick action set-pieces involving gold smuggling sap the show of any suspense. What could have been subtle becomes loud; what could have been clever is spoon-fed.

Ironically, the show’s own narration admits that if smugglers used their intelligence differently, they could cure diseases; the same could be said of the series itself. Had Taskaree channelled its energy into innovating its storytelling to mirror the constantly evolving and inventive art of smuggling itself, it might have stood out. Instead, it settles for what I referred to as the 'Instagramification of streaming. Where long format is so despertarely afraid of losing attention that it throws in as many gimmicks as possible. From stylistic experiments like shifting camera angles designed to maintain a Reel-friendly hook, to cliché meta moments such as Bella Ciao playing during an Italy chase and relentless, unnecessary exposition, the show settles into being watchable only as second-screen content but nothing beyond that. The one element that consistently works is the airport set, meticulously designed and convincingly alive, capturing the chaos of arrivals and departures. 

Strong production design or dependable Hashmi can only do so much when the narrative beneath it lacks substance. Ultimately, Taskaree masquerades as a cat-and-mouse thriller but lands as stylised, glossy action wrapped in the illusion of depth. It shortchanges the very idea of thought matching execution - never unwatchable but painfully predictable. Here, the comfort of familiarity becomes the biggest obstacle to originality, a pattern Neeraj Pandey seems to be slipping into far too often!

Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web is currently streaming on Netflix!

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