Heroism now belongs solely to the outlier organisational, collective action is seen as either inadequate or a pipe dream. In fact, it’s even spelt out in Special Ops 1.5, when during the last episode, a senior officer tasked with auditing Himmat’s career in the present day quips, in English, “The less competent should not judge the more competent.” The way the character has been written tells us something about the changing perceptions around defence and law enforcement structures in India.
All of this added up over time has a distinct whiff of Man and Superman about it, and I suspect it’s not entirely unintentional. Because of this, Himmat is forever caught in a ‘juxtaposition loop’, wherein his worth has to be constantly defined in terms of the worthlessness of the ‘system’. And he has to do this while dealing with less-than-driven colleagues, oafish seniors and arm-twisting politicians. He is unrealistically good at a job where it’s almost impossible to get it consistently right over a long period of time. Menon, predictably, excels amid a sea of spy movie clichés, but the reason I find Himmat’s character interesting is because he’s written as a symbol of outlier competence. The Himmat Story takes us to the early 2000s, when Himmat was a field agent at R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing).
Yet another Kay Kay Menon project where he thoroughly overshadows the middling material he has to work with - what else is new? Menon’s latest, director Neeraj Pandey’s Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story, is a prequel to last year’s Special Ops, an otherwise unremarkable espionage series where Menon, as spymaster Himmat Singh, is one of the few bright spots.