When we first meet Kareena Kapoor Khan in The Buckingham Murders, she is sitting on a public bench, dead-faced under a grey England sky. Her stardom nowhere in the frame. There are blink-and-miss flashbacks, of a sunny day, of a young boy laughing while running over the green grass, of a ball hitting the bowling pins, of red and blue police car lights, of Kareena with the same shell-shocked expression she is wearing now. We jump inside a court hearing. A young man confesses to opening fire inside a restaurant. Says he was tired of being invisible, says he didn’t intend to shoot the child. Kareena is silent. She is in a corner of the frame when the judge sentences the boy guilty. It’s only when he is being escorted by the cops, that she charges at him and let’s out a long-held squeal.
Kareena plays Jaspreet Bhamra, a policewoman dealing with the grief of outliving her child. She takes a transfer to Buckinghamshire and is soon assigned to a case of a missing boy. She is hesitant at first but gives in on the insistence of her superior. The kid is soon found murdered. An investigation ensues to unravel the mystery, but it unveils more about the lives and troubles of immigrants in the UK. Secret liaisons start cropping up, faultlines of hatred float up to the surface. The murdered child was a Sikh, killed by a Muslim boy.
More than a thriller, The Buckingham Murders is a portrait of southeast Asians in a colonial country. Those who seek the modernity of life but not necessarily of thought. The film in its setting and mood can feel borrowed and patched up from international small-town thrillers. Jaspreet’s character takes its cue from Kate Winslet’s Marianne Sheehan from the HBO series Mare of Easttown (2021). I was reminded of Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River (2003) when the film got into the dynamics and the rifts inside a community. But there was something about Hansal Mehta’s assured direction that swept me into the narrative. The Buckingham Murders doesn’t feel like an Indian film but it certainly is for them.
This is something that Mehta has cracked. Talking to those back home while telling the story of a far-off land. In his last theatrical release Faraaz (2022), through the depiction of Muslim fundamentalism in Bangladesh, he spoke more about the genesis and rise of fundamentalism in general than about pinning it on one religion. In The Buckingham Murders too, you can’t help but draw parallels when there are news flashes of clashes between two communities over “misinformation.” But all politics is in the backdrop. What Mehta gets is people and what they can do for love and for the ones they love. Jaspreet sleeps on the sofa with her boy’s bloodied t-shirt in hand. From the lens of any other director, the scene might come out corny but Mehta handles it with care. Special mention also to cinematographer Emma Dalesman who captured England like the protagonist’s state of mind, grey and heavy, like a cloud of grief waiting to burst.
Kareena gives a steady performance as Jaspreet. She embraces the character with tenderness, and succumbs to Mehta’s vision. She walks like a woman so desolate, so shattered that nothing could break her further but while listening to a suspect’s confession, her hands tremble. An interesting choice is Mehta-regular Ranveer Brar--who plays the role of the dead boy’s father--a temperamental misogynist with secrets. His act gives a whole new meaning to the chef’s famous catchphrase: Fir mat kehna Ranveer ne bataya nahi (Don’t say later than Ranveer didn’t tell).
I won’t call The Buckingham Murders a complex thriller but one that surely is dexterously layered. It’s a microscopic view of characters and relationships. How societal structures suffocate people and create monsters. It doesn’t say anything path-breakingly new. This week, I also reviewed Sector 36, another bleak film where children became victims of a broken society. Another film with borrowed aesthetics. The Buckingham Murders, however, is more than the mood and the style. In its search for the truth, it finds something better.
THE BUCKINGHAM MURDERS
Cast: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Brar, Prabhleen Sandhu, Keith Allen, Ash Tandon and Kapil Redekar
Director: Hansal Mehta