''Class of '83'' is a 2020 Indian

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

-language

crime thriller film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...

produced by

Red Chillies Entertainment Red Chillies Entertainments Private Limited, doing business as Red Chillies Entertainment; abbreviated as RCE is an Indian entertainment company established by actor Shah Rukh Khan and his wife Gauri Khan in 2002. It was transformed from the d ...

and directed by Atul Sabharwal for

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

. The film is based on the book "The Class of 83" and tells the story of a hero policeman shunted to a punishment posting as the dean of the police academy. The film premiered on 21 August 2020 on Netflix. At the 2021 Filmfare OTT Awards, ''Class of '83'' received 2 nominations – Best Actor in a Web Original Film (

Bobby Deol Vijay Singh Deol (born 27 January 1969), better known by his screen name Bobby Deol, is an Indian actor who primarily works in Hindi cinema. A member of the List of Hindi film families#Deol family, Deol family, he is the younger son of actor Dha ...

) and Best Supporting Actor in a Web Original Film ( Bhupendra Jadawat).

Plot

Class of 83, which is based on a book authored by leading crime journalist Hussain Zaidi, is set in Bombay in the 1980s when the underworld’s stranglehold on the city was becoming hard to break. Dozens of young men rendered jobless as a result of the ongoing mill strike were being lured into joining local gangs, and the nexus between powerful politicians and criminal gang leaders made it hard for the police to weed out the problem. With this as the backdrop, the film follows an ideological cop-turned-trainer who moulds five cadets into encounter specialists. Yanked off the field for doing his job with more integrity than those in power would like him to, upright officer Vijay Singh (Bobby Deol) lands a ‘punishment posting’ as the dean of the Police Training Centre in Nashik. Convinced that the only way to restore order in a flawed system is to fix it from the inside, he handpicks a clutch of bold young officers and trains them to bend the law in service of the greater good. Inspired from real accounts of the city’s first encounter specialists, the film depicts how the officers shrewdly planned and executed hits while staying within the system and following all necessary protocols. But then it quickly slips into a predictable rise-and-fall-and-rise narrative with egos and corruption breaking up the friends, and a last-ditch shot at redemption triggered by their mentor.

Cast

as Additional Director General of Police Officer Vijay Singh, the husband of Sudha Singh * Bhupendra Jadawat as Pramod Shukla * Geetika Tyagi as Sudha Singh, the wife of Vijay Singh. *

Anup Soni Anup Soni (born 30 January 1975) is an Indian actor and anchor. He is an alumnus of the National School of Drama. Soni began his career with roles in television serials such as '' Sea Hawks'' and '' Saaya''. He then took a break from televisi ...

as CM Manohar Patkar *

Joy Sengupta Joy Sengupta is an Indian film and stage actor works Bollywood cinema and Bengali cinema as well as theatre. He is best known for his debut feature, '' Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa'' (1998) directed by Govind Nihalani. Sengupta was born in Kolkat ...

as DGP Raghav Desai *

Vishwajeet Pradhan Vishwajeet Pradhan (born 11 September 1965) is an Indian actor who predominantly works in Bollywood films, theatre and television. He is well-known for his role as Pakistani Captain in Kya Dilli Kya Lahore and as Thakur Rudra Pratap in Ek Boon ...

as Mangesh Dixit * Hans Dev Sharma as YP Mathur * Hitesh Bhojraj as Vishnu Varde * Sameer Paranjape as Aslam Khan * Ninad Mahajani as Laxman Jadhav * Prithvik Pratap as Janardan Surve *

Spruha Joshi Spruha Joshi (born 13 October 1989) is an Indian television, film, and theatre actress, the television anchor who works in the Marathi film and television industry. She is also a poet and lyricist for films. Early life and education Spruha Josh ...

as Pramod Shukla's wife

Production

The filming began in the first week of May 2019.

Release

''Class of '83'' was streamed on OTT Platform

from 21 August 2020.

Reception

Shubhra Gupta Shubhra Gupta is an Indian film critic who writes for ''The Indian Express''. She received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Best Writing on Cinema in 2012. She was a member of the Central Board of Film Certification from 2012 to 2015. She is the au ...

The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...

gave the film 3 out of 5, writing, "Class of ‘83 works both as a well-realised if a trifle sketchy hark-back at an interesting epoch, as well as an entertainer. Though we’ve seen so many iterations of the gangsters vs honest law enforcers in the movies, there’s always room for another. Especially because we need stories of cops who believe in their motto of ‘protect the good and destroy the evil’, today more than ever." Conversely,

Saibal Chatterjee Saibal Chatterjee is an Indian film critic, editor and documentary screenwriter. He was a columnist at ''BBC News'', ''Business Standard'', ''Hindustan Times'' and '' The Financial Express''. He has also written for ''The Telegraph'', ''The Tim ...

NDTV New Delhi Television Ltd is an Indian news media company focusing on broadcast and digital news publication. It was founded in 1984 by economist Prannoy Roy and journalist Radhika Roy. NDTV began as a production house for news segments, ...

gave the film 2.5 out of 5, writing, "Despite Bobby Deol's unfussy impersonation of a stolid, righteous policeman, the film is more tattle than tension, more acrimony than action."

Accolades

References

External links

* * {{Red Chillies Entertainment Indian direct-to-video films Indian action thriller films 2020 films 2020s Hindi-language films Red Chillies Entertainment films Hindi-language action thriller films Netflix original films 2020 action thriller films Indian police films Fictional portrayals of the Maharashtra Police Films set in the 1980s Films based on non-fiction books about organized crime Films set in police academies Films set in Mumbai