‘Indian Police Force’ series review: More cops from Rohit Shetty

Though less bombastic than his action features, ‘Indian Police Force’ registers little forward momentum in Shetty’s cinematic style; the cop universe has reached maximum entropy. Midway through Indian Police Force, a fight breaks out inside a Goa warehouse. Two cops, played by Sidharth Malhotra and Shilpa Shetty, rain down kicks and knocks on a gang of goons. The camera darts around frantically, mimicking the handheld grittiness of indie action flicks. The scene is competently executed but feels overlong, unimaginative. It’s all very business-like. After a while, the action spills onto a boat leaving the shoreline. It’s at this point that I began to desperately wish for a Ranveer Singh cameo.

Director Rohit Shetty is frequently mocked for his car-go-boom aesthetics and silly comedy. Yet trim away these frills and what is left is a humourless hull of mediocre action. Streaming on Prime Video and co-directed with Sushwanth Prakash, Indian Police Force is the latest pit stop in Shetty’s ongoing cop universe. It represents, after many years, a genuine desire in the filmmaker to reach out to a different audience: fans of Special OPS and Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, the kind of public that prefers some leanness and realism in their conservative action spectacles. There is a fat-free efficiency to IPF that is its most curious — and numbing — element. “Club me with Singham, Simmba, Sooryavanshi,” Malhotra crows at one point, and while Shetty grants him his wish, he’s forced to ration the bombast of his whiz-bang features.