Lights, camera, conversation - Not a lovable story

In the opening sequence of Ram Gopal Varma's “Department,” we see a cop in uniform, and in motion. At times, “Department” looks like a sniggering parody of a Ram Gopal Varma movie, something that a college kid put up on YouTube in order to mock Varma's growing penchant for hallucinatory camerawork. And just as Varma made Bachchan excavate the contents of his nose in “Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag,” he has the actor thrust a finger into an ear and perform a sustained wiggle. Varma keeps hinting, through the occasional dialogue about right and wrong, at moral complexity, but all we see is a 1980s dishoom-dishoom movie, driven by 1980s chartbusters like Ilayaraja's “Aasai nooru vagai” and Bappi Lahiri's “Thodi si jo pee li hai.” Buried under all this clamour is a narrative about friendships gone awry, loyalties renegotiated at every opportunity, and the inevitable perversion of the powerful – but the relentless gimmickry wears us out and we find it difficult to be involved with anything, anybody.