Title: Detective Sherdil
Director: Ravi Chhabriya
Cast: Diljit Dosanjh, Boman Irani, Chunky Pandey, Sumeet Vyas, Ratna Pathak Shah, Diana Penty, Banita Sandhu
Where: Streaming on ZEE5
Rating: 2.5 Stars
The film opens with a cheeky slate that reads: “I have a problem for every solution”—a motto that’s equal parts bravado and balderdash. And that, in a nutshell, is the film's spirit: confident, quirky, and riddled with fluff. Diljit Dosanjh, in the titular role, plays a sleuth who claims to solve “big cases and occasionally takes small vacations.” Unfortunately, the audience is left vacationing in search of depth while the film tinkles along to Sherdil’s ever-present mouth organ tunes.
Unlike the carrot-chomping Karamchand or Byomkesh Bakshi’s brooding intellect, Detective Sherdil is a man of tunes, tunes, and more tunes—often preferring his harmonica to any real deductive reasoning. He saunters through the film with a self-satisfied smirk, dispensing one-liners with the conviction of a man who believes he’s written them himself. “For love or money, anyone can take anyone’s life,” he muses, offering up philosophy masquerading as profundity.
At the centre of this jazzed-up howdunnit lies a corpse: Pankaj Bhatti (Boman Irani), a billionaire tycoon with a terminal diagnosis and a family one might expect to find at the bottom of an Agatha Christie barrel. There’s the pretentious icy wife, Rajeshwari (Ratna Pathak Shah, underused); the black sheep son, Angad (Sumeet Vyas, phoning it in); the foreign daughter-in-law, Elizabeth (Sarah Barlondo); the deaf and mute daughter, Shanti (Banita Sandhu, playing her part with poise and precision); and an earnest employee-turned-lover, Purvak (Arjun Tanwar, surprisingly effective). Add to this stew an assassin named Luca, the mystical gardener Bodhi Mama (Chunky Pandey in a refreshingly subdued turn), and a murder that is both too convoluted and yet oddly predictable.
The plot, for all its promise, lacks marrow. One expects a mystery this stylishly packaged to at least offer a few genuine surprises. But ‘Detective Sherdil’ chooses instead to luxuriate in its aesthetic—Budapest gleams, the Bhatti estate oozes wealth, and every frame is manicured within an inch of its life. But no amount of polish can cover a narrative that prefers flamboyance over function.
Performances are equally uneven. Dosanjh, though effortlessly charismatic, seems more interested in being cool than being credible. Diana Penty as Natasha, his colleague, is competent but underutilised—more a wardrobe than a character. The real weight, curiously, is borne by Banita Sandhu and Arjun Tanwar, whose performances feel the least contrived amidst a sea of stylised indifference.
If the intention was to spoof the detective genre while paying homage, ‘Detective Sherdil’ never quite decides where it lands. The script—like its protagonist—is puffed up with its own cleverness. Lines like “Laal rang mein chhupa laal rang” are delivered with dramatic solemnity, but leave one wondering if the writers were winking or simply lost in their own riddles.
Ultimately, the film suffers from a case of terminal self-indulgence. It tries to dance where it ought to dig. Detective Sherdil may play a snazzy tune, but the melody doesn’t linger.
