Just days in the life of J Dey? No!

Manoj Bajpayee in a still from Kanu Behl’s thriller Despatch

Faustian," is what I hear director Kanu Behl repeatedly refer to his film, Despatch, as we sit for a post-premiere chat, with his lead actors, before a live audience, at the MAMI film festival.

I don't know if anyone in the audience referred to their phone, to look up Faustian, instead! Neither should you. It basically means selling your soul to Satan; making a deal with the devil, ‘Faustian bargain', as it were.

Kanu also uses it for the portrayal of journalists, in films, forever - they're either crooks, or unimpeachably virtuous.

Much like the world he reports on - the crime-journalist protagonist (Manoj Bajpayee) of Despatch fully operates in the Faustian grey.

Popular Bombay crime journalist, S Hussain Zaidi, infamously belittled his brethren as pliant "munshis"/stenographers of the police, in Suketu Mehta's book, Maximum City (2004).

In equal measure, desperately and deliciously dark, remarkably detailed, Despatch shines a blurry light on the more (fatally) dangerous side. It's a hard watch.

The film drops on Zee5, likely, in December, 2024. Why summarily introduce you to it now? Because, sometimes, you wanna be the one to say: you read it here, first! As it aptly should be, this time.

Despatch is evidently inspired by the life of slain crime & investigations editor, Jyotirmoy/J Dey (1955-2011), who worked in the same paper/newsroom (mid-day), I'm reporting this from!

Although the film's lead character, Joy Bag, works for Despatch, alluding to the rival Mumbai-daily, Afternoon Despatch & Courier, that doesn't exist anymore.

The film will feel close to home for print journalists, in general, as it opens with a suitably unsexy newsroom. From the calendar, flying in the backdrop, you learn, it's March, 2012.

Which explains the advent of "digital first" approach to news - occasioning excitement as a managerial diktat, and sneer from purists.

To think of how only 12 years back can feel like a period film, in the context of media-technology, no? This is beyond observing R2,000 notes in circulation, or Blackberry for smartest phones, on the screen.

Let alone other challenges, including press freedom - just the fact of social media's current primacy in the dissemination of opinion, news (fake, or otherwise), in 2024, could wholly alter the story of Despatch, set in 2012. Right?

Kanu tells me the period apart, he wished the story (written with Ishani Banerjee) to be timeless - probing the totally indecipherable mess the world has seemed, to everyone, for a while now.

Intricacies of the plot, vague as they seem, isn't so important, either - looking into collusion between big crime, and big business, while most roads lead to real-estate. The world is ‘flat', after all! Always been. Check Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Early '80s. Same city.

Sure, this is a crime-procedural, albeit set within journalism. But it's more a film framed around a well-rounded character, to whom shit happens - while he punches way above his weight, as reporters inevitably do - getting deeper into shit, still.

That's Joy, mysterious journalist, covering the joyless crime beat, from the dark trenches, in Despatch. How does he compare with J Dey himself?

Everyone in the mid-day newsroom speaks of him, similarly, as a quiet, secretive bloke, who kept his desk spotlessly clean. Even the Crime Branch that searched his office computer, upon death, found nothing in his hard-drive.

The underworld was in J Dey's head. It's incredible how many Bombay filmmakers derived their crime stories from him.

Hansal Mehta spoke to him, researching Shahid (2012). J Dey got murdered, shortly after. Hansal made the series, Scoop (2023), on this episode, that was more on the life of the accused, Jigna Vora. J Dey (Prosenjit Chatterjee) was hardly in it.

What instantly strikes you about Joy in Despatch, though, is how a new man has got injected into Manoj! You see him stark naked (literally, too).

He credits this to the director he actively scoped out for work, after Titli (2014) - that crazy crime-noir about Delhi's car-jackers!

Much as he asked for it, Manoj seemingly had a rough time making Despatch with the indefatigable, over-demanding Kanu.

At some point, the actor had to calm the director down: "It's just a film!" "No, it's not," the director replied. Manoj claims he's felt like a different actor since. Haven't seen him better - not even Gali Guleiyan (2017), his most under-rated.

Despatch, shot like a badass by Siddharth Diwan, feels furthest from a film over the two elements that movies tend to superficially choreograph the most - sex, and violence.

The authenticity is achieved by capturing both the primal acts in the sheer sloppiness they occur with, in real life. Consider the clumsy police raid/shootout sequence in a dockyard, in Despatch, when you get the chance.

It's the wonderful Shahana Goswami's favourite scene in the film. Rightly so. Shahana plays Joy's wife, going through divorce, in the movie.

Something tells me the overworked Joy - with a wife, committed girlfriend (brilliant debutant, Arrchitta Aggarwal), plus the momentary tight-squeeze (Rii Sen), on the side - leads a far more colourful life, than the super-guarded J Dey ever did.

The toughest scene for Shahana to shoot, she says, was Manoj's prickly stubble causing face-burns, since the lengthy lovemaking scenes also came with never-ending takes for the director. Okay, that's TMI (too much information)!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.