Bad Boy Billionaires: India Review:- Echoes of a desire to be entertaining, at the expense of being penetrative.
Bad Boy Billionaires: India recounts the life and crimes of three publically known defaulters in three episodes that are both entertaining, and enriching, even though they lack of the revelations that would make it a memorable, remarkable documentary on billionaires who lived through years of celebrated success in the garb of corruption, and deceit.
After the pre-release controversy that threatened the art to be pawned by the power invested in the “bad boys”, the documentary came out with three, instead of original four episodes, discounting the one that talked about Ramalinga Raju. The one’s we get to hear about are Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, and Subrata Roy, incidentally figures that have been a common, recurring presence in the media, making their narratives quite known and yet, one that the audience is waiting to sink their teeth in.
The stories of these three is common knowledge, so the makers of Bad Boy Billionaires is to manufacture material that is worth the time of each episode, and does not feel like a forced departure from a Wikipedia page. It is essential, then, to interrogate these episodes both, as narratives, as well as the expose on truth that they claim to be.
Bad Boys Billionaires succeeds on the first account. In Mallya, Modi, and Roy, it gets three perfect protagonists. They are all phenomenal stories, and that is precisely why they keep you hooked through its runtime. There is a good blend of logic, and emotion, which ensures that the show does not bow out to one over the other. If Mallya’s account is treated with arguments, and counter-arguments by people like Raghu Karnad on one side, and Siddharth Mallya, on the other, Modi’s corruption is told from the academic eyes of banking expert and the emotional, unfortunate manipulative side of the peon who was forced to do the dirty work of Modi under the commands of his corrupt superior officer. The most poignant, though, is the story of Roy, who left millions of impoverished people helpless, and empty-handed, building his empire on the money he got from his investors, never returning it back. This episode shows us people who have suffered because of Roy’s alleged misconduct. By giving us a glimpse of people who have been on the other side of the spectrum, the makers of this documentary make the crime humane, and in that, it becomes more than just about money. It becomes a case of people struggling to get what is rightfully theirs, and in that there are examples of lives being washed away, all because one man was not ready to play by the books.
Bad Boy Billionaires creates these three as characters, and it is there that it gets some important points. It realizes, that they are the kind of feisty, flamboyant, fractured figures that would make for an enterprising protagonist. As the very title of the show suggests, it is in no way going to be sympathetic towards these men, and their actions. But it also does not shun them as an incarnation of evil. It sees them as people with fatal flaws. They are seen as a manifestation of Hubris, the Greek figure of excessive pride, and self-confidence, who crumbled in their ambitious obsession to be bigger, and mightier than the rest, ultimately falling from the hallowed reign that they had built for themselves.
If at all, Bad Boy Billionaires fails to dig deeper to extract anything that the media has not already unearthed about these men, and their crimes. The show remains watchable, and largely good, but does not give us anything we did not already know. What it does do is that it simplifies the crimes that are being dealt with here. It introduces us to the crimes and chaos of these men’s latter life in a more accessible way, which is an important part of spreading the truth about banking frauds that often fail to translate themselves for people unfamiliar with banking terms.
Bad Boy Billionaires, unlike the men that it talks about, is a documentary of humble ambitions, and it is there that it comes out victorious. Unlike The Social Dilemma, that bathed in its narcissistic conviction of dispelling some great, unknown, mystery, Bad Boy Billionaires simply concerns itself with telling a story of three men and their larger impact in uncovering the banking fragilities of India as a country. It is a story of dreams, and how the obsession of making your dreams big, can lead to the ultimate fall of grace, impacting many innocent people who fall like debris in a larger collapse of an empire, a business, a tycoon.
Streaming on Netflix
Copyright ©2020 AlternateTake. This article should not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL instead, would be appreciated.
