Jio Cinema’s ‘Bloody Daddy’ is a crime thriller film that revolves around Sumair (Shahid Kapoor), an officer with the Narcotics Control Bureau’s Gurugram branch in Haryana. In an undercover operation, Sumair seizes a bag of cocaine from a known drug lord named Sikander (Ronit Roy). In retaliation, Sikander kidnaps the former’s son and asks him to either retrieve the bag from NCB’s evidence storage or watch his son die. With no options available to him, Sumair does what he’s asked, but things don’t go exactly as planned.
Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, the action-packed film focuses on the world of narcotics and the officers who dirty their hands in the underworld to catch the criminals who are pushing this drug addiction on others. In filmmaking, police, drugs, undercover operations, and every such related incident has been widely covered, and some of it is even based on real life. Therefore, it does make one wonder whether the story of ‘Bloody Daddy’ is also based on true crime or not.
Bloody Daddy is a Remake of a French Film
No, ‘Bloody Daddy’ is not a true story. Written by director Ali Abbas Zafar alongside Aditya Basu, Siddharth Singh, and Garima Wahal, the film is a remake of the French film, ‘Nuit Blanche’ (‘Sleepless Night’). Directed by Frédéric Jardin, the film follows the exact same storyline as its Bollywood remake but with the necessary changes to fit the story into an Indian context.
When asked why he felt the need to adapt the French film, director Ali Abbas Zafar told Hindustan Times, “When I watched the original, the vulnerability of the lead character really attracted me. You don’t know how he’s going to rescue his kid from the bad guys. And I needed an actor who had intensity, but at the same time can give me a softer side to him. So he played the character on the lines where you don’t know whether you love him or hate him. He’s not responsible as a father. Till the very end, we don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. But he proves that he’s definitely a good father.”
The moral ambiguity that the director speaks of can be seen throughout ‘Bloody Daddy.’ Though Shahid Kapoor’s character Sumair is a law enforcement officer, he’s also a character in an action film – that already gives him the right to use violence to solve most things. But most of the time, the violence is directed toward the bad guys. Even when his son gets kidnapped, we don’t suspect Sumair of anything, for he’s a father trying to get his son back. It is only a little later that we realize that things might not be how they seem.
However, moral ambiguity or not, the crux of the film remains the fact that it is ultimately about a father and son. “See, filmmaking is only going to be about these fundamental relationships. Every genre cannot survive unless there’s an emotional relationship, be it father-son, sometimes it’s going to be mother-son, sometimes the best friend; I’ve been lucky to have some very memorable best friends, be it Shiva in ‘Kabir Singh’ or Feroz very recently in ‘Farzi,‘” said actor Shahid Kapoor on the theme in an interview with Firstpost.
The actor added, “I don’t think I ever played a father until I turned a father, I guess I sensed I wouldn’t be able to do justice because you’re not able to understand unless you’re one. Now, I’m a dad and my dad is also very much around, I have a little perspective on both sides.” The film is also set during the second wave of COVID-19 in India, which makes everything that is happening on the screen feel relatively fresh in the minds of the audience.
Taking everything into consideration, we infer that while certainly a little exaggerated when it comes to its action sequences, the fictional tale of ‘Bloody Daddy’ strives to be relatable at the same time through its themes and settings. The relationship between a single father who’s constantly working and a son who knows that it’s to provide food on the table is something that many of our viewers can relate to – single parent or not.
Read More: Best Action Movies on Netflix
