'Aarya' Review: Sushmita Sen shines in an otherwise drawn-out crime thriller

'Aarya' is the mixture of a crime thriller and an emotional drama that always keeps its viewers on the edge of their seats. This web show has been the talk of the town, because of the return of Bollywood's evergreen Queen B Sushmita Sen. From Naseeruddin Shah to Madhavan this trend of comebacks on OTT platforms has been going on since a very long time. We can't tell you how much we missed the elegant and always convincing power-packed performances of Sushmita Sen on screen. Along with her, we get to see the comeback of actor Chandrachur Singh who vanished into thin air many years ago. The show is an official adaptation of Dutch series Penoza which many of us might not have heard of before.

'Aarya' has Sushmita Sen written all over it, in fact, the title of the film is the name of her character. Set in Rajasthan, the show is the journey of Aarya, who struggles to clean the mess left by her husband, fending off a rival drug mafia in order to keep her children safe.

The calm before the storm: Aarya's husband Tej Sareen (Chandrachur Singh) runs Aryasatva Pharmaceuticals, which is just a front for a secret illegal business of transporting medical drugs with a large quantity of opium across the Indian border. With all his contacts and bribes in various checkpoints in place, Tej's business was going smooth and away from the radar of police. However, the matter goes out of hand when he, along with his partners in business and crime, friend Jawahar (Namit Das) and brother-in-law Sangram (Ankur Bhatia) decide to take the business to next level. The trio steals feared drug mafia Shekawat's (Manish Choudhary) 300 crore consignment of narcotics and all hell breaks loose. While Tej gets shot, Sangram lands up in jail and Jawahar struggles to find a way through this mess. This event causes a domino effect onAarya's whole family andthe family business.

Directed by Ram Madhvani, Sandeep Modi and Vinod Rawat, the web show has 9 episodes of around 50 minutes each. We get to see Sushmita Sen's character develop from a person who willingly stays away from the family business to someone who calls all the shots because of unforeseen circumstances to keep her children safe. Each episode of the show ends in a cliff hanger, increasing the urge to binge-watch this crime thriller with a gripping storyline. The writers of the show Sandeep Shrivastava and Anu Singh Choudhary make sure the viewers never stop their guessing game, by adding new twists and turns to the plot every episode.

The music of the show adds to the thriller element, it blends perfectly well with the scenes and never gets unnecessary and overpowering. We also see the use of old Hindi songs such as 'Bade Achhe Lagte Hain', 'Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana' and 'Aaiye Meherbaan' to show different moods during the narrative.

Although Aarya seems like a show made just for Sushmita Sen's comeback, it would not have been executed half as well without its other cast members' solid performances, whose subplots add more depth into the narrative of the show. ACP Khan (Vikas Kumar) of the Narcotics Enforcement Bureau plays a brilliant role as a cop who is chasing Aarya and her family to find a loose end and bust their seemingly shady business. Aarya's children Aditya, Veer and Arundati provide good performances, portraying naive kids trying to make sense and come to terms with the reality of their family.

There are a few things that could have been executed slightly differently in the show. For starters the length, it surely is a big commitment to invest 9 hours into this crime thriller. Even though the narrative is not flat, it does get a bit stretched in between the episodes, especially the latter half of the show. Aarya tends to deviate from the main plot of who shot Tej, with going far too deep into stories of other characters. At some points, you ask yourself, was that scene actually necessary? Adding too many characters and subplots also led to holes in the main plotline.

Even though everyone was aware that someone tried to kill Tej, why was there no security outside Aarya's house to protect her and the children? Aarya did stop the children from going to school once, but what about the other days? Where did Aarya's mother disappear after the first few episodes? Maybe all these could have been avoided with a tighter script. It takes far too long to reach to the killers of Tej Sareen and does drag towards the end.

Apart from these flaws, watch Aarya to see Sushmita Sen back in action on screen, as she lifts this mediocre crime thriller to another level.