From Netflix’s ‘Sacred Games’ to Amazon Prime’s ‘Mirzapur’, Indian web series have emerged as the leading source of entertainment for the masses owing to the growing consumption of digital content among the country’s billions. With fresh acting talent, brilliant writing and a succinct portrayal of the struggles and aspirations of small-town Indians amid rapid urbanization, web series have catapulted many lesser-known actors to fame and stardom. Scam 1992 – The Harshad Mehta Story is the latest in a slew of web series that have created a strong buzz online and have “clicked” with the audience.
Directed by Hansal Mehta and starring Gujarati theatre proponent Pratik Gandhi, Scam 1992 is a gripping portrayal of the country’s biggest stock market scam committed by infamous stockbroker and mastermind Harshad Mehta.
The series features strong dialogues and screenplay written by Sumit Purohit, Saurav Dey, Vaibhav Vishal and Karan Vyas. Gandhi, who plays Mehta in the series, delivers a performance that is brilliant, engaging, as well as relatable for the audience.
While the story revolves around Mehta and chronicles his journey from a lower middle-class Gujarati family to his rise as the uncrowned king of Dalal Street, it also captures his downfall as a scammer and discredited stockbroker. The series shows the incredible feats Mehta achieved – how he managed to make the public rich and made an astronomical sum of money initially.
Thanks to his shrewd tactics and business acumen, Mehta took advantage of loopholes in the Indian banking system and made thousands of crores through illicit means. He amassed nearly Rs 24,000 crores in a short period of 3 years which left the public as well as officials of the stock market befuddled. Mehta’s meteoric rise soon attracted doubts and theories which eventually brought him under the media scanner.
Connecting the real story to the reel one, Mehta’s dream run is cut short when a stubborn journalist goes after him relentlessly and uncovers his schemes that defrauded major banks of crores. The truth not only led to Mehta’s downfall, but also exposed a nexus between industrialists and top politicians that shook the nation.
Covering every detail of the 1992 scam was a difficult task, a task most filmmakers and directors have failed to achieve as can be seen from the plethora of flops Bollywood has delivered about stock market and scams. Hansal Mehta, however, delivers exceptionally well by keeping some of the real names involved in the case while changing others.
The talented supporting characters in the series help carry the story forward and make the series a great success. Gandhi is both convincing and intelligent as Harshad Mehta, portraying human emotions along with a machine-like precision in manipulating the stock market, leaving the audience with conflicting emotions for the notorious stockbroker who loved his family and was the ideal son, but also had a tainted ideology that failed to keep his ambitions in check. On the whole, Scam 1992 is an entertaining, refreshing and cautionary tale of India’s infamous stock market scam and is a complete entertainer worth a watch.
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