CAST: Taraka Ratna, Ajay, Vinod Kumar, Madhu Shalini, Ravi Varma, Preethi Asrani, Ankith Koyya, Jwala Koti, Monica Reddy.

DIRECTOR : Krish Jagarlamudi

BLUF:  Three inmates have escaped prison right after their roll call to execute a robbery of three major banks. However, the robbery is not the challenge here. The catch is that they have to be back in their cells by the time of the next roll call, which is just 9 hours. These “Nine Hours” are a nerve-wracking and suspenseful answer to the question of what happens if the plan does not go as planned

Things are about to go awry and our inmates need to deal with loads of unplanned twists. The plan goes haywire when the police get involved and sacrifices have to be made. Will they get back to jail according to the original plan? Or will they be stuck? Three inmates. Three teams. Three banks. 

THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES

The first episode starts with an introduction to each character and how they ended up in jail. It also gives you an insight into how each character will play out in the following episodes. We are introduced to our main characters on different floors but somehow manage to meet during the first episode when they attempt a bank robbery together.

 9 Hours, streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, is filmmaker Krish Jagarlamudi’s adaptation of the Telugu novel Thommidhi Gantalu (nine hours), written by Malladi Venkata Krishnamurthy. 

Directed by Niranjan Kaushik and Jacob Verghese, the series has diverse and complicated characters falling on different sides of the moral compass. There are prisoners who do not think twice about hurting the hostages and those who, given a chance, would opt for a better life. The hostages of different age groups are with differing moralities. 

The story has a lot to untangle, with the backstories of personalities turning into a thesis on relationship subtleties, gender sensitivity, greed and power games. The story that begins as just another day at the bank swiftly transforms into a hostage drama. A video cassette store becomes the police control room for the mission and in the pre-mobile phones and the high-tech gadget age, walkie-talkies, landlines and public telephone booths come into the picture. As the drama unfolds, we get a closer look at the lives of the characters, some of which hold deception.

IN THE KNOW

9 Hours has everything that you want out of a good heist series. It has excellent cinematography, great acting by all the actors and actresses involved, an intriguing storyline, and most importantly, it keeps you hooked till the end! The series starts with an escape sequence where we see how all these prisoners get out of jail while they are being counted, without anyone noticing them missing until they’re gone.

Taraka Ratna plays a short-tempered cop who is in the vicinity of one of the banks and wants to save the hostages. His estranged wife (Madhu Shalini) is a reporter. The bank manager (Suresh Kumar) who is serving his last day at work before retirement, is contrasted by a recruit (Preethi Asrani). Romance brews between her and Nandu (Ankith Koyya) in the bank. The others include a middle-aged assistant manager, a woman who faces sexual harassment from a pervert colleague (Venkata Giridhar), and so on. 

At the prison, politics play out differently and Ajay gets to enact an interesting character that gives him the scope to depict a range of emotions. A jailor with an ulterior motive, an aged cop who weighs his decisions with care, a newlywed young woman, and a sex worker who dreams of a better life, are the others in the drama. here

Then there are some cheesy portions, like the one involving an egoistic movie star and an emerging actor who lets vengeance get the better of him. 

Given the number of characters and their stories, there is a lot at play. However, everything takes its own sweet time to untangle. It is one thing to intentionally pace the storyline and another to not impart any sense of urgecy in a crisis.