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Class of '83
Class of '83
	Netflix release poster
Directed by	Atul Sabharwal
Written by	Abhijeet Deshpande
Based on	The Class of 83; by Hussain Zaidi
Produced by	Gauri Khan; Gaurav Verma;
Starring	Bobby Deol
Cinematography	Mario Poljac
Edited by	Manas Mittal
Music by	Viju Shah
Production; company	Red Chillies Entertainment
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	21 August 2020;
Running time	98 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi

Class of '83 is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language crime thriller film produced by Red Chillies Entertainment and directed by Atul Sabharwal for Netflix.^[3] The film is based on the book "The Class of 83" and tells the story of a hero policeman shunted to a punishment posting as the dean of the police academy.^[4] The film premiered on 21 August 2020 on Netflix.^[5]

At the 2021 Filmfare OTT Awards, Class of '83 received 2 nominations – Best Actor in a Web Original Film (Bobby Deol) and Best Supporting Actor in a Web Original Film (Bhupendra Jadawat).

Plot

A hero policeman shunted to a punishment posting as the Dean of the police academy decides to punish the corrupt bureaucracy and its criminal allies in return by training five lethal assassin policemen. But, like all good plans, it only works for a while until the fire that he has ignited threatens to burn his own house down.
— Netflix

Class of 83, which is based on a book authored by leading crime journalist Hussain Zaidi, is set in Bombay in the 1980s when the underworld’s stranglehold on the city was becoming hard to break. Dozens of young men rendered jobless as a result of the ongoing mill strike were being lured into joining local gangs, and the nexus between powerful politicians and criminal gang leaders made it hard for the police to weed out the problem. With this as the backdrop, the film follows an ideological cop-turned-trainer who moulds five cadets into encounter specialists.

Yanked off the field for doing his job with more integrity than those in power would like him to, upright officer Vijay Singh (Bobby Deol) lands a ‘punishment posting’ as the dean of the Police Training Centre in Nashik. Convinced that the only way to restore order in a flawed system is to fix it from the inside, he handpicks a clutch of bold young officers and trains them to bend the law in service of the greater good.

Inspired from real accounts of the city’s first encounter specialists, the film depicts how the officers shrewdly planned and executed hits while staying within the system and following all necessary protocols. But then it quickly slips into a predictable rise-and-fall-and-rise narrative with egos and corruption breaking up the friends, and a last-ditch shot at redemption triggered by their mentor.

Cast

Bobby Deol as Additional Director General of Police Officer Vijay Singh, the husband of Sudha Singh
Bhupendra Jadawat as Pramod Shukla
Geetika Tyagi as Sudha Singh, the wife of Vijay Singh.
Anup Soni as CM Manohar Patkar
Joy Sengupta as DGP Raghav Desai
Vishwajeet Pradhan as Mangesh Dixit
Hans Dev Sharma as YP Mathur
Hitesh Bhojraj as Vishnu Varde
Sameer Paranjape as Aslam Khan
Ninad Mahajani as Laxman Jadhav
Prithvik Pratap as Janardan Surve
Spruha Joshi as Pramod Shukla's wife

Production

The filming began in the first week of May 2019.^[6]

Release

Class of '83 was streamed on OTT Platform Netflix from 21 August 2020.^[7]

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 17% of 12 critics' reviews are positive.^[8] Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave the film 3 out of 5, writing, "Class of ‘83 works both as a well-realised if a trifle sketchy hark-back at an interesting epoch, as well as an entertainer. Though we’ve seen so many iterations of the gangsters vs honest law enforcers in the movies, there’s always room for another. Especially because we need stories of cops who believe in their motto of ‘protect the good and destroy the evil’, today more than ever."^[9]

Conversely, Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave the film 2.5 out of 5, writing, "Despite Bobby Deol's unfussy impersonation of a stolid, righteous policeman, the film is more tattle than tension, more acrimony than action."^[10]

Accolades

Year	Award ceremony	Category	Nominee / work	Result	Ref.
2021	Filmfare OTT Awards	Best Actor in a Web Original Film	Bobby Deol	Nominated	^[11]
2021	Filmfare OTT Awards	Best Supporting Actor in a Web Original Film	Bhupendra Jadawat	Nominated	^[11]