An actor known for his versatility, Vijay Varma has proven himself time and again with the most compelling on screen performances. His performance in the newest web series, Kaalkoot has made him the talk of the town, yet again.
About the series
Kaalkoot, is a series about a town ridden with cases of acid attack on women and Vijay Varma plays Ravishankar Tripathi, the investigating officer on the case. The series has other brilliant actors like Gopal Dutt and Shweta Tripathi, who has been in other OTT series like the much lauded “Mirzapur”. The show runs around the plot of finding the perpetrator behind the acid attack and raising awareness about the same.
Image Source: India Today
Acid attacks
Acid attacks are a form of assault in which the perpetrator throws acid on the victim’s face. Most of these crimes’ victims are women. Pop culture has recently spoken about acid attacks to raise awareness about it in public and to stop the selling of acid in stores without permission to do so. We have seen Deepika Padukone starrer “Chhapaak” where she portrayed an acid attack victim and it is based on a true story. “Kaalkoot” also deals with similar themes and is a series one should not skip.
Vijay Varma – The Performer
In recent years, we have seen a rise in the popularity of OTT releases of series and cinema to break the barrier of being able to watch quality content in the palm of our hands. The pandemic and lockdown brought in a wave of web series and movie releases on all kinds of OTT platform releases as people could not go to the movies.
Amidst this, the actors who have been in the film industry for several years under the “struggling” phase, were slowly being thrusted into stardom. People were starting to see real talent on screen and many of these actors rose to fame through OTT. One of them being Vijay Varma. He started off his acting career as theatre artist in Hyderabad and gradually started working in short films and did character roles as he entered the film industry. His notable works are “Darlings”, “Gully Boy” and “Dahaad”. After giving back to back incredible performances though, there seemed to be a pattern. Vijay Varma was probably getting typecasted.
He plays an alcoholic abusive husband in “Darlings” and a serial killer in “Dahaad”. Both of these performances were critically acclaimed and he got a lot appreciation for his work. In June 2024, Netflix came out with an anthology called “Lust Stories 2” which is the second part of an anthology “Lust Stories” which came out in 2018. Audiences were looking forward to seeing Vijay Varma in a romantic role, with his rumoured girlfriend Tamannah Bhatia, but (spoiler alert) he turned out to be a bad guy again. Other notable performances by Vijay Varma are in “She”, “Manto” and “Mirzapur 2” to name a few.
Conclusion
“Kaalkoot” which was released on 27th July 2024, brings a welcome change as it seems that Vijay Varma plays a good guy and did not have to delve into the mannerisms of a grey character this time around. Although, this does not make him any less than brilliant. His ability to switch from one character to the other, with them being on two different ends of the morality spectrum so seamlessly, is extremely admirable. It’s not always that we like seeing heroes as villains and villains as heroes, but Vijay Varma is definitely an exception after Shah Rukh Khan’s compelling negative role performances.
