Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Uberoi Line Productions' Depart­ment is the story of the underworld-police-politicians nexus.

Nilesh Girkar's story hardly offers any novelty. But the angle about two police officers working diligently as a team despite their different ideologies is new. However, that's not enough to create the desired impact. The screenplay (Nilesh Girkar) is good. There are so many characters, gangs, alignments, friendships and enmities that many among the audience won't be able to understand the drama & hence lose interest quite early on. Besides, there is so much action, violence and bloodshed that the lack of dialogues and drama is sorely felt. That's one reason why women, families and the multiplex-frequenting audience will not take to the film. Dialogues are good at some places and routine at most others.

Amitabh Bachchan acts splendidly, using his voice, body language and style to the hilt. Sanjay Dutt is good as Mahadev Bhosale but looks rather stocky. Rana Daggubati has a lengthy and important role and he does justice to it. He acts ably and also shines in action sequences. His Hindi diction is poor. As his girlfriend first and wife later, Anjana Sukhani is ok. Vijay Raaz is effective but how one wishes, he had got more to do than simply mouth dialogues. Nathalia Kaur exudes oomph and sex appeal in the 'Dan Dan' song. Others lend able support.

Ram Gopal Varma's direction and narrative style cater to the hardcore masses, almost completely ignoring the classes and the family audience. Music is more functional than anything else.

On the whole, Department is only for the masses and front-benchers, that too, in smaller centers. It is too routine a fare to create any waves at the box-office and, given the dull start, will actually face rough weather at the box-office.