Film: Ghanchakkar
Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Vidya Balan, Rajesh Sharma, Namit Das and others
Director: Raj Kumar Gupta
One would expect the director of the refreshing, tight ‘Aamir’ to handle a thriller with finesse. One would also expect him to give us something that we don’t already know from the trailer. But Gupta fails on both counts in ‘Ghanchakkar’, with the twist in the tale doing little to redeem a story that drags on and circles itself twice over in a dreary runtime of more than two hours.
The premise is straight out of the Seventies - only, it would have made for a hilarious Hrishikesh Mukherjee thriller back then. Three goons wearing Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra and Utpal Dutt masks (Emraan Hashmi, Rajesh Sharma, Namit Das) carry out a train robbery. The princely sum of `35 crore is entrusted to the man who was most reluctant to do the job. Next thing we know, he has amnesia and a wife haranguing him.
The next two hours are all about Hashmi’s character trying to retrace his steps and piece the night together. Vidya Balan, who has built a career on the merit of her ample stomach, tacky clothes and penchant for spouting crass dialogue, plays yet another version of her regular role. This time, she’s a Punjabi housewife who can’t cook, wears strappy lingerie and reads high-end fashion magazines. Her contribution to the role is ending every sentence with “hain” - and mispronouncing words to spoof the Punjabi accent.
The attempts at humour in this film are painfully strained. There is a terrible sequence in which the characters argue over whether Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan or Saif Ali Khan starred in ‘Ghajini’. In another laboured scene, a character who has ordered wine over the phone forgets his address and we follow him all the way out to the door, then gate, then end of the street.
This film could have been pacy and funny. The director has proven himself before, and the cast could have been worse. But not a single character has been fleshed out enough to appeal to our empathy.
The Verdict: A laboured comedy and lukewarm thriller come together to make an irritating two hours.