Dulquer Salmaan’s latest outing, Lucky Baskhar, is set in Bombay of the late 80s and early 90s. This being a Telugu film, you wonder whether our protagonist is a prototypical outsider then. But no, Baskhar is far from it. He has grown up in the city of dreams; he has a stable job, a spacious ancestral home with a terrace, mind you (A seemingly enviable situation for Mumbaikars). And he has plenty of people around who speak his language. What then makes him a relatable figure? The fact that Baskhar’s story is one about a classic Indian underdog—the middle-class man.
Writer-director Venky Atluri puts a clever spin on the Harshad Mehta scandal by planting a fictional yet relatable man in the middle of all the chaos, someone who is as much a victim of the system as he is the perpetrator.
The film feels a little hurried in the initial portions, especially in the scenes requiring emotional heft, because there is a lot going on. Venky Atluri has the gargantuan task of the late 80s worldbuilding and navigating the banking sector in an accessible format while also ensuring that the audience roots for the protagonist.
There are a few detailing lapses Jackie Shroff was way past his Charminar cigarette hoardings by 1989. And no, they don’t serve vada pav on plates for late-night meals—but overall, the film is pretty impressive and immersive in its production design. Rushed it may be, but the narrative never lags in pacing or momentum. Dulquer Salmaan really sells us the mousy underdog, and his fabulous performance drives the film for a large part until the narrative finds its footing.
It’s in the second half that Lucky Baskhar truly comes into its own. Things get exponentially more interesting because, more than the plot or the events, the post-interval portions focus on the spirit of Baskhar. Even though Baskhar tells us at the interval mark that the real story begins only now, we now find ourselves settled to the rhythms and vibe of this fast-paced narrative where a regular Joe calls the shots—and it’s enthralling to see him win.
Almost everything lands in the second half, including Baskhar’s slow transformation to a cold, power-hungry man and Sumathi’s moment of violent outburst (Meenaakshi Chaudhary doesn’t get too much to do, but the few author-backed scenes she gets, she knocks them out of the park.) Disappointingly, Baskhar’s siblings come across as mere placeholders, without any gravitas to add to the stakes, but they don’t irk you after a point as you find yourself increasingly intrigued by Baskhar’s dissent away from human connections, something that made him a likeable figure in the first place.
The story also veers into dangerous territory here of becoming preachy when, after all the power trips and successes, Baskhar finally has a moment of moral confrontation with someone close. But Venky Atluri toes the line smoothly, never going overboard into sentimentality or sympathy-creation for the protagonist.
GV Prakash Kumar’s music creates a great sense of thrill and tension in the proceedings, keeping in sync with the ticking time-bomb nature of the many scenes at hand here. There are a few occasional missteps—like the mawkish confession scene with the couple’s eight-year-old son, who conceals his emotions like a full-blooded grownup—but the narrative doesn’t lose energy.
Even the worn-out device, where the director stages a big reveal after deliberately hiding certain details from the audience, only to reveal them later in a non-linear, ‘gotcha’ fashion, works here because Lucky Baskhar is all about deceit and one-upmanship. So, each of Baskhar’s victories over his adversaries feels true to that spirit, and after a point, we don’t mind being fooled.
Another impressive thing about the film is how it leaves the morality takeaway open-ended. Early on, we are led to believe that his circumstances led Baskhar down a path of crime. However, it’s conveniently forgotten that before stepping over to the other side of morality, Baskhar already had a side hustle going on. And that’s perhaps the point of Lucky Baskhar life for an average middle-class man is brimming with hustle, always on the brink of wrongdoings and uncertainty that you can corrupt your moral core. And who is to judge such a tense life, after all?
We are not sure whether we aspire to be like Baskhar, but we are positive we don’t want to be on the other side, the side that exploits his vulnerabilities. In a near-perfect Pretty Woman homage, our protagonist decks his whole family in extravaganza after a humiliating experience; he now understands, more than ever before, the rarely-dissipiating bridge between money barrier and class barrier, and he knows where he wants to belong.
Lucky Baskhar is the ultimate middle-class revenge story in that sense. You can be ambivalent about his heroism, but you cannot deny he knows how to stay a step ahead of the exploitative upper-class. That’s where the ticket-buying audience finds itself too, and there couldn’t be a bigger victory for any film or protagonist than to speak so directly to that part of us.
By the end of it all, what do we really think of Baskhar? As the best films are supposed to let us keep feeling: to each their own.
Film: Lucky Baskhar
Director: Venky Atluri
Cast: Dulquer Salmaan, Meenaakshi Chaudhary, Sachin Khedekar, Rajkumar Kasireddy, Tinnu Anand, Aadi Saikumar