- India
- International
Drugs. Cops. Gangsters. Youngsters. Mix ‘em up, and you get ‘Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein’. Or at least that’s what the film sets out to do. Which, if done effectively, could have been a fun caper. What you get instead is a confused mish-mash of scenes, with characters doing lines, snorting, shooting up, shooting at and so on. And on.
A big delivery of ‘charlie’ is hijacked, and the ‘bhai-log’ behind it want their ‘powder’ and the people whodunit. Naseer plays the investigating cop, as he and his colleagues sift through some incriminating ‘found footage’ of a bunch of young people (Tiwari, Sial, Rachh, Arora and co) sniping at each other in some kind of an underground den with graffiti scrawled on it, and bodies sprawled in it.
The film swings rapidly between the mobsters and the guys and gals being targeted by them, as well as the cops trying to unravel the mystery. Equally rapidly, you stop taking any of it seriously because the characters are busy acting away: even Anand Tiwari, who’s usually reliable, is reduced to mouthing lines, and Sial, who was so effective in ‘Titli’, becomes a blur of mannerisms.
Matching the general tone, Naseer vamps away happily, nodding sagely and blowing smoke rings. He gets to be massaged by a luscious half-naked lovely, and spout some hilarious lines. One of them turns out to describe the film perfectly : ‘poori ki poori film chhod gaye hain, phir bhi samajh mein nahin aa raha kahaani kya hai.”
Quite.
Cast: Naseerudin Shah, Anand Tiwari, Amit Sial, Manasi Rachh, Disha Arora
Director: Manish Srivastav