G9 {Divya Solgama} the Filmi Freak...: 'Main Aur Charles'

'Main Aur Charles'

Movie Review By 'G9 Divya Solgama'

'The News Hour Debate..'

Expectations:

Our Hindi film maker’s fascination towards real life criminals have helped them carve some great real life criminals in their films. Pran saab’s impersonation of dacoit Raaka, Amjad Khan and Vinod Khanna essaying characters like Gabbar and Jabbar Singh or Amitabh Bachchan are few among the various examples where, iconic film characters were etched based on the real life criminals. Though, there were some striking references in films like ‘D-Day’, ‘Aakhen’, ‘Once Upon A Time In Mumbai’ and many more films. Few filmmakers tried to attempt biopic type of films in the form of ‘Godmother’, ‘Pan Singh Tomar’, etc and enhanced the level of our Hindi cinema. The latest to join them is ‘Main Aur Charles’ which is inspired by a real life happening related to international serial killer Gurmukh Shobraj who is popularly known as Charles Shobraj. The promos look exciting and Randeep Hooda, in terms of looks has a striking resemblance with its main protagonist. So let’s find out whether ‘Main Aur Charles’ will manage to give us one more good film based on the real life happenings of a criminal or might end up being just a normal film trying to cash in over the popularity of the famous criminal.

Story:

‘Main Aur Charles’ is a story of Charles (Randeep Hooda) a con man cum serial killer who escapes from one of the highest guarded prison cell from India. Police inspector Amod Kanth (Adil Hussain) and his team starts to investigate the whole matter and starts hunting for Charles in every corner of the country. Charles is supported by various people consisting of Richard (Alexx O’Neil), Liz (Mandana Karimi), Mira (Richa Chadda) and others. On the other end, Mumbai police appoints Inspector Joshi (Shanu Dev) to catch hold of Charles and what happens next is what the entire film is all about.

Screenplay & Technicalities:

The movie looks outstanding on papers and even as a one liner idea. The chosen chapter from Charles Shobraj’s life in this film is fascinating and has a high amount of curiosity attached to it. Sadly, the screenplay lacks proper detailing and strong happenings. The movie starts with abrupt date references right from the 60’s era to the mid 80’s. There are loads of repetitive scenes involving the love making and drugging patterns of Charles. Many of these scenes are irrelevant, especially the whole super stretched Goa track. In the whole film, they keep hammering us by saying that Charles has hypnotic powers to charm any girl and control other peoples mind, but there isn’t a single scene which justifies or presents it in a proper manner. Also, the basic detailing about Charles is not shown, due to which the personal connect is missed out. There is definitely a high amount of curiosity in the film, which has been mildly sustained with the help of the few good scenes like Adil Hussain interrogating Charles victims followed by his chat with Richa, the whole jailbreak part, Richa-Randeep conversations, Adil Hussain gets the main motive of the case, etc. On a technical basis, there are many loopholes related to the date, style, setup, language, etc related to the era shown in the film. There is one huge blooper in the film where the police nabs Randeep and instantly in the next shot, it’s announced on radio after which the police nabbing scene again continues. The cinematography is of top notch.

Music & Direction:

There is not much scope for music in this film. Remix version of ‘Jab Chaye Tera Jadoo’ is good, but the background score resembles the score from ‘Once Upon A Time In Mumbai’.

Director Prawal Raman is known for making some good thrillers, like his short stories in, ‘Darna Mana Hai’ and ‘Darna Zaroori Hai’ followed by one of India’s finest physcological thriller ‘404: Error Not Found’. He also directed a dud like ‘Gayab’ and wrote another such type of film ‘Darling’. This is his first non-supernatural film and he fails to do proper justice to it. He had a great opportunity to present one of a daring con ever witnessed in our country, but misses out due to the weak screenplay and lethargic narration.

Performances:

Randeep Hooda highly succeeds in adapting the real life character. His body mannerisms, accent, looks, etc does full justice to his character. Adil Hussain is brilliant and adds up as a second hero in the film. Richa Chadda, Alez O’Neil and Shanu Dev lend good support, but have nothing special to boast about. Mandana Karimi, Vipin Sharma, Tisca Chopra, Heeral Mei and others were wasted.

So bol meri 'Filmi Khopdi' iss film mein kitna hain Dum???

Dum??? Well, concept wise and basic story wise there is lots of dum, but everything gets fizzled out due to weak screenplay and lethargic direction. It’s not a bad film but, you do feel bad over the lost opportunity, as it had all the potential to become a great film. On an overall basis, ‘Main Aur Charles’ is like a prime time news hour debate which has an interesting topic to start with but ends up with the same routine stuff without giving a proper solution to the main problem.