Story 1:
Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy, Heroes) has returned to India to set up a business venture. He falls in love with model Shalmila (Preeti Desai) and wants to be a part of the city and its life. But his fairy tale has its share of goons (Zakir Husain, Sarkar) whose constant extortion demands make life difficult for him.

Story 2:
Saawan Murthy a.k.a. Savvy (Sundeep Kishan) a talented aspiring cricketer, wants to make it to the Mumbai under 22 team, but not before he can cough up a good chunk of money to pay off the selector, so they can ‘select’ him for his talent!

Story 3:
Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor) is a bootlegger, running a book piracy business along with his 2 ‘colleagues’ a.k.a. petty thieves Mandook (Pitobash Tripathy) & Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi). Mandook, the pun on the hindi words “mann dukh” and Ramesh steal a bag and discover it to be full of guns and explosives. They intend to sell the loot and make big money. But due to an incident, Tilak, thinks of doing away with their life of petty crime and stick to his ‘publishing business’, lending only ‘moral support’ to his friends. 

Ekta Kapoor’s latest film, by director duo by Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK is the above 3 stories with the back drop of the Ganesh festival. The entire sequence of events plays out during the 11 days of festivities, colour and noise.

The 3 stories have no connection besides Tipubhai (Amit Mistry) and the they remain disconnected from each other till the climax.  The directors have taken their own time to build up the plot and it takes till intermission for the 3 protagonists to reach their melting points. Post interval, the pace of the film does drop, making one wonder about the length of this erstwhile short film.

The cinematography by Tushar Kanti Ray is first rate. The manner in which he has presented Mumbai, is excellent. Likewise the story and screenplay by Raj/DK/Sita Menon is good. The dialogues are not heavy and filled with intelligent humour. Not much scope for music here, thank God for no ‘item’ songs. But “Karma is a bitch” and “Saibo” might ring a bell with few.

Preeti Desai does not have much work in the film besides showing the viewers that she was the Provogue model. Girija Oak as the helpless girlfriend is excellent. Radhika Apte (Rakht Charitra) initially is hardly there but is good. Mainly the film belongs to the men.

Zakir Hussain is excellent. Nikhil is good, especially in the climax. Tusshar comes up with a different performance from his usual Golmaal / Aggar type of roles. He blends into his character beautifully. Sundeep Kishan shows extreme vulnerability as the boy whose entire life is being taken away from him. Sendhil is again natural as a NRI  stuck in circumstances beyond his imagination. But the highlights of the film are Pitobash and Amit Mistry. Brilliant, is an understatement for the performance that these two have delivered. Pitobash

Although the editing does take a heavy beating in the second half, but due to the non expectations the film does pleasantly surprise you.

The Directors have shown some brilliant moments in the film.  It sort of equates to a strong moment for each of the characters once in the film : be it Sapna’s sheer happiness in talking to her husband, Tilak’s remorse at seeing the injured child due to their mischief. The child’s reaction to Tilak leaving is something which not only gave me a sense of relief but brought a big smile to my face. It was the best in the film. Likewise, Mandook’s joy on landing his hands at the AK (they could not confirm whether it was a 47 or 56 till the end and neither am I an arms expert), the manner in which he makes an old adversary ‘shit’ in his pants or his arrogance in dealing with the arms dealers. Tipu bhai’s shock when he is introduced to Tilak ‘bhai’ or his handling of his daily affairs be it stars or his mother! Abhay’s acceptance of the city in the finale, when he finally gives in and becomes a part of it and with the colours of the city on his face and the noise in his soul!

I feel the product needed to be marketed in a different light, with all due respects, but not many people have seen “Heroes” so they will not know who Sendhil is and for the crowd who does, they might perceive it to be another gift from the sister!

Rating: 7/ 10

By Yusuf Poonawala

YusuF Poonawala, is an independent writer, who authors The Y Factor. Explore his passion for movies with reviews and everything around them.