Easily among the most eagerly awaited movies in May, Ek Chalis ki Last Local failed to make it to the good books of the critics.
Infact, I was quite disappointed that it received only a* 1/2 rating from most critics. I mean, I couldn’t believe that this movie could be that bad! May be that famous song put us all on the wrong track? And so I went to the theatre expecting the least, but to get partly occupied for a couple of hours and be back home to my cold midnight meal, and stares from the mama.
But the movie was unnecessarily given the flak by those reviewers. It isn’t that bad either!
The moviemaker - Sanjay Khanduri - tries his hand at a Tarantino style pulp fiction, that contains Guy Ritchie-esque characters and the familiar mumbai-at-night backdrop.
Okay, the characters are out-of-world, the cinematography is jarring, the music is totally forgettable and the performances are’kind of okay’ at best.
But that doesn’t take away the best part about the movie - the bold attempt at dark humour that succeeds at amusing the discerning viewer. What the movie succeeds in doing is forcefully glorify the weirdos one gets to meet in Mumbai, and give them a past, a present and a life on screen. The director flings character after character at you, each increasingly gross, impactful and playing a crucial part in twisting the tale 90 degrees every ten minutes.
Sample.this: A mumbai-shetty sidekick - Bhujang - with a glass eye, that rolls out in a shot after Abhay Deol hits out accidentally, only to be retrieved from under a sofa by the swipe of a dirty shoe by a bulky bodyguard. The eye is then proceeded to be blown off dust, cleaned with a clinical liquid and popped back, to the sniggers from the viewers!
You couldn’t expect this in an average Indian movie, even from those ugly’Mogambo’ style characters created in the eighties! If this isn’t naive, what is?
The plot is too complex to be put in a nutshell. Nilesh - a Call Center executive, stranded outside a local station after a night of binge, meets a similarly stranded girl - Madhu- who he thinks is easy to hit on. He tries to impress her, and feebly attempts to hide his cowardice, below-average success at career, just Rs.70 in his wallet and total lack of chutzpah. Unable to resist a beer, he succeeds in convincing her to join him in the bar until the morning and hopes to try his luck with her.
Then, at a brisk pace, the movie’s characters flow in - Patrick- a long lost friend of Nilesh, Ponnappa, owner of the Bar, Karan Johar, a businessman, the drug addict brother of ponnappa, the corrupt inspector, the Rajinikant-lookalike side officer, the eunuch, the rival don - dharmesh bhai - and scores of other characters that stand out for their individuality and impact on the plot.
The most insignificant support character possible, such as the waiter in the bar, too has a role to play in the movie and that’s the beauty of this story.
The plot winds around blind alleys, skids at points, runs at unbelievable speed between far flung locales of mumbai and ends up with a typical showdown involving most of the characters getting killed and Nilesh walking away with 2.5 crores, which is the ransom for a kidnap of a rich kid - a hilarious side plot.
One major flaw is the time within which all this happens - just 2 1/2 hours for what ought to take atleast 10-12 hours. It takes more than an average moviegoer to believe that the mumbai’s distances shown can be covered in under 2 1/2 hours leaving time to flirt with the girl, play out a card game, run around in the jungle, see a few people killed and also come back to catch the next local.
And there are too many’inspirations’ in the movie: from Pulp Fiction, from Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels. And some of them, like the gun going off at the backseat guy’s temple after a car hits the bump are straight lifts.
The movie is a Wannabe for sure, but makes for an interesting watch nevertheless, just for the novelty of the theme. New themes and stories aren’t well received in bollywood, atleast by the so-called-critics and film magazines just for the fact that they don’t create stars, star clubs, fanmail and the resultant sales of gossip magazines. What attracts the true movie buff isn’t the money a movie makes or the filmfare award-winning performance(which isn’t much to speak of too), but a true attempt to create something new and entertaining. New, in as much as it isn’t made in India yet and entertaining, in as much as it doesn’t bore you to say the least.
And the movie succeeds in doing both!