Gimme raid, said the fake CBI
officers who in a daredevil swoop-down on a well-known jewellery outlet
in Mumbai in 1983 escaped with loot worth lakhs. If done today, it would
have been a heist worth crores.
But that's the devilish beauty of Neeraj
Pandey's second feature film. Though set in a world where lakhs were a
large fortune, he gives us a caper-thriller worth crores. The period
detailing of the 1980s - the cars, hotel lobbies, clothes, hairstyle and
most importantly, the attitude to wealth acquisition (scams were
unknown back then, scandals were as far as the financials over-reachers
went) - they all add a lustre of underscored believability to the
proceedings.
Morality is a prime casualty in the tale.
Get this. There are two sets of CBI
officers on duty in this deviously-plotted tale of daredevilry and drama
in real time. The real and the fake teams are respectively helmed by
Manoj Bajpayee and Akshay Kumar. Both put in impressively understated
performances. But since Akshay Kumar is a bigger star than Bajpayee, he
gets a bonus romantic track with the unimpressive Kajal Aggarwal.
The high energy-level in the plot - how
high, just check out Manoj's introductory chase sequence across
Connaught Place, it leaves you panting for breath - comes entirely from
the way the quartet in the core group plans its various pseudo-CBI raids
across the country from Kolkata to Mumbai, bringing to the plot a
meticulousness that doesn't interfere with the entertainment quotient.
After a point, you don't care about the headlines. It's all about the
deadlines.
The goings-on resonate in rapid-fire
speed, imparting the kind of urgency to the proceedings that "Oceans 11"
would have achieved if it wasn't a caper devoid of a moral centre, or
"Race 2" were it not devoid of a soul.
"Special 26" achieves a rare synthesis
of real-life credibility and cinematic flamboyance. Pandey's perception
of cinematic licence is liberating. The real-life incident involving the
CBI scam, which shook the nation, is given a sensuous spin that
culminates in a completely unexpected and spectacular culmination.
Cinema, Pandey tells us, is not only
about being true to life. It is also about making life seem more
engaging than it actually is. This is where the director's ability to
punctuate socio-political anomalies with edge-of-the-seat excitement
comes into full play.
The mix of fact and fiction was earlier
applied by Pandey to the theme of terrorism and the wounded individual
in "A Wednesday". No character who goes so audaciously against the law
in "Special 26" seems particularly wounded or terrorised. You suspect
they are all in it for fun.
The characters are not in search of a moral payoff and we are not eager to find it for them.
Pandey weaves vivid vignettes into the
main heist-format from each of the four protagonist's personal lives.
One of them played with compelling gusto by Kishore Kadam washes his
wife's clothes at home when he is not away carrying out fake CBI raids
with his comrades. Another, played equally effectively by Rajesh Verma,
lives in a sprawling joint family where everyone is caught sleeping
while he sneaks out to do his clandestine thing with his pals. These
moments define the individual and the crime.
Anupam Kher has a sizeable part as
Akshay's right-hand man. A nondescript family man with an unending brood
of children, Anupam's Sharmaji could've been the reluctant terrorist
Naseeruddin Shah in Pandey's "A Wednesday". Thankfully, Sharmaji decided
to protest against his inconspicuous life with some serious con-jobs
and not something more ... er, explosive.
Another reined-in but riveting
performance comes from Jimmy Sheirgil as a conflicted cop who must
redeem himself before the final reel. And what a resounding
redemption!Jimmy, who has lately shaped into one of our finer actors,
imparts a secret life to his duty-bound cop's role without being given
leisurely space to do so.
Manoj is in many ways the film's main
protagonist. In fact, he gets the kind of breathtaking breathless
introductory chase sequence that Akshay would normally secure for
himself. Curiously, Manoj underplays his part in a film where the
performances are purposely italicised. In just a couple of shots with
his screen wife, we get a full measure of Manoj's idealistic character.
Whether it's the lucid and long-limbed
writing or the performances or maybe a yummy yoking of both, one doesn't
know. But the narrative's over-all mood is one of urgent crises-point
reached with minimum fuss and optimum energy. Pandey adds considerably
to his narrative's credible climate by shooting on real locations,
wherever the pseudo-raids take our 'hero' and his three unlikely
associates.
Akshay as the mainstay of the
governmental masquerade moves away from his by-now patent and
predictable comic moves to deliver a surprisingly subtle unassuming
performance. His Ajay Singh is a bit of a loner, a bit of an enigma. The
only character he bonds with is Sharmaji. Anupam and Akshay bring a
very understated father-son feeling to their bonding.
Feelings are frequently hammered into
place in the no-nonsense plot by a background score by Sanjoy Chowdhary.
It was the same in Pandey's "A Wednesday" where the characters'
silences were loudly interpreted and interrupted by the background
score.
"Special 26" is not a film that favours
soft creative options. It takes the heist-story audaciously through a
complicated maze of morality without getting snarled in sermons and
messages. This is a film that engages you while letting the protagonists
cross mischievously from one side of the line of morality to the other.
Special mention in this special caper
must be made of the editing by Sree Narayan Singh, which allows every
character (even the small and cute cop's role played by Divya Dutta) to
breathe as individuals, and the unassuming but illuminating
cinematography by Bobby Singh that takes us to the cities of the raid
without pausing to define the location.
Bobby died months ago. But then this film wouldn't let him die.
Movie Rating....2.75/5
Movie Rating....2.75/5
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