Saturday, November 07, 2015
Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein
Drugs, Lies and Videotape
On watching Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein, the first question that comes to mind is, why did Naseeruddin Shah agree do this film? Then there is the bigger question, why was this film made at all?
The grungy, convoluted thriller about a group of friends, gangsters and a fortune in cocaine (aka Charlie) does not even have the freshness one might expect from a film with a bunch of young people. It looks like it was made on a shoe-string budget just to get some aspiring actors on to the screen. Probably written in a Lokhandwala or Malad café.
A large chunk of it is ‘found footage’ as one of the characters a wannabe filmmaker, keeps shooting everything, even his own and other people’s private moments. A lot of it doesn’t make sense and the ever changing story told by a shifty prisoner is more confusing than convincing.
It starts with a semi nude woman writhing supposedly in a drug-fuelled haze, and then a mass shoot out, the video footage of which senior cop Sanket Pujari (Shah) along with a fresh faced female investigating officer (could not catch the actresses’s name) and male IT expert starts watching. The footage was shot over a period of time by the very creepy Jeevan (Nishant Lal). His gang of friends that include Sam (Amit Sial), Deepak (Anand Tiwari), Meena (Mansi Rachh) and Patty (Anchal Nandrajog) are all into drugs, and during a booze and cocaine ‘high’ Sam gets into a fight with a gangster and later, he ends up dead.
Now some gangsters, represented by the sexy Hera (Disha Arora) want the friends to do a drugs drop for them in return for protecting them from the cops.
Bits and pieces of these events, arguments among friends, and just random scenes were shot by Jeevan. The cops try to make sense of what happened. They nab one suspect Sohail (Subrat Dutta), who leads them on with his set of lies.
There is deception and double cross and gradually a sense of nothing-is-what-it-seems, but by this time, the viewer is long past caring. The film has been released to catch the gap before the big festive releases hit the screens, but it doesn't even have the potential to get some word-of-mouth crowd.
Labels: Cinemaah
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