A scene from ‘Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga’
thief ran away The film is based on dacoity and kidnapping, but this is just the beginning. Director Ajay Singh and writers Amar Kaushik and Siraj Ahmed take pleasure in portraying the unpredictability and viciousness of their plots, pulling off one-liners in two, four and eight different directions. They come in the form of giddy school children stretching a piece of bubblegum to see how far they can go before it breaks. A good distance – as it turned out.
Trick movies—that is, movies that delight in convoluted twists and turns—often rely on simple surfaces and hooks, taking the audience a little further along the way before luring them in. The trouble is that this approach is clearly out of date. thief ran away This foreshadows the problem and sets us up wrong from the start. The film opens in medias res, then goes back eight hours, then eight months. It’s already complex enough (and moving fast enough) to engage us in surface action. With so many plates spinning in the air, we stop looking for more games down under.
The thief ran away (Hindi)
Director: Ajay Singh
mould: Yami Gautam, Sunny Kaushal, Sharad Kelkar, Tamanna
runtime: 110 minutes
Summary: A flight attendant and her boyfriend hatch a plan to steal a cache of diamonds to pay off an old debt. But 40,000 feet above the ground, their heist goes horribly wrong and turns into a hostage situation.
The story begins in earnest in the simulated Middle-Eastern city of ‘Al-Barakat’. Neha (Yami Gautam), a flight assistant, meets and falls in love with Ankit (Sunny Kaushik), a failed diamond insurer. Their efforts to start a new life are jeopardized when Ankit comes clean about his past – he has been under the hood of some local criminals. What’s more, he can’t pay them back, so creditors get better use of the new additions. They are strong-armed to steal the cache of diamonds, which Ankit’s current boss is taking on a flight to India. The couple secretly plans to get the job done. However, before they can fully accomplish this, the flight is hijacked and 150 passengers are trapped.
thief ran away The first half progresses with a self-seriousness that belies the narrative high-jinx unfolding on screen. It pays off, though, once the film pulls its final trick. Singh, who is making his Hindi directorial debut, wants to do something on the level of Snatch or Now You See Me. As the revelations and double-crosses come thick and fast, the film becomes nightmarish and emotionally loose. from each otherA famous song from the 1991 multi-starrer GunjanUsed to excellent comedic effect, and I laugh when a suspected hijacker, when questioned by the police, says he is just a worker returning from the Gulf, because jobs there are terrible anyway.
Sunny Kaushal has worked in some notable films in his career. His shaggy charm and bright, rough-and-tumble appearance mesh well with a feature film like ThiefFinding herself in the middle of a crime comedy, Yami enjoys the double act, though I couldn’t believe Ankit and Neha’s pairing from the very beginning. The supporting players are thoroughly enjoyable, especially Sharad Kelkar as a curt, confused RAW officer and Barun Chanda as a lousy politician.
thief ran away Not as technically adept as other aviation-based Hindi films Neerja And airline, The good news is, it doesn’t have to be. It is a joke film, a trick film, a film where cleverness on paper somehow overcomes the flaws in execution. Its slipperiness extends to the characters’ ultimate fates. Each of these scoundrels thinks they’re going to get the last laugh. Yet, in the end, it is the audience who is left smiling.
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga is currently streaming on Netflix