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A large jewellery exhibition in Mumbai becomes the site of a heist. A hysterical phone call raises alarm, gunfire is heard, the cops on duty herd the panicked gathering into a secluded area, and during the melee, a fistful of precious gems go missing.
Chief investigator Jaswinder Singh (Jimmy Shergill) zeroes in on three suspects. Long-time employee at a jewellery store Mangesh Desai (Mehta), his pretty colleague Kamini (Tamannaah Bhatia), and computer techie Sikandar Sharma (Avinash Tiwary) who is in a tearing hurry to leave the grounds once the all-clear is sounded. The more Jaswinder hounds them, the more they stick to their stand of having nothing to do with the robbery. Do they protest too much? Or are they truly innocent, proving Jaswinder with his vaunted ‘instinct’ wrong, marring his blameless record for catching every single thief he has encountered?
Neeraj Pandey has pulled off quite a heist with his new film in which he shares writing credits with Vipul K Rawal. The ‘heeron ki chori’ is just a lead-in to a film which is more pulpy character study than out-and-out thriller, a rare beast in Bollywood. The two-hour plus duration is dotted with twists and turns you don’t see coming, even as the whodunit-howdunit suspense keeps simmering: there are things I did twig on to, but the surprises kept coming, making things enjoyable.
That said, there are contrivances and plot-holes aplenty, and a few characters aren’t developed as much as they should have, but given the genre, you are willing to take them in your stride. Because the moment you are ripe for an eye-roll, something unexpected happens, and your attention is diverted, which is exactly what the filmmakers want.
The film swings through a fifteen year arc, from 2009 when the heist occurred, to the present when the mystery is sought to be unravelled through a series of flashbacks. How an event such as this can impact lives, and take them into unanticipated directions is woven through the telling, and the characters look and feel older, just as they should, even though some of the make-up looks plastered on.
The ensemble is the key to keep us watching. Jaswinder’s career has taken a dive, but his obsessive beliefs remain unshaken, a trait that has seen him part ways with his partner (Dutta, in a small role, leaves a big impact), and Shergill plays his character with the right degree of worn conviction. Tamannaah Bhatia proves that she doesn’t need only dance numbers in horror comedies to get eyeballs: she can be ‘stree’ enough. For a change, Rajeev Mehta gets more than just a forgettable role on the side. And Avinash Tiwary, flying high on his successful re-release of ‘Laila Majnu’, is, as ever, a delight.
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Being on OTT means you can junk big stars in the pursuit of good story-telling. Or that’s what it was supposed to mean, before the streamers also got sucked into vacuous starry propositions with zero results. ‘Sikandar Ka Muqadaar’, its title riffing off on one of Amitabh Bachchan’s late 70s blockbusters, is a solid example of how you can get a film going on the strength of plot and performance, with stars servicing the story, just the way it should be.
Sikandar Ka Muqaddar
Director – Neeraj Pandey
Cast – Avinash Tiwary, Jimmy Shergill, Tamannaah Bhatia, Rajeev Mehta, Ridhima Pandit, Divya Dutta, Ashrut Jain
Rating – 3/5
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