Film: “Shakal Pe Mat Ja”; Cast: Shubh, Pratik Katare, Chitrak Bandhopadhyay, Harish Parekh, Umang Jain, Rajkumar Kanojia, Saurabh Shukla, Raghuveer Yadav, Aamna Shariff, Zakir Hussain, Mushtaq Khan, Joy Sengupta, Aditya Lakhia and Pradeep Kabra; Director: Shubh Mukherjee; Rating: *
“Shakal Pe Mat Ja” is a Gaasmandu film!!!! If you don’t understand what it means, well this is the lingo of today’s generation that is often used in this film, meaning “All Gas”.
A light-hearted comedy, the film is literally a one-day show in terms of the time span of the story and as well as its exhibition.
The prologue begins with an absurd amateurish scene of the 55th World Terrorist Awards taking place in some god-forsaken prison, where the prize for the best terrorist is given to a bearded Rohan Govardhan Malhotra. This leaves you assured that you are watching a slipshod attempt at exposing the slice of life in a terror-fixated society.
It all happens one fine day in Delhi when Ankit (Shubh Mukherjee), his younger brother Dhruv (Pratik) and friends Rohan and Bulai are out to shoot a documentary on terrorism.
In order to capture a brilliant shot of a low flying commercial plane, the foursome land up at the periphery of Delhi international airport. After the shot, they are accosted by the police and arrested as suspects. They are brought before the inept airport security cop, Raghuveer Yadav.
With Bulai and Rohan having unconventional looks, the handycam having shots of sensitive areas of Delhi combined with the idiom – “looks can be deceptive” the four are grilled.
For further interrogation, the Anti-Terrorist Squad is roped in. Vijay Dinanath Chauhan (Saurabh Shukla), the ATS officer, and his assistant (Joy Sengupta), play perfect buffoons as investigating officer and his man Friday.
The story takes a twist, when an actual terrorist, O-mama (Zakir Hussain) with his terror network, Al- Baqueda, plans to blow up a plane. With characters like Wasabi, Riyazbhai, Rafiq and Ameena – a set of amateur jihadis added by deceptive goof-ups, mistaken identities and madness created by comedy of errors, the film reaches its climax when the four guys by default bust the terrorists’ plot.
The music and background score by Salim and Sulaiman Merchant, Nitin Kumar and Yo Yo Singh is too loud and disappointing.
Shaurabh Shukla, Raghubir Yadav, Mustaq Khan, Joy Sengupta, Aamana Sharif and Zakir Husain try to elevate the film, but alas!
Subh Mukherjee as the actor-writer-director seems to be a bundle of talent that needs channelising. Some of the scenes are well handled. In short, the film is good in parts.
With no pedigreed casting, hackneyed scenes and dialogues inspired from recent films, the film lacks the novelty factor that one looks in for first time filmmakers’ projects. The treatment is so mediocre that it seems like a well-made college project.
IANS
