The film is
inspired by the real life 1987 Tribuvandas
Bhimji Zaveri Jewel heist where a middle-aged
conman had posed as an Income Tax Officer staging a raid with 28 'newly
recruited' officers who were told that they were doing a mock-raid as a
part of their training. The thief, who called himself Monsingh disappeared with the Jewellery and was
never caught. To date, this is said to be an 'unsolved mystery'.
While picturizing a
single event would have looked like a documentary, the writers
have added more meat to the film
through events and developing each of the key characters, presenting most
aspects of their lives, love interests, family, etc., Sure, the storytelling
has repeated shots of people walking
or driving for dramatic effect, which gets tiresome after a point. But then,
the story doesn't lose pace.
The first scene shows
a walk-in interview to recruit CBI
Officers. Cut to flashback, Ajay Singh (Akshay Kumar), PK Sharma (Anupam Kher)
along with Joginer & Iqubal are seen raiding
a Minister's house in Delhi assisted by a cop Ranvir Singh (Jimmy
Shergill). After they have recovered lakhs, it is revealed that the four men posing as CBI officers are actually
fakes. The four soon disappear into the crowd with the loot.
Fearing loss of
face, the minister refuses to lodge a
complaint, much like most of their earlier victims. It is revealed that the
conmen use the fear of law to loot black
money whose owners would never want the public to know that they had it in
the first place. Soon, the news of the
loot reaches the real CBI where Wasim Khan (Manoj Bajpai) is tasked with
finding them. He is helped by the now-suspended
cop Ranbir Singh.
What follows is a
very interesting chase across cities,
peppered with the right dose of comic
lines delivered at the right time. In a way, the movie reminds you of Tom
Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio starrer 'Catch Me If You Can' and the famous
'Ocean'
series and packs in adequate drama. Although many Bollywood filmmakers have heist
flicks before, only a rare few could get the formula right and 'Special Chabbis' is a good one!
Some may argue that
the film surely has a moral dilemma
angle to it. One, that it makes
heroes out of conmen. But the other argument would be that the people they robbed were bad anyway. The
weakest link is probably the love track
which rather delays the film, and some repeated
footage that could've been avoided.
On acting, the best
among them is Anupam Kher who plays
the greedy old man, which is closely
followed by a predictably good performer in Manoj Bajpai and Akshay Kumar demonstrating that he hasn't forgotten acting. Kajal
Aggarwal, as Akshay Kumar's love interest, at best is a pretty distraction and hardly has much to do. Jimmy Shergill as
the cop and Divya Dutta who plays his assistant perfectly fit their roles too.
The single biggest
achievement in the film, is its production
design: portrayal of 1980's India
with traffic free roads, no cell phones, no modern cars, etc. And this had to
be repeated for all the cities that the story is depicted in. The best of such scenes is an overhead shot
of Delhi's Connaught Place which zooms down to Manoj Bajpai riding a
scooter. There are some other scenes that are tacky, but can be pardoned.
Take my advice and don't wait for it to come on TV. With
tons of advertisements to interrupt the show, the chase drama would lose its
charm. For all the good screenplay, intelligent
dialog, occasional humor and some twists,
make sure that you don't miss 'Special Chabbis', what many believe is the Indian answer to Ocean's series!
Rating 8/10: Heist movies have come of age in
Bollywood!
Comments