Three different stories move parallely, underlining the philosophy of Bombay city – there is nothing as wrong or right: you’ve got to do all under your power to survive and succeed. Read the review of Shor In The City for more.
Business rating: 1.5 stars
Star cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathi, Radhika Apte, Preeti Desai, Amit Mistry, Zakir Hussain.
What’s Good: The track of Tusshar, Nikhil, Pitobash; the dialogues; the performances; the songs; the racy narrative style.
What’s Bad: The lack of explanation of the philosophy of the film; the track of Sendhil is in English which a lot of people won’t understand.
Verdict: Shor In The City will manage to create some shor in the big cities in select multiplexes only.
Loo break: Not really.
Watch or Not? May not be commercially strong but it is worth watching for its fresh style.
Balaji Motion Pictures and ALT Entertainment’s Shor In The City (UA) is about life in Bombay city. It has three stories, seemingly unconnected to each other, running parallely but they do intersect each other at some points.
Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Mandook (Pitobash Tripathi) are three friends who con people for a living. They kid- nap a novelist and force him to give them his latest manuscript which they publish; they steal a bag from a local train and are shocked to find guns and bombs in it; they even loot a bank. Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is an outsider who comes to terms with the fact that he is alone in an unwelcoming city. He is living in his comfortable shell but is soon threatened for extortion money by Premal (Zakir Hussain) and Hemraj (Suresh Dubey). He finds himself helpless when the police does little to act on his complaint, so he pays the extortion money. His girlfriend, Shalmili (Preeti Desai), who has left the city for some days, wonders why he is not the same because she doesn’t know that he is being hounded by blackmailers. Finally, Abhay decides to take law into his own hands.
Young Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), an aspiring cricketer, needs money to bribe his way into the junior cricket team. First, he tries hard to use influence, but he soon realises, he would need a lot of money to bribe the selector. He doesn’t know where to get the money from. Additionally, he is tense about his girlfriend, Sejal (Girija Oak), leaving him because her family wants her to get married soon and they won’t approve of him because he earns nothing.
The film seeks to explain, through the three seemingly unrelated stories, that in the overcrowded urban landscape, the right and the wrong are blurred and what each one is trying to do is survive and succeed. As the characters of the three stories come to grips with the noise of the city, one realises that in the city, which runs on its own ad hoc rules, one doesn’t need an excuse to be good or bad.
By its very nature, the film has a philosophical message which has not been explained very explicitly. As a result, the film becomes class-appealing with little for the masses. This, in spite of the fact that the basic plots of the three stories are mass-oriented. Also class-appealing is the entire track of Abhay because he not only speaks mostly in English but also with a very heavy accent, which the non-English-speaking mass base will not even understand. So there’s a problem area here – a mass-appealing drama has been made in a way that holds appeal mainly for the gentry audience.
Having said that, it must be mentioned that per se, the story and screenplay, written by Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK and Sita Menon, are interesting and engaging. Of the three stories, that of the Tilak-Mandook-Ramesh trio is the most exciting and enjoyable because it has more layers and variations. If Abhay’s track doesn’t impress as much as the trio’s, it is because Premal and Hemraj don’t appear to be so connected or influential that the police would not pay heed to a complaint against them by Abhay. Further, the audience wonders why Abhay couldn’t bribe the police to register his complaint and nab the culprits instead of paying the extortion money. He could’ve got his work done at probably a tenth of the cost. Likewise, the track of Sawan is not very interesting. What is definitely interesting is how Sawan actually manages to get the money for bribing.
The film’s first half is more interesting than the second half because of the freshness of the characters, the incidents in the drama and, of course, the witty dialogues and punch-lines. In fact, dialogue writers Sita Menon and Chintan Gandhi are in form, elevating some scenes with their peppy and fun dialogues. The post-interval portion loses some of the grip of the first half as it becomes more routine. The climax, in which Tilak gets up suddenly, looks unbelievable.
Tusshar Kapoor gets into the skin of the character of Tilak and does a lovely job of it. Sendhil Ramamurthy is wonderfully restrained but his accented English will restrict his appeal to the city-based audience only. Nikhil Dwivedi does a fine job. Pitobash Tripathi is splendid. He acts very naturally and evokes laughter at a number of places. Sundeep Kishan is effective. Radhika Apte’s is an intense performance. She gets very little scope though. Preeti Desai suits her character and is alright. Zakir Hussain and Suresh Dubey make for a menacing duo – as they are required to – and impress with their acting. Amit Mistry is simply superb. Girija Oak leaves a mark as Sawan’s girlfriend. Sudhir Chowdhary (as the gangster who keeps staring) and Alok Chaturvedi lend able support.
Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK’s direction is smart and honest to the script. Although the duo has not been able to underline the philosophy of the film too explicitly (thereby restricting the film’s appeal), it has made the three almost unrelated stories merge into one another seamlessly. Sachin-Jigar’s music compositions in the ‘Saibo’ and ‘Karma is a bitch’ songs are racy, fast-paced and very appealing. Lyrics (Sameer, Priya Panchal) go with the mood of the film. Camerawork (Tushar Kanti Ray) is lovely. Ashmith Kunder’s editing is sharp. Technically, upto the mark.
On the whole, Shor In The City is a well-made and well-enacted film but it has limited commercial appeal and will, therefore, do well in select multiplexes of the big cities only.
Business rating: 1.5 stars
Star cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathi, Radhika Apte, Preeti Desai, Amit Mistry, Zakir Hussain.
What’s Good: The track of Tusshar, Nikhil, Pitobash; the dialogues; the performances; the songs; the racy narrative style.
What’s Bad: The lack of explanation of the philosophy of the film; the track of Sendhil is in English which a lot of people won’t understand.
Verdict: Shor In The City will manage to create some shor in the big cities in select multiplexes only.
Loo break: Not really.
Watch or Not? May not be commercially strong but it is worth watching for its fresh style.
Balaji Motion Pictures and ALT Entertainment’s Shor In The City (UA) is about life in Bombay city. It has three stories, seemingly unconnected to each other, running parallely but they do intersect each other at some points.
Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Mandook (Pitobash Tripathi) are three friends who con people for a living. They kid- nap a novelist and force him to give them his latest manuscript which they publish; they steal a bag from a local train and are shocked to find guns and bombs in it; they even loot a bank. Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is an outsider who comes to terms with the fact that he is alone in an unwelcoming city. He is living in his comfortable shell but is soon threatened for extortion money by Premal (Zakir Hussain) and Hemraj (Suresh Dubey). He finds himself helpless when the police does little to act on his complaint, so he pays the extortion money. His girlfriend, Shalmili (Preeti Desai), who has left the city for some days, wonders why he is not the same because she doesn’t know that he is being hounded by blackmailers. Finally, Abhay decides to take law into his own hands.
Young Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), an aspiring cricketer, needs money to bribe his way into the junior cricket team. First, he tries hard to use influence, but he soon realises, he would need a lot of money to bribe the selector. He doesn’t know where to get the money from. Additionally, he is tense about his girlfriend, Sejal (Girija Oak), leaving him because her family wants her to get married soon and they won’t approve of him because he earns nothing.
The film seeks to explain, through the three seemingly unrelated stories, that in the overcrowded urban landscape, the right and the wrong are blurred and what each one is trying to do is survive and succeed. As the characters of the three stories come to grips with the noise of the city, one realises that in the city, which runs on its own ad hoc rules, one doesn’t need an excuse to be good or bad.
By its very nature, the film has a philosophical message which has not been explained very explicitly. As a result, the film becomes class-appealing with little for the masses. This, in spite of the fact that the basic plots of the three stories are mass-oriented. Also class-appealing is the entire track of Abhay because he not only speaks mostly in English but also with a very heavy accent, which the non-English-speaking mass base will not even understand. So there’s a problem area here – a mass-appealing drama has been made in a way that holds appeal mainly for the gentry audience.
Having said that, it must be mentioned that per se, the story and screenplay, written by Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK and Sita Menon, are interesting and engaging. Of the three stories, that of the Tilak-Mandook-Ramesh trio is the most exciting and enjoyable because it has more layers and variations. If Abhay’s track doesn’t impress as much as the trio’s, it is because Premal and Hemraj don’t appear to be so connected or influential that the police would not pay heed to a complaint against them by Abhay. Further, the audience wonders why Abhay couldn’t bribe the police to register his complaint and nab the culprits instead of paying the extortion money. He could’ve got his work done at probably a tenth of the cost. Likewise, the track of Sawan is not very interesting. What is definitely interesting is how Sawan actually manages to get the money for bribing.
The film’s first half is more interesting than the second half because of the freshness of the characters, the incidents in the drama and, of course, the witty dialogues and punch-lines. In fact, dialogue writers Sita Menon and Chintan Gandhi are in form, elevating some scenes with their peppy and fun dialogues. The post-interval portion loses some of the grip of the first half as it becomes more routine. The climax, in which Tilak gets up suddenly, looks unbelievable.
Tusshar Kapoor gets into the skin of the character of Tilak and does a lovely job of it. Sendhil Ramamurthy is wonderfully restrained but his accented English will restrict his appeal to the city-based audience only. Nikhil Dwivedi does a fine job. Pitobash Tripathi is splendid. He acts very naturally and evokes laughter at a number of places. Sundeep Kishan is effective. Radhika Apte’s is an intense performance. She gets very little scope though. Preeti Desai suits her character and is alright. Zakir Hussain and Suresh Dubey make for a menacing duo – as they are required to – and impress with their acting. Amit Mistry is simply superb. Girija Oak leaves a mark as Sawan’s girlfriend. Sudhir Chowdhary (as the gangster who keeps staring) and Alok Chaturvedi lend able support.
On the whole, Shor In The City is a well-made and well-enacted film but it has limited commercial appeal and will, therefore, do well in select multiplexes of the big cities only.
