Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga (2023) Review: The greatest difficulty is in the effort of reviewing films that are just mediocre. They lack political consciousness, have no apparent motive to exist apart from the filmmaker writing or chancing upon a story that fascinated them, and has no dedicated investment to contribute to the art of cinema. Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga is one such mediocre film that neither has glaring flaws nor overwhelming highs.
It is so bland on the senses that you don’t feel your time was wasted. At the same time, you don’t feel rewarded either. I have such casual indifference to this Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal starrer that I don’t know if I could have done something better in the two hours I spent on this. What is the character of this film’s mediocrity? Let’s begin with probing into the narrative.
Ankit, played by Sunny Kaushal, is debt-ridden. The sharks not only want their money back but are asking him to steal a set of diamonds worth INR 120 crores. Neha, played by Yami Gautam, is an air hostess and Ankit’s partner. When she gets pregnant, Ankit proposes to Neha and expresses his will to keep the child. However, Neha is kicked on her belly in an altercation with the sharks, leading to a miscarriage.
Having lost her child, Neha also finds herself threatened by the possibility of losing Ankit, so she convinces him to carry out the heist for the lender. The heist is to be carried out on a plane where the diamonds are transported. It is a private consignment for the home minister in the domestic country, but the transfer is through a commercial plane to keep the import hidden from authorities and the media.
Things take a sharp turn when the plane gets hijacked by a group of terrorists vocally expressing the cause of a free Kashmir. Whether the hijackers are separatists or not becomes a secondary concern because the primary concern becomes the enforced change in the circumstances that have complicated the heist. Ankit’s tryst with the hijackers is violent, for his restlessness is causing him to take possession of the real diamonds and replace them with fake ones as soon as possible.
The environment inside a hijacked plane when the protagonists are tasked with a heist is definitely intriguing to the senses. The plot is interesting for a thriller. And in some sequences, the thrill is communicated effectively. But does that accord multidimensionality to this film from which the audience can derive a long-lasting pleasure? I am afraid not.
The thriller is driven by the Abbas-Mustan need to get defined by its twists and turns. Restricting information from the audience and then spoon-feeding what transpired is its cinematic appeal. In this exercise, it is possible for any character to be anyone and do anything that is usually not within the faculties of regular humans.
Suppose a protagonist is a con man exploiting the innocence of those around him. In that case, the innocents are seasoned criminals who have left the world of crime for a regular life within the capitalist order. While it is not a battle of wits, it is definitely a battle of violence in which both parties take turns. The first party wrongs the second, and the second party takes revenge, causing life-long damage to the former.
It is important to note the moral corruption characters in such thrillers suffer from. To establish and justify the vengeance motive of the victim, her victimhood is founded upon psychological and sexual violation.
The implications of mental health are diluted, but this film is not a drama about the consequences of violation and its trauma. It is about the relentless ability of humans to cause hurt for hurt. But while these themes sound intricate and somehow important to explore, they are quite reductive in Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga due to weak writing and direction.
Coming back to the mediocrity I defined the film with, the dialogues are patchy, and worse is their rendition by two highly incompetent actors who seem to be acting straight out of an acting manual introduced to school students to familiarise them with basic expressions for different emotions.
Yami Gautam is better than Sunny Kaushal, though. The film gets mildly interesting in the final act as it tries to stitch everything together and entertains partially. The revelations are idiotic, both for the audience and for the characters within the film.
However, Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga ends with a tease for its sequel, which is quite audacious on its part. If you have time and are interested in watching a Hindi-language heist film, you can return to Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante. Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga is the second option, an opportunity cost of watching Kaante.
★★½
Related to Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga (2023) Review: Bheed (2023) Review: Revisiting a Recent Past of State-violence with a Courageous Narrative
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga (2023) Links: IMDb
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga (2023) Cast: Sunny Kaushal, Yami Gautam, Farooq Azam and Rik Aby
Where to watch Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga
