Mumbaikar (Jio Cinema)
Directed by Santosh Sivan
Rating: **
Someone must have thought this to be a clever idea for a film: two migrants, one a jobseeker from Chennai, the other a wannabe gangster from Chennai, clash with an angry jobless rebel with a cause in Mumbai.
Tributes to Mumbai shaher may come and go. This one jolts you for all the wrong reasons. The treatment of the city’s underbelly is so bitter, it gives you acidity just watching these characters go from heaving to healing in just two hours. The characters are either on the run or trapped in senseless whirlpool of stagnancy.And that message about the human touch feels like balm on an open wound.
Mumbaikar is neither hopeful nor cautionary about the migratory experience. It just wants to whip up some noise and action with a bunch of characters colliding over a day,the way Sudhir Mishra’s character did during the night in Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin. Sivan’s film lacks the wily vision of Mishra’s film.
The actors are willing but the characters are weak, almost caricatural at times, the worst hit being Vijay Sethupathi in his Hindi debut. As a South Indian migrant in Mumbai Vijay is supposed to be a mix of funny and illustrative. But kidnapping the wrong rich kid for ransom can only go this far in being milked for humour. The amusement quickly dries up, and we are left looking at a film that is all pose no thought.
Vikrant Massey as an angry Mumbayite seething after a messy breakup(we have to be careful with this prototype who has been caught going amok once too often in real life recently) has his moments , the dependable actor that he is. But the screenplay(Himanshu Singh, Amit Joshi) spins out of control barely allowing Massey to gather his breadth .
Sachin Khadekar and Ranveer Shorey get to expose their dark droll side. But fangs, no fangs. Mumbaikar roars with all the power of a toothless lion. Bereft of skilful writing the characters’ whimsical destiny seems written on a phone chat . There is a lack of gravitas in the presentation. Barring Sanjay Mishra and Hridhu Haroon, as two migrants thrown together by fate or whatyoumaycallit, every male character wants to be dark and nasty.
Oh, Sethupathi gets to make a ‘Mukesh and Anil’ joke in a film that originates from Mukesh’s Jio Studios. Not that it makes the joke any funnier.