SPECIAL 26 Bollywood movie review
Cast:Akshay Kumar, Kajal Aggarwal, Manoj Bajpayee and Anupam Kher
Director:
Neeraj Pandey
SPOILERS AHEADOne
absolutely failsafe way of figuring out the efficacy of a movie is to
measure how heavy its runtime weighs on the audience.
Special 26 is actually quite a long film – it is a shade under two and a half hours. But it feels much shorter than it really is.
It glides by with such effortlessness that it leaves behind no unsightly footmarks.
Special 26 is an intelligently scripted, superbly acted, enthralling and believable heist film that is more than just that. Writer-director Neeraj Pandey’s maiden film,
A Wednesday, was a taut thriller that delivered a sharp comment on the nation’s frequent and bloody brushes with the spectre of terrorism.
This
one turns the spotlight, if only tangentially, on India’s collective
and seemingly never-ending struggle to rid itself of the scourge of
rampant corruption.
Special 26, "inspired by true
incidents", is set in the first few months of 1987, one of the final
years of the long-entrenched licence-permit raj that allowed
self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen to rob the people
of the country at will and with impunity.
Without spelling it out in so many words, the film poses the question: a quarter century on, has anything really changed?
Special 26 deals with an era that is long gone. Yet the central issue that it raises is still as relevant as ever.
At
the heart of the film is an intriguing battle of wits between an
honest-to-a-fault CBI officer Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) on the one
hand and a cynical con artist Ajay Vardhan (Akshay Kumar) and his older
associate P.K. Sharma (Anupam Kher) on the other. While one is a
committed custodian of a terribly flawed enforcement system, the other
two think nothing of exploiting its many loopholes to serve their own
get-rich-quick designs.
Waseem is a government functionary
willing to slug it out in the field even as he waits patiently for a
promised promotion and a better pay packet. He asks his boss in
mock-seriousness: "Can’t make ends meet. Should I start taking bribes?"
That, of course, is the last thing on his mind. Ajay, on the
other hand, has a reason to be cut up with the way life has treated him.
So he and his accomplices are out to make those who live off the fat of
the land pay for their greed.
There is no hero or villain
here – both Waseem and Ajay are common men simply going about their
lives, each opting for his own methods. None of the main
characters, let alone the minor ones, has detailed back stories that
could help the audience grasp exactly where they are coming from. Yet
each of them is generally interesting enough to be integral to the
jigsaw that the film is.
Neeraj Pandey is particularly adept at
laying out his principal spaces and extracting dramatic value from them –
the locations and settings play an important part in not only taking
the story forward, but also in capturing the shifting moods of the
different players. The cavernous and haphazardly lit CBI office
where Waseem works, the huge; red-carpeted hall in which the fake law
enforcers conduct the interviews to recruit young intelligence officials
for one final mission; the streets and interiors where the raids take
place; and the various terraces on/from which the sleuths operate (the
director obviously has a fixation for rooftops) are all vital (and not
merely incidental) elements in the narrative.
Even the minor
characters have clearly identified locations – Joginder (Rajesh Sharma)
belongs to Old Delhi, Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) is a Jaipur man and film’s
only romantic interest is a teacher whose Mumbai school makes an
appearance a few times.
These details of space, even when they
are only fleeting, serve the purpose of underlining the slants and
motives of the characters. If there is a weak link in
Special 26,
it is the somewhat laboured love story involving Ajay and his pretty
Mumbai neighbour, Priya (Kajal Aggarwal). Ignore the inevitable love
ditties and a big fat wedding number, and there is little else in the
film that would appear out of place.
Especially well executed is
the daring CBI raid that the film opens with – it is conducted on
Republic Day 1987 in the bungalow of a corrupt and cowering minister. The
build-up is steady and the cat-and-mouse game that the real CBI men
play with the fake ones assumes increasing urgency as the film hurtles
towards the final flashpoint – an audacious sortie on a high-end
jewellery store in Mumbai.
Besides the gripping climactic
moments – the highlight of which is a surprise last-minute twist – the
film has a superbly mounted chase scene in Delhi’s Connaught Place as
Waseem and his men zero on a suspect.
Special 26 hinges on
four pivotal performances, with Manoj Bajpayee’s star turn being the
standout one. It is a classic demonstration of what a consummate actor
can achieve when he is at complete ease with the material at his
disposal. The pre-climactic scene between Bajpayee the armed
interrogator and Anupam Kher the cornered target is remarkable for both
its intensity and wit. The encounter crackles with controlled energy.
Akshay
Kumar, shorn of all his superhero trappings, is a revelation. He stands
up to the challenge with effort to spare. And Jimmy Shergill, whose
invariably steady work often flies under our collective radars, is
splendid as the man in uniform who has a score to settle with the
conmen.Just one grouse: wish Rajesh Sharma and Kishore Kadam were given a better deal. They are too good to be wasted in walk-on parts.
Verdict:
Special 26 truly special. Not be missed.
.jpg)
