Cast: Yami Gautam, Sunny Kaushal, Sharad Kelkar
Director: Ajay Singh
Rating: Two and a half stars (out of 5)
The writers of Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, a Maddock Films production presented by Netflix, are like wily cardsharps who get a touch carried away by their bag of tricks and overplay their hand at the business end of their fraught game. Yet they are intelligent enough to keep their wits about them and pass off the occasional false move as part of a larger deliberate design. The means that they employ to pull the wool over the audience's eyes works for the most part.
Written by Shiraz Ahmed and Amar Kaushik and directed by Ajay Singh, the quirky crime caper centres on a mid-air diamond heist that is upended by the hijack of an aircraft with 150 passengers on board. It isn't as smart as it thinks it is but is passably engaging nonetheless. It keeps a tight rein on its twists and turns as it makes its way through a plot that turns increasingly dense and convoluted.
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga is a smart and mildly diverting gambol, starts on an innocuous boy-meets-girl note. A flight attendant Neha Grover (Yami Gautam Dhar) runs into a vegan passenger Ankit Sethi (Sunny Kaushal) on a flight to New Delhi from a fictitious Middle East city called Al-Barkat. The latter's vegan meal isn't available on board. The helpful air hostess lets the man have hers.
United by their veganism, Neha, who is coming off a major personal setback, and Ankit, a former diamonds insurer with a dodgy past, fall in love. Their next encounter is in a nightclub. Mercifully, the duo does not break into song and dance of the kind that Bollywood lovebirds usually do.
The liaison begins to turn sinister as menacing goons, a business deal gone awry, a tragic back story and an unplanned pregnancy throw Neha and Ankit into a spiral of dangerous moves that culminate in an all-out kerfuffle. Their plane and plans are hijacked.
As one thing leads to another and the two scurry for cover, the plot is littered with duds, fakes and feints and bombs, guns and diamonds. Together, all the deceit that is in the air spells big trouble for Neha and Ankit. Goons and grifters run amuck. To top it all, three armed men hijack the aircraft the lovers are on. They demand the release of a Kashmiri militant lodged in a Manali jail.
Among the passengers is a delivery man carrying a bag containing a mobile phone studded with diamonds. It is meant for a powerful politician. Ankit has his eyes on the bag. But before he can strike, all hell breaks loose. He ends up with a bloodied nose. Neha has her hands full trying to save the passengers from harm. And RAW officer Parvez Shaikh (Sharad Kelkar) swings into action and rolls out a plan to thwart the hijackers.
The last one-third of the 110-minute film delivers revelations and swivels that centre on individuals who string each other along. The double-crosses, which alternate between the startling and the expected, keep the film on a steady boil.
As Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, flitting between the present day and anything from eight hours to eight months ago, pulls a series of fast ones on the audience, forcing rapid shifts in perspective from one principal character to the other. The reveals fly so thick and fast that it becomes rather easy after a point to second-guess what lies ahead.
This is despite the fact that nothing is as it seems. Neha and Ankit have much to hide. As the layers that hide their true colours are peeled in quick succession after the plane has made an emergency landing in Kullu, the film changes course a number of times. Their cards are revealed and the not-so-well laid-out plans of the two begin to come unstuck.
Sunny Kaushal has a rakish charm that is a perfect fit for a character who pushes his luck too far after he has dug a huge hole for himself. But the role has limited emotional bandwidth and that stymies the possibility of a truly memorable turn.
Yami Gautam Dhar's character is more sharply etched and, therefore, has far greater range. That stands the actress in good stead. She is the one who powers the film along especially when the ride turns somewhat bumpy.
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga lays all its store by the two lead characters and leaves little room for the others to develop. The supporting cast - Indraneil Sengupta as a flight marshal and Barun Chanda as a smarmy politician, besides Sharad Kelkar as a RAW investigator, deserved a better deal.
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, despite its taut and precise screenplay, is at best passable fare. The film takes some time to take off. When it does, it avoids deviations and stays firmly focussed on its course. But for all the success that it has in taking the mickey out of the audience, it neither climbs high enough to rise above the wobbles nor shrugs off the head winds in its way.