Jul 11, 2009 12:21 PM
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For those who are wondering what Sankat City is, it’s the name given by the protagonist of the movie to Mumbai. A Mumbai in all its filthy splendour. A Mumbai where survival is a daily struggle and using amoral means to survive is no big deal. Hey one gotta live!
Guru (Kay Kay) is a small time crook who steals cars, his partner Ganpat (Dilip Prabhavalkar) repaints them and they sell it to Sharafat (Srivallabh Vyas). Then there is the dangerous loan shark Faujdar (Anupam Kher) who strikes terror in the hearts of one and all. Mona (Rimi Sen) is a conwoman who thinks on her feet. An almost broke film producer (Manoj Pahwa) and a businessman (Yashpal Sharma) both owe money to Faujdar and are running out of time. There are many more characters like flop actor Sikandar Khan (Chunkey Pandey), the Sardar taxi driver looking for his long lost brother, a contract killer (Rahul Dev), Faujdar’s ‘fattu’ driver, and Faujdar’s religious guru (Virendra Saxena).
Life is going along nicely for Guru till one day when he steals a car which belongs to Faujdar. Guru and Ganpat get the most pleasant shock of their life when they find Rs. 1 crore in the trunk too. But Faujdar soon catches up with them and demands his money back. Unfortunately for Guru, Ganpat loses his memory after getting a bump on his head and thereby forgets where he hid the money. Faujdar gives Guru 3 days to recover his money or face death. From here starts Guru’s struggle to raise 1 crore in 3 days. I don’t want to reveal how the other characters are involved in all this as that will give away too much.
The movie starts slowly, infact the first half an hour is almost boring as the identity of all the characters is established. In addition to too many characters, there are also many sub-plots that take time to be woven in the main story. But once the story gets on track, it becomes a thrilling merry-go-round with unexpected twists and turns. A black comedy – intelligent yet crazy, simple yet whacky - Sankat City is many things rolled into one. There are spoofs on 70s/80s cinema like mele-mein-bichde-hue-bhai, on actor-producer equations, on God-mens. Watch out for the brilliant scene in the garbage dump which is a spoof on Mumbai itself.
On the downside there are times when the pace slackens. It mostly happens when the attention shifts from the main characters to the sub-plots. Though the sub-plots are well justified in the story, they do take away a lot of the fun element. When so many characters are filled into a movie whose duration is less than 2 hours and that too when the style is caper, its difficult to do justice to all of them.
First time director Pankaj Advani impresses with his fresh and original approach. The screenplay is good while editing is inspired in bits and pieces. That it’s a low-budget movie comes across in the average cinematography, sets, lighting etc. but that doesn’t really matter when you know that your intelligence is not being insulted. There are a couple of songs in the movie which are nothing to write home about but thankfully do not hinder the flow of the movie.
Kay Kay is as dependable as ever, he looks a bit uncomfortable with his comic timing at first but soon gets it right. Anupam Kher as a comic villain is a delight to watch as always, here he brings back the same twang he used in Hum. The supporting actors Dilip Prabhawalkar, Manoj Pahwa, Yashpal Sharma, Srivallabh Vyas, Hemant Pandey, Rahul Dev, Virendra Saxena are all perfect in their roles. The only bad performance of the movie comes from Chunkey Pandey – he has a double role and its difficult to say which of the two roles was more irritating. Last but not the least, Rimi Sen is the biggest surprise of the movie. She not just lights up the scenes with her screen presence but also outperforms Kay Kay at times! Somebody please give this girl a role worthy of her talent.
My Final Take – Sankat City is genuinely ‘different’ but not so different that it becomes art cinema. It is not able to match the same standards as Bheja Fry and Loins of Punjab but it does come very close. Watch it in the morning shows (read cheaper tickets) and you will walk out with a smile on your face. If you pay the regular multiplex fare for it (read expensive tickets) you may not feel so satisfied.
