Delhi wala Virus!. Review on Mickey Virus

Manish Paul has been a popular face in small screen for long and his debut Bollywood movie Mickey Virus garnered a lot attention from media and public. I was also interested to watch Mickey Virus to see the performance of debutant heroine Ellie Avram, whom I am following in Bigg Boss 7. The duo did make a powerful debut and the movie did not disappoint on the whole.

Manish played a character close to what he is in real life - sada dilli wala launda. A reckless youth who daydreams a lot, is a wella, a part time hacker and computer virus creator. He has a gang of friends called Professor, Floppie, Pancho and Chutney, who all are hackers and computer system experts. They party out all day but are street smart and engage in odd hacking jobs some times.

The Delhi police is looking for an expert hacker to solve a murder mystery and ACP Siddhant appoints Mickey for it after some serious pursuation. Another twist in Mickey's life involves the entry of the girl of his dreams Kamayani, who strongly resembles Kung Fu Chameli, a online gaming avatar that Mickey himself had created. Soon Mickey's life gets entangled in mystery and he is part of a crime scene. The first half is full of comedy and the interval comes at just the right point. The second half is gripping and intriguing. The movie unfolds at a fast pace and soon the audience begins a guessing game to think who is the real culprit.

One cannot help but identify and empathise with Mickey once he falls into trouble and seems to be in a mess from all sides. How the mystery is solved forms the crux of the climax. The narrative follows who-done-it format and in the end the audience is left in bit of a shock.

Coming to performance, Manish Paul is brilliant and very reliable as the Generation Y hacker, who is lazy, but shows his brilliance only in pressure situations. He has good comic timing and his performance is praiseworthy in romantic scenes also. Elli Avram makes a stunning debut. She looks very attractive and can make any guy fall for her. Not only looks, she has good acting skills also, and is not a frozen eye-candy like some of her seniors. Coming from a non-Indian background, her acting skills are really commendable.

I see a bright future for her in Bollywood. The next star of the movie is Varun Badola as Inspector Devender Bhalla. He has the funniest one-liners in the movie and has played his part to perfection. He also resembles the honest and good character in the movie amongst all kinds of grey characters. Manish Choudhary impresses as ACP Siddhanth Chauhan and carries much of the movie on his shoulder. One cannot help but notice how similar his character looks to Amir Khan's character in Talaash. Puja Gupta's performance as the tom boyish Chutney is praiseworthy. Nitesh Pandey and Raghav Kakkar too have done justice to their characters.

Hanif Shaikh's music is good, but not great. The best track is Tose Naina sung by Arijit Singh and the catchiest number is* Pyaar China ka Maal hai sung by Manish Paul himself.

Saurabh Varma's direction is good. He has good punches of comedy in the narrative which was very much needed in a movie like this. The funniest gag according to me is a T-shirt message worn by a hacker which said - Jab Tak Hai Trojan. He has also build up the thriller element well. The plot could have been a bit more realistic. Especially the hacking operations performed by Mickey are portrayed as video games, which is far from reality I believe. Real life security systems and breaching of those involves intense coding, which is more serious stuff.

Perhaps the director was trying to make it interesting and visually appealing, so he portrayed the operations in a way similar to video games. Also, in the beginning when Mickey and gang of Delhiite friends where introduced, the stylization reminded one of the recent flick Fukrey. I think this could have been consciously avoided.

The plot is tight and its a very good one time watch. However, there are loopholes. For example, it's hard to believe that an expert hacker will transfer 100 crores of money to a bank account which he is not sure of. Watch the movie to know what I am talking about. Also, the way Mickey easily enters Kamayani's office late in the night without any proper identity card is unrealistic.

However, this virus will definitely cheer up your laughing system. You won't be disappointed to watch this movie once. Go for it!