Shor In The City

Cast: Sendhil Ramamurthy, Preeti Desai, Tusshar Kapoor,Alok Chaturvedi,Sudhir Chowdhary,Pitabash Tripathy

Director: Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK

Filmmakers' fascination to tap the spirit of Mumbai is undying. And following the trend of taking the city as a character itself forward comes ALT Entertainment and Balaji Motion Pictures' Shor In The City. A gritty first look, initial hype and decent promotion; the film has a lot going for it. Now it remains to see whether it may make enough noise at the box-office or not.

Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), an outsider, is forced to come to terms with the fact that he is alone in an unwelcoming city, which he thought was home. Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor) is friends with local ruffians Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Mandook (Pitabash) who together pull off petty thefts. One day the three come across a bag full of arms and a bomb and in a bid to en-cash their theft land up in a dangerous situation. Sawan Kumar (Sundeep Kishan) is an aspiring cricketer who desperately wants to get into the under-22 Indian cricket team. However, corruption forces him to bribe the selector with an astounding amount he can not even imagine conjuring up. Shor In The City is spanned across 11 days of Ganesh Utsav. Three different tracks run in parallel and have nothing to do with each other. However, some way or the other their lives entwine. How the city plays around with their lives where the right and the wrong get blurred is what forms the rest of the story.

Directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna Dk, Shor In The City despite all the initial hype doesn't have much to offer. The underlying theme of the film though appeasing makes filmmakers take too many liberties. The entire first half is consumed in building up the characters as well as the story. The actual turn of events happen in the last 10 minutes of the film but by then one is already tired of the dreaded snail-paced story. However, there are some elements in the film which are quite interesting. Especially, the dark humor instilled in places least expected. Even the minutest detailed taken into consideration for getting the setting of the film right. Music by Sachin And Jigar is quite pleasing; especially the song saibo.

On the acting front though there's some major disappointment. Many characters are either used as props for the story to move on or purely wasted. For example, model Preeti Desai who barely has anything to offer to the story or even the talented Marathi actress Radhika Apte who plays Tusshar Kapoor's wife. Nikhil Dwivedi and Sendhil Ramamurthy on the other hand act decent. Pitabash Tripathy is a revelation and gives crackling performance. Despite being under his sister Ekta Kapoor's wings, Tusshar barely manages to bag himself a prominent role. I saw the future of Hindi cinema. And it's got a name. "Shor In The City". They say Mumbai never goes to sleep. Catching the restless on-the-edge mood of a city and its people who refuse to fall off that edge of the hurtling local train that takes thousands of destinies every day to their work and then back home, "Shor" throws forward the kind of seductive cinema that makes you think about the quality of life we all lead, irrespective of the city that we occupy, or rather, the city that occupies us. Mumbai, in co-directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK's scheme of things, is that giant monster that consumes everything that moves. The characters are all casualties of that traffic-jam freedom that comes to a commuter stranded in the middle of a highway in a car with nowhere to go and nothing to do with time than to spend it in idle retrospection (with or without music playing in the background).

The mood of this tense, clenched and thoroughly gripping humane thriller is so spiritedly Mumbai-centric you applaud the director's vision after the last shot of the work swishes by. The rapid movements of images of extreme emotional crises and the ensuing violence, are so skilfully put forward you don't feel you are being manipulated into staying riveted to the screen. You flow with the frenzied pace of a people whose lives are out of control. "Shor In The City" pins you down to its brilliant screenplay from the first frame when we see the three waylaid youngsters Tusshar, Nikhil Diwedi and Pitobash negotiate the crowded streets of Mumbai in search of prey. The characters work both as predators and as victims. They feel the gun gives them the right of way when, in fact, the traffic snarl of life has got them by their balls.

There are three protagonists with their 'Mumbai' stories to tell. Sawan (Sundeep Kishan) wants to play national-level cricket. Tilak (Tusshar) wants to give up a life of crime to focus on reading and housekeeping (in that order). But the most interesting strand in the lucid lineup of conflicted characters is the NRI Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), whose dreams of setting up his own business in the city are turned into a nightmare by goons who muscle into his work-place and life with menacing insidiousness. The interaction between the NRI and the goons is chilling to the core. So real because they sound so unrehearsed. Abhay's lapse into a life that he had probably left behind, is charted in a zigzag of humour and irony.

The pace is so relentless, we don't even get a chance to applaud the even narration that defines these jagged lives as they hurl towards a karma that we are not allowed to guess. The co-directors succeed in remaining many steps ahead of the audience. The masterly editing (Ashmith Kunder) and the moody earthy cinematography (Tushar Kanti Ray) aids the director in building a conflagration of compelling montages that add up to a climax that doesn't quite add-up…and rightly so. There are no neat conclusions to these lives that are stuck in their desperate bid to escape their karma. Karma, the theme song tells you, is a bitch. Watching the people who move through their designated anguish with such furious fluency, you have to agree with the opinion that destiny deals a bitchy blow to most working-class people in the cities.

"Shor In The City" is a work suffused in an inspiring glory. The characterization is so precise and the dialogues so perfectly attuned to the minds and hearts of the characters you wonder which came first. The people in the film. Or the film itself. I have not seen a film so filled with credible performances in a while. Even the smallest cameo is done by the perfect face and personality. Whom do we single out without doing injustice to the rest? But yes, Tusshar as the bad-boy finding salvation in books and wife gives an interesting spin to his character. This is a far cry from his over-the-top Golmaal escapades.

Nikkie Diwedi and newcomer Pitobash as Tusshar's accomplices are entirely in tune with their characters blending so well with the milieu you are sure no one gave any of these actors a second glance on the streets of Mumbai where the script often ventures out. Sundeep Kishan as the boy who wants to play cricket and get married brings a certain simplicity to the tangled goings-on. You could say he's the voice of innocence in the cacophony of selfserving diabolism. Among the female characters Radhika Apte as Tusshar's simple but strong wife reminded me of Tabu in "Viraasat".

There are stand-out cameos by Amit Mistry (as a street goonda who specializes in organizing dharnas), Zakir Hussain (as an extortionist) and several other actors who bleed a brilliance into the plot for just fleeting moments before vanishing into the crowds of Mumbai. Yes, the city has been savage and inviting before in the cinema of Raj Kumar Santoshi and Ram Gopal Varma. But never so funny. There's a moment when a little boy whose foot Tusshar thinks has been blown away by a mistimed bomb, stands and dances in the Ganpati visarjan.

That moment defines the cutting edge of the humour in "Shor In The City". If Mumbai is troubled by violence and greed it survives so splendidly because it never takes its problems to heart. Don't miss this outstanding ode to the city of dreams, goons, guns and glory. Now this is one film that makes you feel that if only the narrative would have been even more imaginative and the presentation sleeker, it would have not just turned into a gritty affair a la Guy Ritchie or a Quentin Tarantino cinema but also broken new grounds for Indian cinema. It does strive to do something unique though as it makes audience join the journey of three small time criminals (Tusshar Kapoor, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathy).

A couple of hilarious episodes follow with the first coming at the very beginning where the trio loots an author of his book even before it is published. Another episode that leaves its mark is the extended sequence involving a time bomb. Since the film maintains its black comedy genre, hence resulting in some dark moments, this episode is no different as well where the explosion of the bomb ends up awaking Tusshar's conscience even as it deafens him temporarily. However right through the first half of the film such sequences are scattered all over the narrative as it starts turning a little monotonous at points. You want the story to get to a certain point but certain repetitive sequences like the involving an upstart cricketer (Sundeep Kishan), who could well be losing his girlfriend (Girija Oak) if he doesn't get selected, doesn't quite keep you entirely gripped to the proceedings.

Entry of a woman (Preeti Desai) in Sendhil's life just seems like a forced inclusion. Ditto for a couple of sequences featuring Radhika Apte (as Tusshar's wife). Though an attempt was made to make it all sound cute and romantic, one only waits longer for the drama to pick up and make all the right noise which was being promised. Also, the film's epilogue sequence featuring Tusshar appears to be an after thought in order to enhance the commercial appeal of the film. Thankfully for the film, director duo of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK do comply and start changing gears as the film progresses towards the real deal. Exchange of stolen arms, coming together of various characters through a bank robbery, the amateur manner in which the plan is put together and the way it is executed, all of it pretty much compensates for the wait all this while.

Amongst actors Tusshar is restrained and is particularly impressive in the scene where he comes across the kid who was accidentally harmed due to an act of his. Nikhil comes up with a good act and maintains poise in his act, especially towards the couple of sequences around the end. Pittston does what one would have expected from Rajpal Yadav though one has to admit that his maniacal comic act does bring in a different shade. Sendhil is quite good and much better than what he did in 'It's a Wonderful Afterlife'. Sundeep and Girija play the part of average Joes well though one would have wanted to see more of Radhika and Preeti, both of whom in the current scheme of things are pretty disposable to the plotline.

Technically, despite the low budget of the film, 'Shor In The City' is quite good while boasting of a gritty cinematography. Background score is well placed though the same cannot be said about the song 'Saibo' which, despite being well tuned, only brings the pace of the narrative down. Also, one would have loved to hear 'Karma Is A Bitch' at multiple junctures than just the opening credit rolls. Even though the film has been titled 'Shor In The City', the metaphor around the city's noise being equated to that of every individual's inner and outer noise isn't something which is on-the-face. In a way this attempt to tease audience does make for a gripping watch as you are constantly along with the journey of the characters. Overall 'Shor In The City' doesn't go all the way but still manages to come across as one of the finer and unique films to have come out of Bollywood this year.For a nation of a gazillion English readers, where 3,000 copies of a book sold is deemed a bestseller, pirates who publish the same books to hawk around the city’s traffic junctions couldn’t be doing too well either. Tilak (Tushar Kapoor) is one such lower middle class publisher, if you may. He evidently loves his job. He’d like to move up in the social hierarchy, from a motorbike, to a Nano. He finds that ladder in the film’s opening scene.

Tilda, along with his two best buddies, both 'chindi chors' (small-time thieves: Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathi) break into a celebrated author’s Mercedes Benz. They demand the writer to pass them on the manuscript of his next, much awaited novel. Tilak intends to sell that book on the streets, even before it makes it to bookstores. The author, at gunpoint, agrees. His name, by the way, is Chetan Gandhi. This goofiness, for lack of a better word, is very Guy Ritchie. The tone gets immediately set. Soon after, the three boys get into a suburban train; steal a passenger’s bag. Their booty, it turns out, consists of hardcore ammunitions. Though the guns don’t quite look like AK 47 or AK 56, which is the ongoing debate, they’re Kalashnikovs all right. And there’s a bomb in there too.

The richly textured pic pretty much plays out like a stream of consciousness. Anything presumably can happen in a so-called happening city. Mumbai is the indisputable protagonist. Its pulse gets read reasonably well. Camera ably captures the strolling metropolis, right from the vast stretch of snogging lovers off Bandra flyover, to the craziness of an orchestra bar, or tourist trappers on Colaba’s flea market causeway. It’s the sort of exhausting experience visitors from abroad often politely call “overwhelming”. Sendhil Ramamurthy plays one such expatriate. He’s returned to India to become a small-time entrepreneur. As anyone in that corruptibly precarious position would tell you, either the goons will get him, or the government or some other power tripping authorities will. It’s the former in his case. It’s the latter for another gent a young local boy who must bribe his selector to make it to the cricket team.

Somehow the separate stories of Tilak and everyone else (all of them inspiringly cast) intertwine over Ganesh Chaturthi: a noisy ten-day festival which itself was popularised in Mumbai by another Tilak (Bal Gangadhar, back in the late 1800s). Ganesh visarjan in Mumbai is without doubt the world's largest open-air party to annually take up every nook and cranny of a city’s streets. It could be a public nuisance if you’re not the willing participant. Cops are on high alert. But that’s something you wouldn’t figure if you saw what these fellows in the film are up to on that day. What you do notice about this quintessentially metropolis movie is its sheer spunk, verve and adorably absurd humour. It belongs to two low-profile directors (Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK) whose last film (99) went unnoticed because apparently audiences were busy following the IPL tournament on TV. They bring to the edit table the sort of spirit that embodied the best of British independent cinema in the ‘90s (Full Monty, Trainspotting etc). Which also defined the early works of two other fine filmmakers who, like them, made that precious move from Andhra to Andheri (Nagesh Kukunoor, Ram Gopal Varma).

Shor, or constant noise, is clearly the irrepressible energy of the Mumbai air. Was Suketu Mehta’s stupendous Maximum City a film, it’d come close to this. No prizes for guessing, pirate Tilak is really fond of Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist!