‘Bank Chor’ enjoyable heist gone wrong

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The heist-gone-wrong genre is an enjoyable one, but Bumpy’s action comedy is a shining example of what can go awry not just during a robbery but in making a film about one. A confused, over-stretched film that wrongly fancies itself as smart, “Bank Chor” wants to be “Dog Day Afternoon” but doesn’t even measure up to “Dhoom 3”.

Riteish Deshmukh plays Champak, who we meet as he is in the middle of a heist with two sidekicks. Given that this is a Bollywood film, our hero has a noble reason, but he doesn’t know the first thing about robbing a bank.

As the three thieves bumble their way through the robbery, supposedly swashbuckling officer Amjad Khan (Vivek Oberoi) paces the street outside the bank, thinking of ways to draw out the robbers. Breathless reporter Gayatri (Rhea Chakraborty) also has a part to play in the proceedings, but given that no one seems to know what is going on, it is hard to keep track of what she’s doing.

Police officers walk in and out of the bank in what is supposedly a hostage situation, bags of money are exchanged, and corrupt politicians are brought to book without so much as a care about logic or believability. There are a few stray Mumbai vs Delhi jokes that evoke laughter, but other than that, “Bank Chor” doesn’t try to be funny at all. It even switches gears from comedy to drama midway, and then proceeds to throw so many red herrings in the audience’s way that the story stops making any sense.

Even Deshmukh’s usually reliable comic timing cannot come to the rescue, and Oberoi seems to have little to do but twirl his moustache and act menacing. And in the ultimate cop-out, the robbers are redeemed and turned into Robin Hoods, stripping the film of the last vestige of honesty.

REUTERS