Crazxy is a unique piece of powerful cinema

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Move aside, all ye pretentious efforts at movie-making! This one is as genuinely unique as a Pushpak and Chhota Chetan in the 1980s, Appu Raja in the 1990s and A Wednesday!, 404—Error Not Found and Kill post-millennium.

And I must state that Sohum Shah’s last and very much hyped movie, Tumbbad, whose claim to recent fame is some amount of box-office success on re-release when it had only been a critics’ darling when first released, was no patch on this film either.

Sohum Shah, who had first produced the esoteric Ship of Theseus, now explores relationships and personal stances in this frenetically-paced thriller that does not go into strange worlds like his earlier films. It shows a very human surgeon, Dr. Abhimanyu Sood (Sohum himself) who has many complexes and problems in life.

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He has divorced his wife because she has insisted on giving birth to their daughter, Vedica, whom he knew would be having Down’s Syndrome, a congenital condition that cannot be corrected and can (theoretically) prove to be a liability to parents. His behavior towards his daughter is thus absolutely churlish even though as a doctor he should have known better.

He also has a volatile woman as his lover and on the professional front too there is trouble. A disturbed Dr. Sood has caused the death of an appendectomy patient and the family has sued him. Fearing for his career, as his lawyers have affirmed that he will lose the case and go to jail, he decides on an out-of-court settlement of Rs. 50 million.

When the movie begins (and it is a very crisp 94-minute chiller), he has placed the cash in his car boot and is set to give away the sum at the destination he is heading for. For dramatic effect (what else can be the reason?), he is told by a voice on the phone that he has to be punctual and not even a minute late.

The doctor is based in Gurugram, a satellite town of Delhi that is based in Uttar Pradesh. On the way, he keeps getting calls from his woman and others, but a sudden call from a familiar voice he cannot place immediately jolts him: the man says that he has kidnapped Vedica. Dr. Sood must reach the place with the ransom he earmarks before sunset if he wants her alive. And the ransom is—50 million!

And so, though he could not care less for a daughter he never wanted (he wanted a smart, normal and intelligent girl as his progeny), he is in a dilemma—should he use the money to save himself or save the girl?

En route, he receives calls repeatedly from his ex-wife, who is desperate, his girlfriend who asks him to think of their future together and sundry other calls. He is besieged by trouble at all levels as he veers between where he wishes to head, including a flat tire, his girlfriend’s irate ultimatum, the realization of whose voice it is and the police (whom his wife has informed) asking him for the place at which he is meeting the kidnapper.

In a talk with his lawyer, Dr. Sood also realizes that if he does not pay up the settled sum to his victim’s kin, the game will be over for him. And there are much more troubles and challenges in store.

Writer-director Girish Kohli keeps the pace as fast as the SUV in which Dr. Sood is driving (across picturesque locations but inexplicably sometimes away from the smooth main roads when time is of the essence!) and at the same time, steers clear of loopholes in the script, though a few points seem far-fetched. And while you know that the denouement will have a social angle (since his daughter is a special child), we cannot foresee what is coming.

Of course, a few templates do come in as dramatization in the last 20 minutes, but the kidnapper showing a video in which Vedica is lying on her own vomit (as he has given her Halothane, an anesthetic that killed his patient), is disturbing not just for Dr. Sood but also the viewer.

Sohum Shah plays to perfection the man who could have led an ideal life but is now physically and psychologically brought to his knees. Unnati Surana as Vedica steals your heart in the climax when she meets her father. The rest of the cast is heard only as voices on Dr. Sood’s phone. Shilpa Shukla is correctly vampish, Tinnu Anand as the kidnapper has the perfect inflections, and Nimisha Sajayan as Vedica’s mother is rightly disturbed. Piyush Mishra as Dr. Sood’s superior is alright.

A plethora of original and recreated music is used, but among all of them, Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s Abhimanyu chakravyuha mein phas gaya hai tu (from the 1984 Inquilab that featured Amitabh Bachchan) makes a mark, once again spotlighting how classics can be fitted in lyrically (Anand Bakshi) even today in a completely diverse milieu.

Jesper Kyd’s background music, though loud on occasion, works on the whole. The camerawork (Sunil Ramkrishna Borkar and Kuldeep Mamania) is top-class, as is the editing (Sanyukta Kaza and Rythem Lath) and the technically upscale film is ably directed by Kohli, who, incidentally, wrote films like Kesari and Mom.

I cannot forecast this film’s commercial outcome in these uncertain times, but it is a film that deserves a lot of endorsement. The extra ‘x’ in the name, however is gimmicky as the justification given by Shah at the media screening showed.

Rating: ****

Sohum Shah Films’ Crazxy Produced by: Sohum Shah, Mukesh Shah, Amita Shah & Adesh Prasad  Written & directed by: Girish Kohli Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Vishal Bhardwaj, Harshavardhan Rameshwar, Manan Bhardwaj, Manan Bhardwaj X Yeahproof, Osho Jain & The Red Kettle  Starring: Sohum Shah, Unnati Surana and the voices of Nimisha Sajayan, Tinnu Anand, Shilpa Shukla, Piyush Mishra

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