Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Special 26 - Movie Review

Any film by Neeraj Pandey would be worth a watch after 'A Wednesday'. Special 26 has an interesting story line based on a true life incident, of a jewelry heist performed in the most audacious manner in Mumbai in 1987.

Ajay Singh (Akshay Kumar), P.K. Sharma (Anupam Kher), Iqbal and Joginder are a group of conmen lead by Ajay, who conduct fake CBI raids on well-chosen targets who have much to conceal from the authorities. Their first victim is a Minister. The team seeks the help of the local police station for back up and completely fools the police, the Minister and all concerned. Ranveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) plays the local cop who gets duped with his bunch of assistants. In fact they are impressed at the way the CBI officers conduct the raid. Soon they realise that the CBI officers and the raid were fakes. The red-faced Minister refuses to file a complaint and the matter is kept under wraps. The gang strikes across India and the matter reaches the CBI.

Ranveer Singh approaches the CBI with his own information about the gang. CBO officer Vaseem Khan (Manoj Bajpai) tracks the gang and their next job to Mumbai. The con men have advertised for a short term recruitment for CBI for 50 posts. The real CBI sends some of its officers to pose as job aspirants, gets P.K. Sharma to spill the beans about the modus operandi, and has it all under control to catch the gang red handed in their jewel heist. They move all the jewels to a different location and wait for the gang. The newly recruited Special 26 squad arrives in a bus at the jewelry shop. Does Vaseem Khan outwit Ajay Singh or not is the question.

Interesting enough. But my question is why did the con men need to drag in the CBI into the operation at all? Why could they not just continue with the regular operations of fake CBI officers instead of complicating things? If it were to be that they needed to conduct raids at two places, then they could very well do that. But again they are not the greedy type. It does not all fit in fully for me but good enough overall for the final effect.

The twist is good, the story is tight and interesting, casting is perfect but there is just that little missing to make it a truly great movie like 'A Wednesday'. Perhaps Neeraj Pandey could have stuck to a simpler and more straightforward story of the heist itself. It could have been the Indian version of the Italian Job. But no complaints and certainly worth a watch.

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