Follow Us
Join Us
Business Rating: 0.5/5 star
Star cast: Gautam Sharma, Prashant Narayanan, Pavan Malhotra, Piyush Mishra, Kay Kay Menon, Shweta Verma, Vedita Pratap Singh, Dipti Naval.
What’s Good: The performances of some of the actors.
What’s Bad: The lack of novelty in the script and the narration; the predictability of the drama.
Verdict: Bhindi Baazaar Inc. lacks novelty and entertainment. Flop.
Loo break: A few.
Watch or Not?: Watch it if you want to understand how even the business of pick-pockets is getting organised.
Picture Thoughts Production’s Bhindi Baazaar Inc. (A) is about how the criminal world in the notorious Bhindi Baazaar area of Bombay city operates. Mamu (Pavan Malhotra) operates a gang of pick-pockets in the Bhindi Baazaar locality, comprising poor boys of the area. He has had a fallout with one of his men, Pandey (Piyush Mishra), whose fingers he cuts off in a fit of rage. Pandey does the obvious – he starts his own gang of pick-pockets. Somewhere along the way, the paths of the two rival gangs cross and the old enmity erupts again.
Soon, Mamu is killed while he is in his getaway bungalow for a night of passion with his own sister-in-law, Shabana (Vedita Pratap Singh). Who has got him murdered? Is it his jealous wife, Bano (Dipti Naval), his trusted lieutenant, Fateh (Prashant Narayanan), who then replaces him as the head of the gang, or the rival gang?
Soon, Tabrez alias Tez (Gautam Sharma), another senior member of Mamu’s gang, starts resenting the fact that Fateh has donned the mantle of the head of the gang. He feels, Fateh has murdered Mamu. He is also unhappy with the fact that Fateh has now joined forces with the rival gang. Is he able to unearth the real killer? Is it that Fateh had joined forces with the rival gang even earlier, to eliminate Mamu?
Meanwhile, Mamu’s sister-in-law, Shabana, is found dead in her room. Was she murdered or did she commit suicide? If it was a case of murder, who committed the crime? Was it Fateh who was having an affair with her, much to the resentment of his gang-member, Kanjri (Shilpa Shukla)? Or was it Kanjri? Or Bano, her own sister? Or did she commit suicide because another of her paramours, from the rival gang, was killed?
What finally happens to Fateh? And what about Tez?
Bhindi Bazaar Review – Script Analysis
The story (Kapil Gulati) has been narrated in flashbacks as Tez recounts the entire drama ever since he joined the gang when he was a kid, before Shroff (Kay Kay Menon) over a game of chess. Given the very local flavour of the film, it is doubtful whether people outside Bombay would even be interested in understanding how small-time local gangs operate in Bombay. What’s more, since Company tackled a similar drama about how the underworld, on a macro level, operates in a corporate style, this film looks like a poor cousin, that too, on a micro level. This further dilutes the impact of the drama as it almost amounts to watching what one has already seen earlier, that too, in a tinier version.
The screenplay, penned by Ghalib Asad Bhopali, does not improve matters either. For one, the drama keeps oscillating between the past and the present time when Shroff and Tez are playing a game of chess, which gets on the audience’s nerves after a point of time. The writers and director may have tried to draw an analogy between the moves of the rival gangs and the two chess players but that hardly comes across as exciting or even comprehensible enough sometimes, to be entertaining. Rather, for the audience, this kind of narrative style only becomes as boring as watching a slow game of chess being played, at least during the times when the film is in the present times.
Except for a couple of twists in the tale, there is hardly anything which one has not seen in an earlier film. Also, the drama is quite predicatble. Even the raw dialogues (Ghalib Asad Bhopali) of the film don’t hold much weight because one has heard similar dialogues in several earlier films.
Bhindi Baazaar Inc. Trailer
Bhindi Baazaar Inc. Review – Star Performances & Direction
Gautam Sharma is ordinary as Tez. He is not hero material, which is one reason why his romantic track is far from appealing, the other being that it is half-baked. Prashant Narayanan does a very fine job. Pawan Malhotra is superb. Piyush Mishra is suitably dramatic. Kay Kay Menon gets limited scope but performs ably. Shweta Verma is okay as Tez’s girlfriend, Simran. Vedita Pratap Singh leaves a mark as Mamu’s sister-in-law. Dipti Naval acts ably but her gruff voice is a sore point. Shilpa Shukla does a fair job. Rajendra Chawla is splendid as the police officer. Jackie Shroff looks bloated but, nevertheless, adds star value in a special appearance. Naveen Tyagi (as Sankat Pandey), Gopal Singh (as Dubey) and Rajat Bhagat (as Pandey’s son) lend able support. Caterina Lopez is okay in a sexy dance number.
Debut-making Ankush Bhatt’s direction is fair but, like the script, the narration and style also look heavily inspired by other films of the same genre. Music (Sandeep-Surya) may go well with the mood of the film but it is functional, at best. The lyrics (Naveen Tyagi) are okay. Background score is very loud. Camerawork (Ram Shreyas Rao and Viraj Singh) is quite alright. Editing (Faisal and Archit Rastogi) is average. Action scenes have been well choreographed by Mehmood Khan.
Bhindi Baazaar Inc. Review – Komal Nahta’s Verdict
On the whole, Bhindi Baazaar Inc. is a dull fare with some chances in pockets of Bombay only but bleak chances in the rest of India because it lacks novelty, face value and entertainment value.
