Movie Review : Special Chabbis (Special 26)

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Rating : 3.8/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2013
Running time : 2 hours 23 minutes
Director : Neeraj Pandey
Cast : Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpayee, Jimmy Shergill, Kishore Kadam, Rajesh Sharma, Divya Dutta, Kajal Agarwal
Kid rating : PG

Ajay Singh or Ajju(Akshay Kumar), P. K. Sharma (Anupam Kher), Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) are a group of conmen, who masquerade as CBI/Income tax officials and “raid” homes and businesses of rich politicians and businessmen. Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpai) is a real CBI agent who is given the task of catching the four. Khan is a shrewd officer, who wants to catch the conmen in the act. When he gets help from Sub Inspector Ranbir Singh (Jimmy Shergill) who has seen the four, his investigation gets a boost and he is able to lay an elaborate trap for Ajju and his gang. It seems that wily Ajju might be spending the rest of his life behind bars.

OK, that’s the essential summary. The film, directed by “A Wednesday”‘s Neeraj Pandey, and based upon true-life events, is a fairly straightforward story of the 4 conmen and the CBI officer out to get them. The film moves sequentially building up the suspense, with a nice little unpredictable twist at the end. The characters are nicely detailed.

Ajay, the mastermind, lives in a middle-class locality and is in love with Priya (Kajal Aggarwal) the girl next door. Akshay is swagger-filled and wily as Ajay, while Kajal’s role is inconsequential. She also seems to have gotten, as my mom would put it, “healthier” since her Singham days. Kher as Sharmaji is a much-married man with lots of kids and another on the way. Iqbal is a hen-pecked husband of a shrewish wife, and from what we see of Joginder he lives a very ordinary lifestyle among many, many members of a family (or was it a religious dharamshala?). A gaunt Manoj Bajpayee is magnificent as the no-nonsense Waseem Khan, attentive dad and patriarchal male, chiding his buxom wife over a forgotten dupatta.

The film moves fast; it’s one event after another, and it holds your interest right uphill the very end. The foursome dressed formally as officers of the government, stride confidently into large bungalows and big businesses. Indeed a lot of striding is done, a bit too much for my taste – we see the foursome walk here and there, there is even a slow-mo of them going up-the-stairs. Pandey directs well; with this film he proves that “A Wednesday” wasn’t just a flash in the pan. The film has some great music. Among the many melodious songs, Akshay Kumar has sung the lovely “Mujh Mein Tu”.

The film has been shot in and around Delhi. There are some very nice shots of Rajpath, the grand politician-occupied bungalows of Akbar Road, and Lutyen’s Connaught Place. Wasim Khan apparently lives in Asiad Village, so we get a few views of the modern apartments there. While Pandey chooses his locales well, I found it a little odd to see Wasim Khan and his officers huddling over a desk on the windy roof-top. Why are they up there when they have perfectly serviceable offices? I remember a character from “A Wednesday” running his covert operations from a rooftop which kinda made sense, but here it just looked weird. The other oddity was when Wasim Khan’s second-in-command delivers a dialogue with the word “schedule” in it, and his pronunciation of the word is decidedly American – he says “skedule” instead of the Indian “shedule”.

Overall a great film, fairly intense and dedicated to it’s story save for one light-hearted wedding dance number. I enjoyed it very much. Do go see it!

Kidwise : This film was pretty clean, no vulgarity or sly innuendo. No semi-dressed females – the closest we come to that is buxom Mrs. Khan minus her dupatta. Special 26 deserves it’s PG rating.