Main Aur Charles: Half Baked Thriller without the thrill

Charles Sobraj was one of the most celebrated serial killer during 70’s and 80’s, known for his shrewd mind and smooth style of doing crimes….

Well Prawaal Raman tries to portray a certain phase of Charles Sobraj’s life when he was arrested by the Delhi Police and he fled from Tihar Jail only to be re-captured again but with a different motive….

Prawaal Raman has tried to make a thriller but the screenplay turned out to be more of an erotic movie than a thriller what with Prawaal emphasising on Charles liaisons with various women rather than how his jail break was planned and executed. The first half the screenplay just looks like a collage of incidents with no cohesiveness whatsoever. You just cannot make any sense of what is happening and by the time the movie reaches the interval point you have lost interest in the movie. Second half is dedicated to putting the puzzle in place but again Prawaal just does not manage to put cohesiveness to the narration and the outcome is too shallow and lifeless. In his attempt to show Charles as the smooth operator with women he ends up spending more time in his affairs with various girls. Actually the base of the story is through various articles and police investigation etc which shows clearly as the screenplay is equally indecisive….In a nutshell the writing fails to create any impact which further makes the overall movie look weak….

It is the performances which makes the movie a bit watchable…. Randeep Hooda as Charles Sobraj gets his act right what with the way he changed his dialect, his body language etc., my heart goes out to him, as he puts in so much of effort and hard work but somehow the movies which he is part of fails him. The best performance off course is of Adil Hussain who plays inspector Amod Kant….he captures your attention the moment he is on screen and gives a smashing performance even overshadowing Randeep Hooda who plays the lead. Richa Chadha as Meera, Charles accomplice does a good job but the sketchy writing of her character pulls down her performance. Alexx O’Nell as Richard has the same expression on his face throughout the movie and looks utterly confused just like the screenplay. Tisca Chopra & Vipin Sharma are wasted in a small cameos….Rest of the cast look as confused as the director was….

Other than the performances three things that stands out in the movie would be the Production Design by Jitendra Kawa who re-created the 70’s and 80’s with perfection, second being costume design by Salim Asgar Ali who styled the characters to perfection that the audience is transported to 70’s & 80’s and third being the brilliant camera work of Anuj Rakesh Dhawan, which complements the production design and costumes and successfully re-creates 80’s….

Other than the script the other biggest flaw is the editing by Nipun Gupta. In a thriller the editing plays a crucial part but unfortunately in this movie it totally destroys the movie….

Prawaal Raman in his attempt to make the movie with a realistic twist fumbles and the outcome is a half baked thriller which lacked the thrills….I will go with Two & a Half Star….

Movie Rating: (2.5 / 5)