Director: Ajay Singh
Cast: Yami Gautam Dhar, Sunny Kaushal, Sharad Kelkar
Where: Netflix
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Love hijack dramas? Yes? What about heist capers? Yes, again? What if a film gave you the pleasure of both?
Directed by former AD on ‘Aamir’ (2008), Ajay Singh is here to give you a mind-boggling genre -bender plot, that seems simple on the surface but wait, you’re bound to be surprised.
Airhostess Neha Grover (Yami Gautam Dhar) and businessman Ankit Singh (Sunny Kaushal) meet-cute and fall in love, soon after. They wish to start a family together but Ankit’s daunting past stands in their way. Wanting to clear their paths, they set off to pull a heist aboard a fateful flight from Al Barkat to New Delhi. But what happens when the said plane is hijacked by terrorists who are demanding the release of a Kashmiri militant, a situation that intelligence officer Parvez Sheikh (Sharad Kelkar) needs to take charge of?
Written by Siraj Ahemad, Amar Kaushik and Raj Kumar Gupta, the film, set across less than two hours, doesn’t get caught up in its indulgences but it deploys smart dialogues to pique our interests. For instance, the romantic track between Neha and Ankit in the beginning, isn’t your usual ‘first glances led to one awkward hook-up and then love’. The exchange of words between both characters is mindful and aware, which pretty much is crucial to setting up the remainder of the story.
Once the film gets into the thick of things with a planned heist and an unplanned hijack, up against each other, is when the momentum gets going. The film’s title, inspired from the popular nursery rhyme ‘Akkad Bakkad Bambe Bo’, smartly gives away an idea of what the plot entails. Since the twists and turns are flung at you at such a break-neck speed, it’s particularly hard to really stumble upon visible flaws. Much credit of that goes to the taut editing by Charu Thakkar. The visuals by cinematographer Gianni Giannelli are transportive and you won’t be blamed if you experience a bit of wanderlust.
Both Yami and Sunny lead from the front, each actor delivering immersive, layered performances with such ease. It’s heartening to see how Yami has come into her own as an actor owing to the range of roles, she has opted for since ‘Bala’ in 2019. Sunny has always shown promise as an extremely sincere and effective performer and with ‘Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga’, the actor seems a lot more confident to slip into characters beyond what’s considered conventional.
Together, the two actors alone are enough a solid, good reason to cherish ‘Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga’ on Netflix, this weekend.
