Release Date: 29th April, 2011

Runtime: 108 mins

Director: Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK

Writer: Raj Nidimoru, Krishna DK

Cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sundeep Kishan

Language: Hindi

 

Rating: 4/5

 

When an on-screen smooch is interrupted with a “Stop, it’s hurting – my lips are dry, yaar”, you know you’re in for a different sort of film. It could be realistic cinema, shedding light on the darker, private moments of our shared existence. Or it could be satirical, a parody of the little failures and successes that give meaning to our inconsequential lives.

 

Shor in the City is both. 

 

It is a dark comedy as much about the city as the colourful people in it. And though it has all the usual suspects – guns, extortionists, roadside rowdies and corrupt cops – it strays neither into Bhandarkar sensationalism nor RGV gangster-cool. Rather, it traverses the city with infallible innocence and presents Mumbai realities like 2-wheeler couples kissing in a row by the road without judgment or hoopla.

 

What makes this possible is an original story with characters that simultaneously inhabit with ease both the world we live in as well as their own personal worlds of dreams, fears and insecurities. It makes them easy to identify but keeps them interesting and enigmatic.

 

Three stories run parallel through the film, twelve days from the noisy, bustling Ganpati Visarjan. One about a young, aspiring cricketer who cannot finance his ambition, another about an expat entrepreneur staring at the city’s underbelly, and the third about three loafer friends who are stepping ever increasingly on the wrong side of the law. Each character is presented without a back-story, which makes their reactions to the unusual challenges of the city unexpected, amusing, and thoroughly engaging.

 

This is intelligent cinema, written, photographed, directed, cast and acted with incredible heart and insight. As a multi-narrative film about Mumbai, it will inevitably draw comparisons to Life In A Metro and Dhobi Ghat. That’s okay. It’s just as good when not better.