Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Fukrey‘ is a local northern slang – meaning good for nothing. The film is about four such young men. Three of them need a large sum of money to bribe their way into the most happening college in Delhi. This is not because they are keen on good education, but because this college boasts of best of girls on campus, cool parties and freedom to stay away from classes and just have fun.

Producers: Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar. Director: Mrighdeep Singh Lamba. Cast: Pulkit Samrat, Manjot Singh, Ali Fazal, Varun Sharma, Vishakha Singh, Pankaj Tripathi, Richa Chadda.

Pulkit Samrat and Varun Sharma are classmates who look grown up because both have failed at least thrice in school. Also, they stick together all day. They have no chance of passing school exams yet dream of getting into college. They decide on doing a recce of their dream campus but it is tough to pass the gates being manned by Pankaj Tripathi. Of course, if one knows how to tackle Tripathi, he is very helpful. The boys make a deal with Tripathi that for a large sum he will get them the exam papers in advance and let them enter the college campus. There they meet guitar strumming Ali Fazal; Fazal has no problem getting into the college, as he has one getting out. He has been roaming around the campus nursing his dream to make a music album. His love angle, Vishakha Singh, teaches in the same college. Tripathi also has one more prospective customer, Manjot Singh, who wants to get into the same college because his girlfriend is here. Since he does not possess the merits, Tripathi offers to get him in against a donation of Rs 2.5 lakh to the college.

Meanwhile, Fazal has a bad news that his father has suffered a stroke and he urgently needs to raise a lakh of rupees for his treatment. The four lads have met and now have a common aim, to raise money. But, they have a very resourceful mentor in Tripathi. He takes them to Richa Chadda, known as Bholi Punjaban who, contrary to her name, is a ferocious woman whose vocabulary is mainly filled with abuses; she deals in drugs, false email racket, pimping and the works.

Samrat and Sharma have a dream to sell to Chadda. Sharma has some peculiar dreams where Samrat is being mauled by a god or an animal which he narrates to him. Samrat interprets this dream to work out a lottery number which they always win. Chadda is convinced to invest the seed money in the dream lottery but she does so only against the papers of Manjot‘s father‘s halwai shop. Under pressure, Sharma fails to get any sleep and hence no dreams but scared of his friends, he makes up a dream. The money is gone and the four lads are now slaves of Chadda till she recovers her money. Her intention is to keep using the boys to do her illegal bidding. She asks them to sell drugs at a rave party in the neighbourhood and also sends the cops after them. The boys somehow escape but Chadda‘s lien on their heads has mounted to Rs 25 lakh after losing the drugs she gave them to sell. The only way out of the trap is for Sharma to dream again.

There is no story for most part of the film and it carries on mainly on gimmicks of Samrat and Sharma and the encounters of Manjot with a local charasi. The story, such as it is, begins after the entry of Chadda. What follow is crazy comic situations backed with funny one-liners. Chadda excels as a loud female villain. Among the boys, Sharma and Manjot shine with good support from Samrat. Fazal and his love interest Visakha are okay. Tripathi is very effective. Music does not add much to the film. Dialogue is good.

Fukrey has some appeal for Delhi and surrounding areas, but the rest of the country will find limited attraction.

Ankur Arora Murder Case – A medical thriller hitting the conscience

Ankur Arora Murder Case is about the might of a powerful wrongdoer being challenged by an honest one without resources. A film in the recent past which comes to mind is Jolly LLB. This film deals with medical negligence and efforts by a powerful doctor and the hospital management to cover up the death caused by negligence.

Ankur, a young boy, complains of stomach pains and is brought to hospital where an intern, Arjun Mathur, diagnoses appendicitis but advises to admitting Ankur for the night until a stomach scan can be done in the morning. Mathur as well as his co-intern and lover, Vishakha Singh, are on the team of Kay Kay Menon, whose skills are legendary. Both the interns are in awe of him and treat him as their idol.

After the scans, Mathur‘s diagnosis proves right and the boy has to undergo a simple surgery to remove his appendix. Menon decides to delay the process by a day in the interest of hospital coffers which Mathur does not find justified. One hour before the operation, Ankur gets hungry. While his mother, Tisca Chopra, is out buying medicines and stuff for him, he is tempted to eat a few biscuits kept next to him; this is against doctor‘s advice to refrain from eating anything eight hours prior to surgery.

The boy tells the nurse about this when asked and the nurse duly informs Menon who decides to do the needful to clean the patient‘s stomach before operation. However, too busy on his mobile, he starts the surgery as soon as he enters the operation theatre (OT); this despite a nagging feeling in his mind that he was forgetting something. Soon as the surgery is over and the boy stitched up, the boy starts vomiting, his windpipes are blocked stopping oxygen supply to his brain and he goes into coma. Menon and his team fail to revive him and the boy is dead in two days.

Menon and his management are all powerful and his team is threatened to keep the matter quiet. The nurse who had warned Menon is sent off to her native place. Mathur, who has been banned from Menon‘s OT team, smells something fishy in the manner of Ankur‘s death. His girlfriend, Vishakha, though present in the OT, refuses to tell him what happened. She leaves him for her career which Menon could ruin if she talked.

Mathur and Chopra decide to take the matter to court. Paoli Dam fights their case. All the witnesses, including Vishakha and the nurse who is traced to Goa and brought to the city as witness, turn hostile. The case is as good as lost. But Vishakha decides to do one last brave act and win her love back. As she goes to Menon‘s office to tender her resignation, he loses his mind and goes off tangent delivering a long rant comparing himself to god and calling the boy‘s death a minor mistake in his career. Vishakha has, of course, recorded this whole scene on her cell phone and it soon makes its way to news channels.

The story is routine and such things don‘t shock people anymore. Performances by Menon, Mathur and Chopra are good. Direction is fair.

There is nothing commercial about Ankur Arora Murder Case.