Mumbaikar doesn’t do the city or its inhabitants any favours. The metropolis, much like the film itself, is depicted as soulless. There are many films and TV shows that have attempted to expose the city’s immoral, crime-ridden underbelly –– and some have succeeded too. But Mumbaikar isn’t one of them. It tries to weave together a number of characters from different walks of life, all of whom are tied together through a series of chance encounters.
Santosh Sivan, known more for his Tamil and Malayalam films, tries to make Mumbaikar many things. The thrust of the film is supposed to be the heady city of Mumbai, the tumultuous paths the city sets you on –– and how one must navigate their way through. There is a fledgling romance that never picks up, between baby-faced, unemployed and aspiring do-gooder Vikrant Massey and Tanya Maniktala, who after Netflix’s A Suitable Boy seems to be finding her footing. Then there is the underbelly: Mumbai’s deliberate and accidental gangsters, corrupt cops and a kidnapping. These radically different character-arcs are thrown together.
In a relatively dull film, where thrills are few and far in between even as the attempts are many, the ‘accidental gangster’ shines through. Vijay Sethupathi, in his Hindi film debut, slices neatly through the boredom to give you a character that has great comic timing and delivers Mumbaikar’s only funny dialogues.
Ranvir Shorey plays PKP, a gun-toting and shiny-shirt wearing gangster, whose son is kidnapped by Sethupathi’s Manu, gangster-in-training. Shorey’s is yet another addition to a motley crew of characters who cannot function in tandem. Half menacing, half-jocular, with a penchant for vada-pao –– disconnected character traits that appear unconvincing on screen. But, at one level, it works for Mumbaikar, which does boil down to a series of disconnected dots that never find fruition.
Mumbaikar is a remake of a 2017 Tamil film, Mangaraam, making it an avid follower of Bollywood’s favourite trend. Both are hyperlink films, with overlaid narratives brought under one umbrella. Mangaraam was a critical and commercial success, and it seems unlikely that Mumbaikar will meet a similar fate.
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It is also worth noting that Mumbai is a city that is far too complex, far too dynamic to serve as a film’s side character. It needs to be the protagonist every single time. Reducing the city to standard images and its inhabitants who harp on about the city, despite being barely immersed in it, is a disservice.
There are no saving graces –– apart from Vijay Sethupathi. Yet, he too hasn’t been given enough screen time. To add fuel to fire, there are also some poorly-choreographed fight sequences: Massey isn’t supposed to be an action hero. There are slow-burn action thrillers and there are fast-paced action thrillers. In between, exists a much-ignored third category –– the no-thrill thrillers. Mumbaikar falls in the third.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)