Ungli Review

What is it all about?

Sad.. It’s so bad. A crappy instant noodle (on availability of actors date) type of cinema that continuously has unconvincing, irrational events orchestrated by the writer director Renzil D'Silva (brilliant when good - Rang De Basanti as writer) and awful when bad both as writer and director.. Wallah‘Kurbaan’.

What could have being a ‘turtle’ of outburst on the prevailing corruption in our Indian system.. this ‘Batman’ meets Ninjas meets cliché mediocre b-town drama is further ridiculed by cheesy dialogues by Milap Jhaveri which goes like ‘Tum Kale Ho Toh Kya Hua, Who Bhi Dilwaale Hai’.. so Dulhaniya (read audience) Yeh Le Jayeinge... no never..

The Story

So anything clever in this ‘Ungli’ to the corruption system.. nah.. it’s a ho hum with the baseline 'The system is so corrupt that you can only ridicule it'. Ironically Rensil and Milap ridicule the already cliché and mediocre plot with their script and dialogues in this story.

The movie opens with an old man and his young daughter waiting at the Pension Office and being insulted by the 'babus' in the department. The old suffers a mild stroke. In the hospital where he is being admitted an intern medical professional Maya (Kangna Ranaut), comes to know about the incident and informs her Ungli gang members Abhay (Randeep Hooda) - a crime reporter, Goti (Neil Bhoopalam) - a computer engineer and Kalim (Angad Bedi) - a mechanic.

Ungli gang has its first case.. and within 10 minutes the movie starts appearing to be a laughing cry by bunch of a youngsters to gain some high instead of some hard hitting corruption ki safai..

Anyways while the ‘Ungli’ gang is kidnapping its targets and shooting their videos appearing like Ninjas with a torch on their forehead which go live on the nation’s top channel without much investigation, ACP Ashok Kale (Sanjay Dutt) gets assigned with the task of catching this gang.

Kale seeks help from Nikhil (Emraan Hashmi) - a junior police officer and son of an honest police wala. But Nikhil is more interested in his final lip lock (remember it’s an Emran Hashmi entertainer) with his girlfriend (Rachel White) and how he does that? The answer is he makes an anonymous call to the police saying there's a bomb in her hostel. Mind blowing.

After kissing good bye to his firang girlfriend Nikhil dances with Basanti (Shraddha Kapoor horribly wasted in a terrible dance number which goes like ‘Naach Basanti’ something.. ). A call from Kale makes Nikhil leave Basanti dancing alone as he too dons this weird cross over mask of ‘Batman’ cum Ninjha with a torch to do some interesting tricks posing as ‘Ungli’ to get notice which are as juvenile as done by the original.

Without much struggle Nikhil enters the gang and realizes that the ‘guys’ are doing a good job for the society. Nikhil is now torn between his duty and dosti with the Ungli gang members and in the due course we come to know the reason why this ‘Gang’ was formed.. which is not very convincing..

What happens next forms the crux of the story that fails to add any chapters of glory.

What to look out for

At least Rensil deserves a pat for the noble intentions. In spite of its juvenile approach in its anger against the system the movie has couple of incidents that will receive audience attention.

The camaraderie between the boys in Ungli gang and couple of scenes between Sanjay Dutt and Emran Hashmi are good.

Shot well by Hemant Chaturvedi’s camera, the technicalities are fine with niece background music by John Stewart, crisp editing by Deepa Bhatia (its less than two hours - 114 minutes).

Performance are decent. Sanjay Dutt impresses whenever he comes on screen. Emraan Hashmi is good as usual. Randeep Hooda gets a role with more meat in spite of the presence of Sanjay Dutt and Hashmi and does a good job. Neil Bhoopalam and Angad Bedi are decent.

Neha Dhupia does well and surprisingly has a better role than Kangana.

Other supporting cast Mahesh Manjrekar, Shiv Subramaniyam, Raza Murad, Reema Lagoo pass the muster.

What not

How good the intensions may be. The execution of ‘Ungli’ ends up like the writer director Rensil had penned a nightmare on the solution to the prevailing corruption. Its juvenile, lacks novelty and originality. After penning ‘Rang De Basanti’ Rensil is still in search for some excitement but it seems he is not getting it so he borrows (as many of our writers do) but fails to upgrade it to b-town sensibilities. If Kurbaan basic plot was inspired from Arlington Road(1999), a sequence in ‘Ungli’ is inspired from ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ where a person gets tattooed on his body while sleeping.

A fine talent like Kangana Ranaut is completely wasted. Appearing for around ten minutes that inclides one song. It’s impossible to figure out what was her contribution to the screenplay.

The first half is somewhat bearable for b-town lovers but the second half is overstretched, banal and boring even for those who by default watch every film on Friday.

Conclusion: Sad ‘Ungli’.. its so bad. This crappy instant noodle (on availability of actors date) type of cinema trying to cash on the corrupt system is such a Bheja fry. Ignore this ‘Ungli’ and ‘point’ elsewhere this weekend.