Lights Out:
A band of masked robbers very easily trip up the power grid of the whole of Pune to grab a fortune in gold. That’s just so the film can be called Blackout. In the dark, their getaway vehicle crashes into a car driven by a crime reporter, and that’s all there is to the outage. In the rest of the film, the lights are back to normal, probably because it would have been tough to shoot a film in the dark, not to mention how difficult it would be to watch squinting at the TV screen.
This low-rent, one-night caper, directed by Devang Shashin Bhavsar, stars Vikrant Massey as Lenny, the kind of crime reporter who wears disguises and carries out sting operations against corrupt cops and politicians. The actor must have used up all his understated performance craft behind in 12th Fail, because his jittery overacting in this film just makes him look like he had too many caffeinated beverages.
Lenny, sent out by his wife (Ruhani Sharma) to buy food, steals a trunk from the robbers’ car (dreaming of wealth raining upon him), has the misfortune of running down a man while driving away. A drunk, referred to as Bewada (Sunil Grover) till his real identity is revealed, offers to help dispose of the body in exchange for cash and booze—though Lenny hasn’t exactly committed murder. Two petty thieves, Thik and Thak (Karan Sonawane, Saurabh Ghadge), aspiring to be influencers, happen to be on the scene and join in; a frazzled Lenny has to drive around with three loony passengers, and are soon joined by a “ladki bheegi bhaagi si” (Mouni Roy).
Lenny is trying to avoid cops, and is unaware that he is being pursued by a detective (Jisshu Sengupta), as he gets into one scrape after another. Amidst the mindless mayhem, there are a few funny scenes, like a stoic pawnshop owner taking his own time to release the many padlocks to get to the object needed by Lenny, while all of them stand around hopping with impatience.
When so many seemingly random things happen, the film’s run time is taken up by backstories and explanations, which hold up the frenetic pace. Sunil Grover, actually gets a pointless song as he wanders around the city. Thankfully, no bar dance though, which is a staple of this genre of crime thriller.
Blackout is not unwatchable, it’s just not as clever or comic as it thinks it is, or wants to be. Sympathies go with Vikrant Massey, doing a Kunal Khemu kind of role that he does not quite know how to approach– play him as a pathetic victim or a hero who is expected to overcome all odds. Sunil Grover is aware that the poetry-spouting Bewada is ridiculous, and does not make an attempt to make sense of what is being asked of him. He pushes most of the film’s comic buttons, while the others are squawking in panic.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
