Special 26
movie review; Writer-director: Neeraj Pandey; Cast: Akshay Kumar, Manoj
Bajpayee, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill, Rajesh Sharma, Kishore Kadam,
Divya Dutta and Kajal Aggarwal; Rating: ****
Gimme raid, said the fake CBI officers who in a daredevil swoop-down
on a well-known jewellery outlet in Mumbai in 1983 escaped with loot
worth lakhs. If done today, it would have been a heist worth crores.
But that's the devilish beauty of
Neeraj Pandey's
second feature film. Though set in a world where lakhs were a large
fortune, he gives us a caper-thriller worth crores. The period detailing
of the 1980s - the cars, hotel lobbies, clothes, hairstyle and most
importantly, the attitude to wealth acquisition (scams were unknown back
then, scandals were as far as the financials over-reachers went) - they
all add a lustre of underscored believability to the proceedings.
Morality is a prime casualty in the tale.
Get this. There are two sets of CBI officers on duty in this
deviously-plotted tale of daredevilry and drama in real time. The real
and the fake teams are respectively helmed by
Manoj Bajpayee and
Akshay Kumar.
Both put in impressively understated performances. But since Akshay
Kumar is a bigger star than Bajpayee, he gets a bonus romantic track
with the unimpressive
Kajal Aggarwal.
The high energy-level in the plot - how high, just check out Manoj's
introductory chase sequence across Connaught Place, it leaves you
panting for breath - comes entirely from the way the quartet in the core
group plans its various pseudo-CBI raids across the country from
Kolkata to Mumbai, bringing to the plot a meticulousness that doesn't
interfere with the entertainment quotient. After a point, you don't care
about the headlines. It's all about the deadlines.
The goings-on resonate in rapid-fire speed, imparting the kind of
urgency to the proceedings that "Oceans 11" would have achieved if it
wasn't a caper devoid of a moral centre, or
Race 2 were it not devoid of a soul.
"Special 26" achieves a rare synthesis of real-life credibility and
cinematic flamboyance. Pandey's perception of cinematic licence is
liberating. The real-life incident involving the CBI scam, which shook
the nation, is given a sensuous spin that culminates in a completely
unexpected and spectacular culmination.
Cinema, Neeraj Pandey tells us, is not only about being true to
life. It is also about making life seem more engaging than it actually
is. This is where the director's ability to punctuate socio-political
anomalies with edge-of-the-seat excitement comes into full play.
The mix of fact and fiction was earlier applied by Pandey to the
theme of terrorism and the wounded individual in "A Wednesday". No
character who goes so audaciously against the law in "Special 26" seems
particularly wounded or terrorised. You suspect they are all in it for
fun.
The characters are not in search of a moral payoff and we are not eager to find it for them.
Neeraj Pandey weaves vivid vignettes into the main heist-format from
each of the four protagonist's personal lives. One of them played with
compelling gusto by
Kishore Kadam
washes his wife's clothes at home when he is not away carrying out fake
CBI raids with his comrades. Another, played equally effectively by
Rajesh Verma, lives in a sprawling joint family where everyone is caught
sleeping while he sneaks out to do his clandestine thing with his pals.
These moments define the individual and the crime.
Anupam Kher
has a sizeable part as Akshay's right-hand man. A nondescript family
man with an unending brood of children, Anupam's Sharmaji could've been
the reluctant terrorist Naseeruddin Shah in Pandey's
A Wednesday.
Thankfully, Sharmaji decided to protest against his inconspicuous life
with some serious con-jobs and not something more ... er, explosive.
Another reined-in but riveting performance comes from
Jimmy Shergill
as a conflicted cop who must redeem himself before the final reel. And
what a resounding redemption! Jimmy, who has lately shaped into one of
our finer actors, imparts a secret life to his duty-bound cop's role
without being given leisurely space to do so.
Manoj Bajpayee is in many ways the film's main protagonist. In fact,
he gets the kind of breathtaking breathless introductory chase sequence
that Akshay Kumar would normally secure for himself. Curiously, Manoj
underplays his part in a film where the performances are purposely
italicised. In just a couple of shots with his screen wife, we get a
full measure of Manoj's idealistic character.
Whether it's the lucid and long-limbed writing or the performances
or maybe a yummy yoking of both, one doesn't know. But the narrative's
over-all mood is one of urgent crises-point reached with minimum fuss
and optimum energy. Pandey adds considerably to his narrative's credible
climate by shooting on real locations, wherever the pseudo-raids take
our 'hero' and his three unlikely associates.
Akshay Kumar as the mainstay of the governmental masquerade moves
away from his by-now patent and predictable comic moves to deliver a
surprisingly subtle unassuming performance. His Ajay Singh is a bit of a
loner, a bit of an enigma. The only character he bonds with is
Sharmaji. Anupam Kher and Akshay Kumar bring a very understated
father-son feeling to their bonding.
Feelings are frequently hammered into place in the no-nonsense plot
by a background score by Sanjoy Chowdhary. It was the same in Pandey's
"A Wednesday" where the characters' silences were loudly interpreted and
interrupted by the background score.
"Special 26" is not a film that favours soft creative options. It
takes the heist-story audaciously through a complicated maze of morality
without getting snarled in sermons and messages. This is a film that
engages you while letting the protagonists cross mischievously from one
side of the line of morality to the other.
Special mention in this special caper must be made of the editing by
Sree Narayan Singh, which allows every character (even the small and
cute cop's role played by
Divya Dutta)
to breathe as individuals, and the unassuming but illuminating
cinematography by Bobby Singh that takes us to the cities of the raid
without pausing to define the location.
Bobby died months ago. But then this film wouldn't let him die.
Eros International & Next Gen Films present 3G a super natural thriller film produced by, Sunil Lulla and Viki Rajani. 
