A Breezy Watch . Review on 99 Movie

A movie starring Kunal Khemu and Soha Ali Khan in the lead roles would have never interested me if it hadn’t been for the producer’s strike. For a movie buff like me 5 weeks without movies is nothing less than torture. So when I came to know that a movie called 99 is releasing, I was eager to watch it. And I am glad I did.

Story:-

The story is set in the year 1999-2000 when mobile phones were a new concept in India and the nexus between cricket players and betting-mafia was yet to be exposed. Sachin (Kunal Khemu) and Zaramur (Cyrus Brocha) are small time crooks who are forced to work as recovery agents for a bookie AGM (Mahesh Manjeraker) after their own duplicate-sim card racket goes bust.

Rahul (Boman Irani) is a Delhi-based professional whose relations with his wife Jahnvi (Simone Singh) are strained because of his compulsive gambling. He owes Rs. 20 lakh to AGM and Rs. 7 lakh to Kuber (Amit Mistry), a close associate of AGM. One of Rahul’s gambling associate is JC (Vinod Khanna) who is the kingpin of cricket-betting mafia.

Fed up of Rahul’s delaying tactics, AGM sends Sachin and Zaramur to Delhi to recover his money. Both of them check into a 5-star hotel strike up a friendship with Pooja (Soha Ali Khan) who works in the hotel. From here starts a series of funny misadventures with Sachin, Zaramur and Rahul trying their best to get out of the mess they are in.

Impact & Performances:-

The biggest strengths of this movie are its fresh story, witty treatment and good performances. The downside is that it gets disjointed at places and takes its own time getting into the groove. The first half drags sometimes and establishing the characters takes too long. But the witty dialogues save the movie from getting boring. The movie picks up in the second half when the three losers join hands to outdo AGM, Kuber and JC. What follows is a comedy of errors which ends in a terrific double climax.

Another reason 99 works is that each actor performs his/her role to perfection. Kunal Khemu is competent and natural. Soha does not have much to do and is okay in her role. Cyrus gives a controlled performance, in fact a bit too controlled. Mahesh Manjarekar plays the irritable bookie with aplomb. Vinod Khanna is impressive in a small role. Simone Singh is sweet and likeable. But the real scene stealers are Boman Irani and Amit Mistry.

Boman packs in so much in his performance and that too with such ease – he is adorable even when he lies, smooth talks, steals, gambles. His attempts to make up with his estranged wife are both hilarious and heart-warming. Amit Mistry is another revelation, he just lights up the screen whenever he is on it. Hope he gets more offers after this movie.

Technically:-

Director duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. impress with their novel way of story-telling. Another addition to the club of ‘different’ filmmakers. The script is fresh and so is the approach. There are only two songs in the movie (one of which plays in the end titles) but it’s a good things here. The editing is also quite good specially in the last half an hour but could have been better in the first half. Cinematography is decent. The dialogues are one of the high points of the movie.

My Final Take -99 is a fultoo time pass movie. Go with your friends and have a good laugh.