Release date:
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September 26, 2014
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Director:
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Manish Harishankar
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Cast:
Language:
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Soha Ali Khan,
Zakir Hussain, Harsh Mayar, Seema Biswas, Mukesh Tiwari
Hindi
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The road to cinematic
hell is paved with good intentions, poor production values and mediocre writing.
Chaarfutiya Chhokare is meant to be an expose on
child sex trafficking and the vulnerability of juveniles at the hands of veteran
gangsters. At a time when India’s juvenile justice system is being widely debated
in the national media, this could have been an important catalyst for further
discussions. However, it is so poorly conceived and so tackily executed, that
far from generating a debate on the issues at hand, the film does not even
merit a detailed review.
Soha Ali Khan plays
Neha Malini, an NGO activist who wants to set up a school in a remote area in
Bihar. Once there, she meets the deadly local criminal Lakkhan who dominates everyone
and everything in that largely impoverished community. She also comes up
against three little boys – the chaarfutiya
chhokare of the title – who are being used as shooters by Lakkhan.
If you have friends
in the NGO sector, you will know that those working in social milieus different
from their own tend to make an effort to blend in with the crowd. In the case
of women workers, that usually translates into wearing unobtrusive Indian
clothes in a rural area such as this one. Yet here, Neha goes about her mission
while togged out in stylishly casual Westernwear and driving a flashy SUV on
deserted roads.
Let’s grant the
film this concession: perhaps she is naïve and no one advised her to do
otherwise. What though excuses Chaarfutiya
Chhokare’s terrible presentation and lacklustre direction? What excuses a
lazy screenplay in which, of the three gun-toting central characters, we get to
know only one kid called Avdesh, while the other two hang around him as
opinionless sidekicks without expressions or dialogues? In the middle of all
this, the clarity in sound design comes as an unexpected plus in a film that is
sub-par in every other technical department.
Soha is not the
only known name in the cast. The usually reliable Zakir Hussain plays Lakkhan
with an accent that sounds like it might be coming from the border of West
Bengal and Bihar. Nothing wrong with that except that it’s inexplicable because
it’s so vastly different from the way the rest of the village, including his
own gang, speaks.
There are three
other wonderful actors in this film, doing their best but rendered helpless by
the pathetic quality that threatens to drown them: Seema Biswas playing
Avdesh’s mother, Mukesh Tiwari as a slimy policeman and Harsh Mayar who plays
Avdesh. Mayar is the remarkable child actor who won a National Award for his
sparkling performance in I Am Kalam, which was released in theatres in 2011.
It’s worrisome that just three years after he earned the national spotlight, he
finds himself in a production so unworthy of his charisma and talent.
More worrisome is
the fact that Chaarfutiya Chhokare thinks it can get away with
making a casual mention of child marriage without even hinting at its own position
on the matter. This is not a film. It’s a non-film.
Rating
(out of five stars): -10 stars
CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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119 minutes
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