Tottering in first gear

[1]

If you have an email account, which you do, of course, there is no way you would have been spared those annoying, even embarrassing, emails suggesting that you suffer from erectile dysfunction and, in the same breath, recommending a cure. No matter how secure your account, and whether or not you have the appropriate anatomy, the determined souls out to wipe out erectile dysfunction from this world take no chances. And yet, this dedicated lot missed one real opportunity to fix a serious, obvious case. If the People Against Erectile Dysfunction had spammed Yash and Vinay, the screenplay writers of Chaalis Chauraasi (4084), and the film’s director Hriday Shetty, and suggested a cure for the aforementioned dysfunction, a film could have been saved.
Chaalis Chauraasi takes so long to, as they say, get it up, that by the time it’s excited and ready to go, you are bored and no longer in the mood.
The film has a stellar all-male cast, and its story is inspired, even wicked and funny, and yet it doesn’t get the job done.

We are in Mumbai with four men — all of them in khaki trousers and white shirts — in a blue Mumbai police van (Registration No. 4084). It’s raining and they are driving around aimlessly, looking for a panga, some masti.
Shakti Chinappa (Ravi Kissen) is driving. Next to him is the booze-swigging baldie, Pankaj Suri (Naseeruddin Shah). They are quibbling — Shakti wants to go home and prepare for next day’s life-changing mission; Pankaj, always referred to as Sir, would like to drink and drive some more.
Behind them, in the cage-like coupe, Albert Pinto (Kay Kay Menon) and Bhaskar Sardesai (Atul Kulkarni) are playing cards and talking about swamis and sex.
They stop a car that overtakes their van and two men in khaki proceed to flex their sarkari muscles. There’s a decent couple in the car, scared and baffled, but these men have vardi power and like to see it in quivering, innocent faces, just for time-pass. Given their behaviour, there is no reason to suspect that they are not cops.
But Shakti doesn't like all this braggadocio and is getting antsy. To distract him, Sir starts talking about a recent jewellery heist involving Amar, Akbar, Anthony and Amar’s wife. That doesn’t calm him, so they stop at a dance bar where they wave their guns, order tandoori and booze and sing and dance. They return to the van thrilled, and are driving aimlessly again when a cop starts flashing his bike’s headlight at them. “Rukna toh padega,” one of them says. “Asli policewalla hai.”
Flashback to five days ago when these four men were in their civvies and talking into a camcorder about who they really are and what they plan to do.
The film starts getting mildly interesting here, but not for long. As each one begins to narrate his story, it’s in their own sweet time, and told via some seriously bad acting, two terrible item numbers, and lots of wasted time and reels.
Sir, an English professor, had an affair, killed his wife and spent 10 years in jail. When he got out, he became one sethji’s driver. Pinto is a car thief with a thing for dukkar Fiat cars (dukkar is Marathi for pig and the vintage Fiat 1100 cars are called thus because of their cute, round behinds). Shakti sells drugs and Bhaskar aka Bobby is a pimp.
They are together because Sir spotted a fake currency adda and told the others that there were just two men to tackle and walk off with Rs 5 crore each. But now, a real cop is signalling them to stop. When they do, crime branch's Mahesh Naik (Rajesh Sharma) tells them that he is on his way to arrest a don, Tony Bisleri (Zakir Hussain), who is hiding in Dwarka Lodge and since his backup is late, they will have to assist him.
This is when the film overcomes its dysfunction and really gets going.
What follows — an encounter between real cops, fake cops and don log, and a hysterical trip to the fake noton ke adda with Tony Bisleri in tow — is crazy and fun. These few moments tell us that if the film’s lead actors — especially Naseeruddin Shah, Kay Kay Menon and Ravi Kissen — had been honest to their art and had taken their jobs seriously, and if the director had done a bit of directing in the first half, Chaalis Chauraasi could have been a decent film.
The problem is not that we are let in on their secret mission very late. This, in fact, is the script’s clever bit. The issue is that for the longest time we are riding pillion to great actors who are actually very dull company. Of the four, only Atul Kulkarni has put in any effort to earn his cheque.
Though the film's plot is interesting, and some dialogue, ripe with footpath philosophies, are nice, I was just appalled by Naseeruddin and Kay Kay, men from whom we expect better. While Naseeruddin is plain sleep-walking, Kay Kay’s vanity is insufferable. He doesn’t act, just swaggers about, mighty chuffed. Perhaps Mr Shah and Mr Menon thought that Chaalis Chauraasi is too small a project for them. It may well be. But people, you know, they are watching, and wondering.