‘Crazxy’ movie review: Sohum Shah almost pulls off a blinder

‘Crazxy’ movie review: Sohum Shah almost pulls off a blinder

We get so many spam calls these days that it is hard to figure out which ones are real. Then, while driving the car, you listen to FM stations where prank calls drive the programming. Director Girish Kohli employs this odd everyday reality in this thrilling race against time.

On the way to the hospital to settle a crucial deal, doctor Abhimanyu (Sohum Shah) gets a mysterious call telling him that his daughter has been kidnapped, and he has time till sunset to save her life. As Abhimanyu presses the pedal, Kohli drops red herrings on the highway. Gradually, we discover that Abhimanyu is an inadequate surgeon and a flawed father.

Mounted as a one-character thriller where the supporting actors appear only in the form of voices, eventually, the moral voice is the loudest. One can make out that the ransom call is made by Tinnu Anand in his impressive baritone even before he is introduced as the teacher of the doctor’s daughter. There is an ex-wife (voiced by Nimisha Sajayan) doubting the doctor’s intentions because of their past. There is a current flame (voiced by Shilpa Shukla) who shifts the needle of suspicion on the ex-wife. Meanwhile, Abhimanyu’s boss (voiced by Piyush Shukla) feels that the doctor is using the kidnapping as a ruse to escape from the deal.

The conversations are sharp, meaningful, and engaging and create a sense of urgency as the characters sound crazy at one point and sympathetic and rational at another. The background score and cinematography generate an adrenaline rush and play with the mind. Girish cleverly uses Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic dialogue in Sarkar as a ringtone and, towards the climax, creatively employs the superstar’s Inquilab number to depict the dilemma of Abhimanyu. The highlight is the sequence where the doctor multitasks to meet two deadlines simultaneously. It captures the limits of human endurance and pulls us to the edge of the seat.

However, the ingenuity starts fading as Abhimanyu crosses the Delhi border. Girish expects the audience to go with the emotion and keep the logic out of reckoning. It doesn’t work. As the questions clog the head, the interest goes off-road. After a point, the storyline works like those film school scripts woven around a brilliant idea that gathers dust on a producer’s table because of an underwhelming second act and a laboured third. The film gradually becomes a showreel of the acting chops of Sohum, who has also produced the film. He is usually efficient and is solid here as the morally ambivalent doctor. In Ship of Theseus and Tumbbad, Sohum has backed two crazy ideas that swept us off our feet, but here, after the initial promise and purpose, the hook loses its hold. But then, you can’t complain too much, for Girish tells us early that the story unfolds on April Fool’s Day.

Crazxy is currently running in theatres