Main aur Charles: Movie Review

Cast: Randeep Hooda, Richa Chadda, Mandana Karimi, Alexx O Nell, Adil Hussain, Anastasia Fomina, Dijana Dejanovic, Lucky Morani, Nandu Madhav, Saurabh Sarkar, Sandeep Punia, Tisca Chopra, and Vipin Sharma; Director: Prawaal Raman; Rating: **

Published: Thursday,Oct 29, 2015 22:04 PM GMT-06:00

Varsha

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Inspired by the life of Charles Sobhraj, the film is about a serial murders and jail breaks. Sobhraj himself being known for his manipulative mind games, how can 'Main Aur Charles' be any simpler?

The movie begins with a girl in bikni found dead at the shore of a beach in Thailand. Charles (Randeep Hooda) is charged for the murder without trial. To escape the death sentence, he reaches India and gets arrested for conning hippies. Charles jail breaks when he is left for only few months to be set free. The con guy runs away along with his female friend Liz (Mandana Karimi) to Goa. Gets caught again on his will, well to know why you would surely like to watch the film.

In the first half, Charles is seen conning foreigners for money, forging their passport to create a new identity for himself, breaking jail and running away from the cops. All the events will keep confusing you. Well, you will have to be patient enough and wait for the second half to explain. Unlike other Bollywood movies, the film is not filled with too much of obvious details and leave a lot unsaid.

Randeep's acting is worth watching and his French accent sounds perfect. He is as a stylish yet calm and composed man. Richa Chadda as a flawed Law student is good to watch. Mandana, Adil Hussainas and Alexx O'Nell played their respective character well.

Loopholes:

A witness described how a bike looks, cops get the sketch made of it and cops actually show it to the locals to identify. I thought for vehicles we just say how what kind of model it is and not give out all the itsy bitsy details.
It was very much clear that Randeep was wearing a wig to get into the character from 1980s.
In a scene Charles was seeing having a session with criminal psychologist which was nowhere connected to the story. Either the following scenes were badly edited or the scene was just to give more screen space to the actress.
One thing which strikes me the most is Randeep never aged. The film had 7 years of leap followed by 11 years of leap and film covered more than 20 years of Charles life but he always looked same. He must be using an age miracle cream.

The director should have taken a less complicated approach and kept the film more understandable. The film could have a better ending. All-in-all the movie is confusing. Only go for it if your brain is ready to be over used on a weekend.

Varsha B.