EMI

Rating : 5/10
Running Time : ~120 Minutes
Release Date : 7th Nov 2008
Director & Writer : Saurabh Kabra; Music : Chirantan Bhatt
Starring : Sanjay Dutt, Aashish Chowdhury, Urmila Matondkar, Arjun Rampal, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Neha Uberoi, Manoj Joshi

The film yo-yo’s between being good and mediocre and kind of settles for average. Nice moments like Sanjay struggling to open a bottle of champagne (its funny if you know the man and his experience in the area of alcohol) and some well built storylines are lost in the midst of some forced dialogue and a preachy ending.


Arjun Rampal is a DJ / Casanova and the last of the big spenders, using every conceivable credit card to spend on women, including a very skimpy (pun intended) appearance by Malaika Arora Khan. Aashish Chowdhury plays a man who gets married to Neha Uberoi on loans – one for the car, another for the laptop and a third for the honeymoon. Kulbhushan Kharbanda is a very middle class father who takes a loan to pay for a slightly profligate & big dreaming son’s studies abroad. And Urmila is a widow who takes a loan to convert her husbands suicide into a murder to be able to collect on insurance. All these people are now passed onto ‘Good Recovery Agency’, headed by Sanjay Dutt, which specializes in the strong arm method of loan recovery. Sanjay has political ambitions though, and some advice he’s given changes the way he chooses to collect in these cases.


There are some nice laughs scattered through the film – the supporting cast (like Manoj Joshi and Snehal Dabhi) around Sanjay in his recovery agency provide the bulk of them, with names like ‘Decent’ and ‘Central’ amongst others. The variety of ringtones, the different recovery tactics all help with the amusement. The movie begins a bit flat but then picks up nicely, with each story developed till it makes sense. I found most of the songs a distraction, though, and pace dropped distinctly in the second half with the ending a bit ‘fake’, everything tied up too neatly and too quickly. Sanjay acted well, as always, though looked overweight (this was his first film after his prison stint).


As the storylines unfold, you do wonder if really there are more and more Indians falling into the ‘live on credit’ trap. I hope not, I hope we’re smarter and the frugality that is drilled into us right from the moment we are born, triumphs and prevents us from having too much fun if its on loan….