Raja Natwarlal HD 2014

Raja Natwarlal (2014) HD

Director: 

Kunal Deshmukh

Writers:

Parveez Sheikh (story), Sanjay Masoom (dialogue)

Stars:

Tarun Dudeja, Emraan Hashmi, Narendra Jetley






The Sting (1973) is an iconic con film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Redford plays a small time con man who unknowingly hustles a mark with ties to the mafia. The mark gets his partner killed in retaliation. He reaches out to retired con legend Newman and asks to teach him the nuances of high stakes con and set up an elaborate scheme to bankrupt the mafia guy. Newman reluctantly agrees and thereby you get treated to one of the most detailed on screen hustles.


This, ladies and gentlemen, is the exact same premise of Raja Natwarlal. But don't think director Kunal Deshmukh has conned you into watching a frame-to-frame copy as what emerges is a tolerable adaptation of the original.


Emraan Hashmi and Deepak Tijori are two small time hustlers who unknowingly dupe an overseas wheeler-dealer's (Kay Kay Menon) henchmen out of hawala money. Tijori gets killed and Hashmi recruits Tijori's one time guru Rawal to teach him high con and bait the shark. And since no Emraan Hashmi film can be complete without him kissing a nubile babe, this time his love interest is across the border artiste Humaima Malik, who does much for Indo-Pak relations by French-kissing Hashmi at every available moment, like after every three minutes or so. For once even Hashmi looked slightly haunted after her assaults. And, erm, she’s a bar dancer and Hashmi wants to rescue her – that explains his earlier need to get rich quick. Every mark has a weakness and Kay Kay Menon’s is cricket. He splurges on cricket memorabilia and is dying to own a Twenty20 team. How Paresh concocts the elaborate hoax and how Hashmi executes it forms the crux of the story.

What saves the extremely implausible plot is the honest to goodness acting of the ensemble cast. Rawal and Kay Kay are excellent as ever and so is Tijori as Hashmi’s mentor. Mohmmed Zeeshan Ayyub makes most of his small cameo. Playing a small time crook with dreams of making it big seems to be Hashmi’s forte. He’s done that in almost all his films so you begin to second guess his expressions. He has tried hard to bring new life into his trademark act but is well advised to start a different play now. Humaima, as said earlier, is part of the film to up the glamour ante and as a sparring partner for Hashmi’s lips.

The Sting’s cult status lies in the fact that it manages to hook you with every viewing. The plot seems plausible and draws you in, whereas Raja Natwarlal’s plotlines are too clever for their own good. You stop believing in the con and the magic evaporates. But full marks to director Kunal Deshmukh for reminding us that cons live in a dark world ruled by bent cops and ruthless mafia. The atmosphere is grim and real when it’s just Tijori and Hashmi on screen, trying to hustle enough money to eke a living. If he hasn’t gone over the top, he would have gotten a cracker of a film…