Commercial Hindi cinema has been based on Bombay/Mumbai for so long that many filmmakers don’t even care about the setting of their stories. Unless it’s important, we’re forced to assume the location, and sometimes when the city is important to the story, most scripts just bombard the senses with all things Mumbai. This is where Shor in the City stands out. It shows a romance with the fabric of Mumbai through the sights, smells, events, and lives of its characters, but rarely goes overboard in celebrating the city.
Shor in the city plot
Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), an enterprising book pirate who is obsessed with maintaining “high standards”, continues to live a single life together with his friends, the good bums: Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Mandook (Pitobash, a find) while his young wife Sapna (Radhika Apte, magnetic) waits patiently for him to speak to her.
Although Tilak wants the rest of his life to begin immediately, he is somehow tongue-tied when it comes to breaking the ice with Sapna. Unlike Tilak, Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), an NRI who returns to set up a small business, has no problem getting along with Sharmili (Preeti Desai), a model, whom he meets at a club.
Abhay discovers that everything has changed in the town he grew up in, but decides to pick up where he left off. He doesn’t think much of a local thug’s (Zakir Hussain, fascinating) offer of ‘protection’ and turns it down. Soon, Abhay finds irritants appearing around every corner and realizes that rules should only be broken in the city he wants to call home.
Elsewhere in the city, Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), a budding cricketer is in despair as he balances his girlfriend Sejal (Girija Oak), whose parents parade her in front of prospective boyfriends every day and the demand for a picker Rs. 10 lakhs to pick him for the Mumbai Under-22 team. As chaotic as the city they breathe, these lives intersect with one another thanks to Tipu Bhai (Amit Mistry, move on Manoj Joshi, finally!), a handyman who can do anything.
With their backs against the wall, Abhay and Sawan decide to cross the line that separates them from those who exploit them and all roads lead to Tipu, who gets Tilak, Ramesh and Mandook to collaborate.
If in the 1970s and 1980s the existence of the middle class of Bombay was the centerpiece of many films, the underbelly of Mumbai with all the infamous creatures has been the preferred subject in the recent past. Shor in the City somehow avoids being a victim of any particular genre in its bid to represent the city and its characteristics as part of the story.
Shor in the City may have the seemingly typical underworld characters, but there’s a bigger representation of ordinary, everyday people than gun-wielding weirdos. These are people who are as different as chalk and cheese, but there is something that connects them all.
Inspired by real-life incidents, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK’s script is not just a connecting-the-dots kind of documentation of these lives. More importantly, the film is nearly perfectly paced, skipping stories and not suffering from the pitfalls of a multiple narrative structure where, after a while, you’re expecting characters to intersect.
Good Points at Shore in the City
One of the things that really makes Shor in the City work so well is the ease and smoothness that all of the actors infuse. Well recorded characters always make life easy for an actor and most of them, especially Kapoor, Ramamurthy and Pitobash, have good performances. Tusshar Kapoor hasn’t had a role like this since Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai, his debut that essentially revolved around him. Kapoor meticulously creates Tilak and makes it so wonderfully organic that it just grows on you; the scenes in which an inspired Tilak talks about the philosophy of life will make you laugh out loud.
Ramamurthy gets the perfect mix of bravado and vulnerability in Abhay and for someone who would always find it hard to land parts that would justify his accent, Ramamurthy has started his ‘Bollywood’ career on the right note.
Like Chandan Roy Sanyal in Kaminey and Deepak Dobriyal in Omkara, Pitobash is nothing short of a discovery. Several movies have traces of a Mandook-like character and now it’s almost impossible to expect anyone to do something new with such roles, but Pitobash’s performance is worth its weight in gold.
Radhika Apte draws you in with the presence of her mother and you cannot look away; Kishan and Oak’s great chemistry makes their relatively small track stand out from the rest. Nikhil Dwivedi is convincing in parts; there are patches where he’s fine but overall he’s the only one who seems a bit overwhelmed.
Final words on Shore in the City
Aside from the insightful writing and excellent acting, Ashmit Kunder’s editing suits Shor in the City very well and never suffers from the trappings of one of those three or four side story movies waiting to merge. The hallmark of good cinematography is that you shouldn’t really notice the camera work, and Tushar Kanti Ray’s fluid photography accomplishes just this by making his camera one of the protagonists of this story. Shor in the City by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK is a film where, after a long, long time, all the elements come together deliciously. Do not miss it.
Short in the city Rating: 4/5
Shor in the City Star Cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash, Amit Mistry, Preeti Desai and Zakir Hussain, Radhika Apte, Girija Oak, Sundeep Kishan
Shor in the City Written, Produced and Directed by: Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK
Shor in the City Genre: Drama / Comedy / Thriller / Suspense
