He meets two criminals, Pandit and Idris and they offer him a chance to assist a bank robbery. If the heist is successful, they will ensure that he never has to worry about money again, so he accepts the offer.
After the bank robbery, Pandit decides that Sanju should keep the suitcase of money hidden (as Pandit and Idris already have record with the police, coupled with the fact that Sanju is married, and will be the least suspected by the police ) and that they will meet after three months and then they will split the money.
Pandit and Idris decide that they can not trust Sanju anymore, they need to keep a close eye on him in case he runs away. They stay at Sanjay and Neetu's house until Sanjay remembers where he hid the money and to make sure they're not cheated. They give him a week to do so.
Then, he suspects his wife Neetu of knowing the hiding place of the money because she has joint account with him and also sole-access to their bank-locker. He accuses her of conspiring with his friend.
Later, Sanju finds out that Uttam moves to London after being confronted about the money and also Sanjay finds out that Neetu has purchased a one-way ticket for London so he goes to buy a gun to kill his wife Neetu in anger.
Under pressure and now frustrated, Pandit and Idris kidnap Neetu and ask Sanjay to meet them in a train station by writing a note and attaching it on the screen of his TV, on the third platform at 1:30am.
When Sanjay tells them that Neetu knew where the money was, Idris begins to lose control. When he pulls the trigger on his pistol, he is shot dead by the unknown person and thereafter, he kills Pandit in a rage in the train.
It is revealed that the caller is Sanju's mother who calls his son like every other day out of her motherly affection and concern however during the conversation she sub-consciously reveals that the suitcase has been kept at her home while remaining implicitly oblivious as to what is in the suitcase and further questions Sanju whether he will be coming to take the suitcase or not. She further expresses her desire to sell the brief case off if in case Sanju does not turn up to take away his belonging. Meanwhile, the heist's mastermind overhears this and jumps on the train out of excitement but he slips on Sanjay's banana skin and impales his neck on Sanjay's fork. Disillusioned, confused and tired, Sanjay throws his phone out of the train while Neetu smiles. Sanjay has no idea what's going on, but the train goes on its way with the dead bodies of the mastermind, Pandit and Idris.[9]
Emraan Hashmi and Vidya Balan worked hard to bring the film to a wider audience. The on-screen couple appeared on various television shows, including Dance India Dance, Chidiyaghar, India's Dancing Superstar and Comedy Nights with Kapil.
Raja Sen of Rediff.com said that the film "stops being funny somewhere through the second half". The critic continued: "Vidya Balan, in particular, deserves to be singled out for applause simply because of her willingness as a leading lady to take on a role this farcical. One time watch only for Vidya Balan." He gave the film only 2 out of a possible 5 stars.[10]
A reviewer for The Times of India gave the movie, a rating of 3.5 out of 5 and wrote "Of the talent-Emraan gets his bewildered expression correct. And for fear of losing it, he keeps it going for the most part. Vidya provides a few laughs trying to ape the Punjabi stereotype. However, her act doesn't qualify for the real thing."[12]
Sudhish Kamath of The Hindu stated "Ghanchakkar almost succeeds too. But sadly, though it is fun as you watch it unfold, it is also mostly forgettable, offering us very few moments to hold on to."[13]
Ghanchakkar stops being funny somewhere through the second half, writes Raja Sen.
The finest, most fascinating mysteries are the ones where we find the red herrings stashed away in plain sight all along. In Raj Kumar Gupta's Ghanchakkar, the true clue to the proceedings is barely hidden.
It's in the song playing in every trailer, the song over the opening credits of the film: it's fiendishly smart to say Lazy Lad and make us assume the filmmakers are talking about the protagonist when in reality they mean the screenwriter. For this is a confoundingly half-written film.
What is exasperating is how good it is right up to the third act, right up to the point when the people plotting this clever and twisty story decided not to type out any more ideas and let the film remain an almighty mess.
Like all of Gupta's films, it starts brilliantly. Emraan Hashmi's Sanju lives with his wife Neetu (Vidya Balan) who dresses like a backup dancer in an 80s music video and doesn't have a knack for seasoning food.
One evening, over a plateful of something too salted, a mysterious man calls with a very lucrative offer. Sanju, who insists they have enough saved up for a few years of idling, isn't keen but Neetu nudges him towards that classic 'one last job.'
This leads to a hilarious bank robbery, one that makes dazzling use of celebrity masks that I would hate to ruin by telling you about, but it's like a Hrishikesh Mukherjee version of Point Break. Each mask wears a different expression -- a Grin, a Gasp and a Frown -- and the way these famous faces fumble their way through the chaos is priceless.
The film rollickingly (and with very impressive narrative economy) zips through its constantly compelling story, and in less than a half hour we know all our principal protagonists, have seen a great robbery, and are aware that one of them has lost his memory and thus forgotten, three months later -- when the cash is meant to be divvied up -- where the loot lies.
So far so far-out, and Gupta and his fine ensemble cast fill in the details with wonderful whimsy. The reliably excellent Rajesh Sharma plays an unctuous baddie called Pandit, a great contrast to his profane and trigger-happy partner, Idris (Namit Das), while Hashmi looks appropriately befuddled and Balan, from amid a deluge of polka dots, sparkles in that way only she can.
I think I smiled at the screen throughout the madcap first half, the lunacy of which echoed early Coen Brothers movies. (I was particularly reminded of Raising Arizona.)
Balan, in particular, deserves to be singled out for applause simply because of her willingness as a leading lady to take on a role this farcical -- that of a loud character not just overweight but mocked for her weight, through dialogue and ludicrous costume. There is a scene, I kid you not, where she wears giant earrings shaped like prisoners, as if The Beagle Boys were using her ears for clotheslines.
But despite all the merry tomfoolery, a film like Ghanchakkar depends more on the meat of the story than on its execution. And somewhere through the second half, it stops being funny and becomes inane precisely at the time when it should have showed off its intelligence.
We look for a big reveal and there is none. And a house of cards can't be built on jokers alone.
So despite the delicious nuances -- the sabzee-buying commuter; the roadside apothecary with technicolor bottles; a chipmunk-like crook talking naughty on the phone before, without irony, straddling the film's hero -- Ghanchakkar builds up and builds up and builds up magnificently before collapsing in a bloody silly heap.
I was loving this film till it turned the tables and cheated me.
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Watch the trailer of Ghanchakkar here: Once the job is done, Emraan is entrusted to keep the loot safe. However, he loses his memory after an accident. His fellow thieves do everything to make him remember where he kept the money and even come to live with him after kidnapping his wife Neetu leads nowhere. The constant bickering between all these characters is funny, even when the film loses traction. The climax is unusual, being the saving grace in the end.
"I am nervous about the film because it is my first comedy. I am worried whether I will be able to strike the funny chord with my audience. Shooting is currently on and I am really working hard for it," Balan said.
"My films have not completely broken the concept of elite audience but they have tried to blur it. Middle class is a fluid class as they aspire to become the elite. But we cannot say that they didn't watch it because 'Kahaani' earned 60 crores and it denotes that other sections of the society also related to it," said Balan while was speaking on the topic of 'Media as a Catalyst for Social Change'.
"Today people are more receptive to seeing and thereby participating in the change that is taking place in the society through cinema. There is an after effect of a film and that influences people in the society. Cinema is influenced by what's happening around us."
"I was not sure about it five years ago but I chose to do the film now because Silk Smitha is a woman who lives her life to the fullest and at the same time she knows how to fight for her rights. It was that resonance which made me choose the role."
Sanju (Emraan Hashmi) is a man who can crack open safes. He decides to do one last job before he retires. He has an expensive wife called Neetu (Vidya Balan), a buxom lady whose idea of the erotic is to look through fashion magazines for the most outlandish of clothes and wear them at bedtime. The expectation of instant arousal works for her. He has other things on his mind.
The truth is that with the sheer tackiness of life in this city, a metropolis bereft of artistic or intellectual existence, you are just not going to get good conversation in a Mumbai-located film, no matter how hard you try.
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