Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga is like one extended gag gone too far. The writers(Siraj Ahmed, Amar Kaushik, and Raj Kumar Gupta) must have brainstormed in pursuit of a sizzling-hot heist caper/hijack drama mixing Guy Ritchie with Neerja. The cock(and bull)tail is anything but heady, heading as it does from a stab at the adage “Do not stretch your legs beyond the size of the blanket ” to “Hell hatch no fury like a woman scorned.” It ends up as a brackish brew of Ek Haseena Thi and Neerja, lacking the high-speed dark suspense of the former and the heart-stopping hijack plot of the latter.
Neha Grover (Yami Gautam Dhar) meets Ankit Sethi(Sunny Kaushal, deserves better) midair. She is a flight attendant and he is a demanding passenger. He wants a vegetarian meal. She gives him her own meal. Then she gives him a lot more. Soon she is pregnant while debtors threaten to knock down Ankit’s door. We are apprised of the romantic situation in the first fifteen minutes. The rest is a diamond heist saga involving a corrupt politician, an imposter flight marshall and sundry government officials including Sharad Kelkar who looks very unhappy. Maybe he feels like a passenger who has boarded the wrong flight.
Back to Ankit and Neha, what the couple plans to do to overcome their hard times is not mentionable here,lest the suspense is spoilt. But what about the fact that the plot, going into trippy convulsions, is hellbent on shooting itself in the leg? There is hardly any breathing space in the narration. At one point in the hijack drama, Sunny Kaushal pretends to have an asthma attack and sneaks into the empty business class of the plane from the economy section, right under the hijackers’ nose.
There is very little coherence in the storytelling. It is more about upping the ante than making sense. The flashback sequences which provide vital clues to the present airborne shenanigans, are hastily dealt with, as if the director didn’t want any diversionary tactics to halt the tempestuous tempo of storytelling.
But sorry, speed is not the decisive ingredient in a suspense thriller. Coherence is. That’s where Chor … takes a dismaying drubbing. It shifts the onus of morality from one side to another like a game of chess where the pieces are tampered with before the game begins. By the time the flight lands and the passengers head for the chaotic terminal, we are way past the urge to know what happens next. We know that whatever it is, it is just a ploy to get our attention.