Special 26 ~ A movie review

It had been a while since we watched a movie in a theatre. The last one was Talash, which we saw in Bharuch last year. Of course, that was after a gap of 2 years. And now after a gap of two months, we got a chance to watch yet another – Special 26, here in Mhow. Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill, Divya Dutta, Manoj Bajpai and some new faces in Bollywood have tried their level best to make this film a must watch. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say it is a ‘must’ watch. May be just one time.

Movie review: Special 26

The movie is set against an 80’s backdrop where there were no cell phones, no internet, no use of computers and no sophisticated devices to track fraud. And so, it was probably easier than today to commit scams without getting caught. And so a team of four con men rob the ‘rich and famous’ off their ‘not so rightfully’ earned wealth and disappear into various states under disguise. And they appear to have a ball of a time disguising as CBI officials or at times, as Income Tax Dept, or even as police. All goes well, until a hawky CBI official vows to catch the con gang at any cost, come what may. And so starts the wild goose chase.

Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Kishore Kadam and Rakesh Sharma are the con team who execute each heist operation flawlessly. All four of them, put together as a team acted with finnese. Kajal Agarwal (who plays Akshay's love interest), though did not have much to act here, looked simple and beautiful as the 80’s ‘Marathi mulgi’. Jimmy Shergill as usual was terrific, though his role was small, yet prominent. Divya Dutta, though a talented actress was totally wasted in this movie. If there was a stunner, then it had to be Manoj Bajpai as the actual CBI officer who tracks down the conmen. He looked ravishingly handsome and was the only one who overshadowed Akshay with his acting. As for Akshay Kumar, I believe he is stereotyping his movies. He must now dabble in new roles.

A multi starrer movie is always tricky. It, most of the time, overshadows the main lead (which of course is a good thing). However, in this case, none of the stars left a lasting impression at the end. The plot is always the life of any movie, irrespective of a starry cast. And Special 26 failed right at that. (I wanted to give one star but considering that there were a few genuinely comic moments, this movie scores one more. As far as music is concerned, most of the songs are good. But when watching movie, they were totally annoying as they took up too much of the movie time)

Rating :

P.S: The movie is loosely based on a real heist carried out on a jewellery store in Opera House, Mumbai on 19^th March, 1987, when 26 people posing as income tax officials raided the store.