Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga review: Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal's heist-hijack drama falls apart with illogical execution

2.5/5

An air hostess (Yami Gautam) and her businessman beau (Sunny Kaushal) are on a mission to steal diamonds to free themselves from the clutches of a loan shark. The theft, on the other hand, goes horribly wrong when a hostage situation breaks out on the plane carrying the diamonds.

Heist dramas are difficult to crack, and filmmakers frequently lose track of the plot. With that added drama, a hijack situation can bring about more twists and turns. Ajay Singh's directorial debut, Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, brings an amalgamation of both, with Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal in the lead roles. The plot of the film is linear, with a couple having a meet-cute, an air hostess meeting a passenger, and eventually falling in love.

The plot twists when they both decide to steal diamonds from the country's home minister while travelling from the Middle East to New Delhi. However, things take an ugly turn when, just as the heist was about to begin, the plane is hijacked, causing the heist to fail. However, the whole hijack plot is where the film falters. You'll want to keep watching to see what happens next, and the film seems to be right on track.

We've seen how dangerous hijacking can be, especially in the 2016 movie Neerja, where innocent lives were at risk. But in this case, the plan to hijack the plane is seen as childish, which makes people question how dangerous the situation is. Reason? It turns out to be a revenge drama between two individuals. But why involve the whole plane and even the country in it? This lack of logic makes Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga a laughable film.

The film has a runtime of one hour and 50 minutes, which for the first time I feel is less time to narrate a story as the end seems to be very quick and quite incomplete, so to speak. The film paces in such quick succession that it's tough to process what happened, and then the film jumps on to another in a jiffy.

Once the film reaches the post-hijack situations, things start to unravel, which defies logic and brings in a lot of questionable situations. Sharad Kelkar's potential as a RAW officer is wasted when he could have been the hero who solved this mystery.

Amar Kaushik, who has a fan following of his own with Stree and Bhediya, co-wrote the film with Raj Kumar Gupta and Siraj Ahmed. On paper, a simple movie must have appeared interesting, as must the execution part. However, it fails to convince me that someone will go to these lengths to plot revenge when there are a million other ways to put another person on the spot.

In performances, Yami Gautam is shown as an air hostess named Neha Grover. She is seen mentioning, "Stalking is a crime," to Sunny Kaushal's character a couple of times. On the other hand, she misses those red flags and is quickly smitten by the "stalker" to get into the situation in which she is involved. The actor has a lot of potential as an actor, but the script keeps her from reaching her full potential. It has become the norm to show grey shades in the lead characters, and Yami manages to pull it off within the limited runtime; she is, however, not entirely satisfied.

Sunny Kaushal is the film's weak link, unable to contribute to any of the sequences in which he has been cast. The actor is given a clownish character who cannot be taken seriously. He is the reason behind all the hell that is about to break loose, from being a businessman and owner of a diamond insurance company to even planning a heist. In short, despite his smouldering appearance, he is the red flag, and the women around him should ignore him.

There are absurd moments in the film that may make you frown and wonder what the hell is going on. And mine remained until the end of Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga. I didn't want to leave the movie, but with a runtime of fewer than two hours, I could easily do so.

With a crackling theme of hiest and hijack, Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga had a lot of potential. But the writing and, in the end, the way it was put together made it so that no one, not even the supporting characters, stood out.