High Jack Movie Review: It Is Original & Fun!

High Jack

Starring Sumeet Vyas,Mantra Mugdh, Kumud Mishra

Directed by Akarsh Khurana

Rating: ***(3 stars)

The last  time  we saw a plane full of  terrified people being hijacked by a bunch of terrorists in that wonderful and brave film Neerja  we came away a  bit  shaken.

If we look at High  Jack as a satire on airborne disaster films we could come  close to the absolutely irreverent mood that the film adopts to everything in-flight.From an androgynous airhostess(Chaitanya Sharma)  to a female  pilot(Sonali Sehgal)  who is asked by a pseudo-terrorist, ‘Do you know how to land a  plane?’—a sexist innuendo not missed by the lady  at the receiving end—High Jack spares nothing and no one.Eventually it becomes  a casualty  of  its own carefully-cultivated irreverence.

 Into its web  of wackiness falls  a busload of characters  so high on everything from hope to dope, you can’t but help  wonder where all this is leading to.The  chaos  of  mid-point crisis  awaits.  To begin with, the  characters boarding this bumpy flight are introduced to us accompanied  by waves  of tongue-in-cheekiness.

I instantly took to the  most sexually stimulated couple the Tanejas on board  played by Kumud Mishra and Natasha Rastogi.This Taneja  chap, played with brilliant vigour  by Kumud Mishra, is a  bit of a busybody. He has his fingers in everything. He is a lecher and  a sexist,and most important of all he is a Pakistan hater who won’t allow his wife to have Lahori chicken.Taneja can’t  stop heckling   the  self-styled celebrity  cricketer  on board(played by Priyanshu Painyuli) as a  gaddaar who was  caught match-fixing.

Eventually of course, like everything else, the couple too goes overboard.By the  time Mrs Taneja starts touching our hero  Rakesh(Sumeet Vyas) inappropriately everything on this  freaked-out flight gets  inappropriate.

Director Akarsh  Khurana has zeroed in on  a sound idea—the employees  of a bankrupt airline  hijacking  a plane to teach their Mallya-inspired boss a  lesson. If only the humour had been more sustained   and  the  narrative less bumpy and bloated.

 It all kind  flattens  out into a noisy mess towards the end.A  kind  of  what-if-Neerja-had-no-script rudderless romp into air turbulence. But nonetheless it is  fun while it lasts because some  of  the actors  seem to have a blast.The  others  seem to have come along just for  the  fun.  And  we  can’t  help  getting their point of view completely. High Jack IS  fun for a while. Before it loses its plot.