Sohum Shah’s Crazxy Is  What A  Thriller Should Be(But Seldom Is)

Sohum Shah’s Crazxy Is  What A  Thriller Should Be(But Seldom Is)

By Subhash K Jha

Rating: *** ½

 Remember that edge-of-the-seat feeling in the movie theatre? Lips parched,  popcorn forgotten? It is back, and what a whammy  actor-producer Soham Shah has delivered  in the crazily titled Crazxy!  You  may or may not agree with  the way the thriller finally pans out(messages tend to dilute the tension). But by jove, this is one helluva ride , orchestrated and executed  by the man behind Tumbbad.

 Sohum Shah gets behind the wheels, literally, to manoeuvre  the  cyclonic drama  through a series of cannily  composed adventures. At the end  of the terse  travel—the  narration is just over 90 minutes long—I was staring  open-mouthed at the screen  wondering how  the heck did Sohum  Shah  pull it off.

Credit of course must go to  the writer-director  Girish Kohli  for pulling of a thriller that is  original  and  utterly gripping…no more than that, ensnaring!   The closest  we come to the clasp-and-gasp tension of this  film is Liam Neeson’s Taken.

  Here  it  is Dr  Abhimanyu Sood’s  specially abled little daughter who is taken by a psycho(Tinu Anand, voice only).Once the intriguing premise is  set up, Sohum’s Sood  goes through  a torrent  of  explosive  adventures in  just 60 minutes: from negotiating  Mumbai’s impossible  traffic to meet the  kidnapper’s  deadline,  to changing  a punctured tyre in the middle of  nowhere, to—hold you breath—instructing  a junior  in an intricate surgery  on the phone.

 By  the way, the tyre change and  the surgery happen simultaneously.At times the screenplay may seem to be running ahead of itself. But you won’t  be disconnected from the protagonist’s mounting tension for even a second.

  Interestingly there is only one   character on screen, and that’s Sohum Shah’s  sinfully beleaguered surgeon Abhimanyu . Shah  pulls  it off with incredible mobility, transitioning from an uncaring absentee  dad  at the  beginning to a guiltstricken repentant parent at the end.

   The  narrative  never  lets us off the hook. We are with  Dr Sood till the  end. Voice performances recur with rigorous impact , stoking the  tension  without being physical visible  on screen. Namisha  Sajayan(as Abhimanyu’s  hysterical wife)  , Shilpa  Shukla(as his  mistress)  and Tinu Anand(as the kidnapper)   give excellent voice performances , repudiating the belief that cinema is  predominantly  a visual medium.

It can be an affective  aural medium  too in the right hands. Crazxy uses  voices, snatches  of music  and incidental  sounds to  vocalize and amplify  the suspense. Kishore Kumar’s song Abhimanyu  chakravayuha  mein phans gaya tu from the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Inquilab is  used here to telling efficacy.

 The Bachchan’s baritone makes recurrent  appearances and his connect with Tinu Anand(in Shahenshah) pops up cheekily.

   There is  much to be  admired and  applauded in Crazxy , not the least of it being its propensity to break the rules of the thriller genre without tripping over its cleverness not to mention the immaculate cinematography, editing and sound design.

 When  was the last time you saw one actor holding fort throughout the film? Sunil Dutt in Yaadein? That was boring! This  is anything but.

You know  those racing-against-time  thrillers that  somehow  never come out right in Hindi cinema? Well, that’s just changed. Crazxy(why such a frivolous title?) takes you for  a ride that will be hard to  forget.