Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Rimi Sen, Anupam Kher, Manoj Pahwa, Yashpal Sharma, Chunky Pandey, Sri Vallabh Vyas, Dilip Prabhavalkar , Hemant Pandey, Veerendra Saxena

Director: Pankaj Advani

`Sankat City’ is Mumbai, maximum city filtered and distilled via its minimum people. In one of the sharpest scenes from Pankaj Advani’s zippy, kooky comedy, a tattered king of the landfills points to mountains of rubbish heaps —that one is Goregaon, and that is Versova. And then a tractor runs over a money-filled tote, spilling thousand rupee notes into the noxious air – the smell of money mixes with the smell of garbage. That is Mumbai’s smell, and spirit, and the director nails it.

It’s tempting to compare Advani’s first released film ( his brilliant debut feature `Urf Professor’ is still sadly languishing unseen ; several of the actors in that one are present here ) with `Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’, Kundan Shah’s towering black comedy that redefined the genre : there’s a corrupt builder here too, and all sorts of other dodgy types. `Sankat City’ stands on its own, even if it reminds you of `Ek Chalis Ki Last Local’ and `Johnny Gaddar’ : its characters are people on the margins, all scrambling to survive, and a vein of gleeful amorality runs through it.

Guru ( Kay Kay) steals cars. Ganpat (Dilip Prabhavalkar ) re-models them. Sharafat (Shri Vallabh Vyas) sells them. Mona ( Rimi) is a girl on the make. Sikandar Khan ( Chunky) is an actor who says Inshaallah ( do we know anybody like that? ) and looks at himself in the mirror a lot.

... contd.