Chamku

Director: Kabeer Kaushik

Chandrama Singh urf Chamku sees his father shot in the head right in front of his eyes. From that moment on, he is a fugitive, and a target — both of those who break the law with impunity, and those who make those laws.

Kabeer Kaushik, who comes to his second film after the wonderful but unsuccessful “Sehar”, clearly isn’t following his instincts which tell him to be faithful to the spirit of his story. “Chamku” is produced by Sunny Deol, who’s been in desperate search of a hit for a long time now. And it has his young brother in the lead, which translates into compromised story-telling. Bobby is meant to play an illiterate Naxalite, on the run from the dark interiors of Bihar, but his real self — suave, urban — keeps coming through.

If it had built on its terrific opening, “Chamku” may have been the film the director had set out to make. But it peters away into predictable patterns: a Bobby practising menace, a painted Priyanka, the Irrfan-Ninad duo trying to keep things moving, and too much gratuitous blood-letting.