MOVIE REVIEW
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Chamku, a standard revenge saga 
Published on Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 01:32, Updated on Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 01:52 in Entertainment section
Tags: Chamku, Masand's Verdict , Cast
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Photogallery
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Cast: Bobby Deol, Priyanka Chopra
Director: Kabeer Kaushik
Director Kabeer Kaushik's Chamku has the best opening scene you've seen in months. It's set on a speeding train and it involves an unpredictable and clever action sequence that is unquestionably the finest scene in the film. In fact it's so good, the director uses it twice. Perhaps he knew that nothing else in the film matches up to it.
Bobby Deol stars as Chandrama Singh or Chamku, a grim young man who's grown up among Naxalites in Bihar after being rescued by them as a boy. A police attack on this Naxal group wipes out all his comrades, but Chamku survives.
Next thing you know, he's hired as a hit man by a government intelligence organization to take down anti-national elements through encounter killings and political assassinations. Chamku goes through his killing duties with robot-like precision, until he falls for a pretty kindergarten teacher (played by Priyanka Chopra) and decides he wants to clean up his act and settle into a normal life.
His boss isn't quite sure he's ready to let him go. After all it's the kind of job that has no easy exit. But even as he's contemplating that, Chamku spots a face he can never forget. The man who killed his father and almost killed him too. From this point onwards, revenge is the only thing on his mind.
With a heavy heart I must report, Chamku starts off with much promise but degenerates eventually into your typical vendetta film. Instead of concentrating on the screenplay, which goes haywire twenty minutes in, the director throws in unnecessary songs and a forced romantic track.
The most glaring oversight in the film is the fact that despite the half-dozen or so sepia-soaked flashbacks, you never once understand why exactly the villain killed Chamku's father.
What's more disappointing than anything else here is the sense of compromise that looms large over this film. Why the ridiculous item song in a club? Why is the hit man sporting designer shades and sharply tailored suits?
Where do Arya Babbar and Deepal Shaw pop out of, and why don't they have any lines? Could it really be that Chamku is an incomplete film, because believe me, it sure looks it.
Of the cast, Irrfan Khan as the cop who hires Chamku, appears bored and positively disinterested in what he's doing here. Priyanka Chopra has nothing to do and she should be thankful for it. And that leaves Bobby Deol.
Sporting those droopy eyes and that one-note expression, he's just right when he's meant to convey anger or frustration, but he wears the solemn face too long. Yet he succeeds in staying restrained, never going over-the-top, even in the film's louder, more filmi scenes.
Chamku has arresting camerawork and some well-directed action scenes. It's an average film, and hence I'll go with two out of five for director Kabeer Kaushik's Chamku.
It works just fine as a standard revenge saga, and at a running time of two hours it's not unwatchable either. But here's a film that settles for such little when it could have been so much more.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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URBANEYE
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Hmm... From the first day when I saw the trailer of this film I had a gut feeling that this
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