Crew review: This fun, fabulous, female heist film rides on Tabu, Kriti, Kareena's chemistry; never fails to entertain

Director: Rajesh Krishnan

Cast: Tabu, Kriti Sanon, Kareena Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh, Kapil Sharma, Rajesh Sharma

Where to watch: Theatres

Rating: 3.5 stars

Chemistry is a word that is overused in the entertainment world. The moment two stars sign a film together, PR pitch notes and press releases of their ‘electric chemistry’ begin to do rounds (even if they feel ice cold together in reality). The truth is chemistry on screen is tough to fake and impossible to decipher. When it works, it elevates an average story into something more than watchable. Case in point – Crew. Although it would be a bit harsh to call the Rajesh Krishnan film average, it is not a very good film. But its writing, music, and the bond of its three extremely fun and dazzling leads makes it a winner.

Crew is the story of three air hostesses – Geeta (Tabu), Jasmin (Kareena Kapoor), and Divya (Kriti Sanon), who work in a troubled airline called Kohinoor, whose billionaire owner Vijay Walia (cough, no relation to anyone real) is about to leave the country. How these three ordinary women find themselves in the middle of a gold smuggling operation and how they turn it to their advantage is what Crew is all about.

Crew can be described as a heist film. But it is not a complex one in the genre of Ocean’s Eleven or even Dhoom for that matter. There are no sophisticated, tech-savvy plans, or geniuses assisting our ladies in this impossible task. There is no high-flying action. This film is more Rajkumar Santoshi than Mission Impossible in its approach to the heist and more importantly comedy. And that simplicity makes Crew  fun watch. It grounds it in reality and makes the stakes seem all too real.

Depicting women go wrong on screen is always challenging. There is a sort of a maryaada barrier that society has put on women characters from time immemorial. If men do heists, it’s cool. When women do it, it’s morally grey. Crew flips that on its head and makes everything fun, innocent, and cool, even justifying this ‘crime’ for the greater good. And it does so in the only way it could have been done – by making us care for these characters and their problems. These women are not evil or even bed, just desperate, frustrated, and angry at a system that lets the rich get away with it.

At the heart of Crew is its three leads – impeccable, fabulous, and absolutely stunning. To say that Tabu is amazing would be sounding like a broken record. The actress does here what she has done a countless times before – marrying humour with vulnerability, panache, and power in a way that is trademark Tabu. Kareena Kapoor reminds you of why she ruled Bollywood. She makes Jasmin so arrogant and aloof yet likable that it falls smack dab in the middle of the Poo-Geet spectrum. Her comic timing is superb and she once again aces the emotional scenes. Kriti Sanon has more than held her own in the company of these powerhouses. She shows that Mimi was no flash in the pan, matching her seniors in humour and even sass.

But more than the individual performances of the three, their combined unity is what drives Crew. The three work almost as a singular protagonist for the film, doing it so fabulously that you can believe that these three have been friends for years off screen too. Now that is chemistry. Diljit Dosanjh appears in a delicious supporting act where he brings his charm and off-screen persona to create a fun character. Kapil Sharma surpises with a sober performance where he manages to impress minus any one-liners and jokes. And Rajesh Sharma and Charu Shankar round off the brilliant supporting casts with comedy so measured that you could run a chemistry experiment using that.

It’s not as if Crew does not have faults. The plot is predictable, the cops are clueless, and the plot armour for the heroines is as thick as an armoured vault. There are several logical faults and the conclusion is all too simple. But one can’t praise that simplicity in one place and fault it in another. That simplicity helps prop Crew up as a light entertainer, so one must discount it when it appears to make it too easy. Maybe we have been accustomed to super-complex heist dramas that this one feels too simple. But that is not a complaint, merely an observation.

Hats off to director Rajesh Krishnan for making a film that takes you back years – to a simple time when bad could be good without moral justification, when stories were allowed to be simple, and when comedies need not be ‘clever’. How he manages to do this in the post-OTT era with such finesse is commendable. Our industry and audience need more films like Crew.

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