'99' should have been a T20 match – shorter and slicker

99
Director: Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK
Cast: Kunal Khemu, Boman Irani, Cyrus Broacha, Soha Ali Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Amit Mistry and Vinod Khanna
Rating: ** ½

Cyber cafes are the booming business, Snake-2 is the popular game on mobile phones, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai is up for release and Mohammed Azharuddin is the Indian team captain. The year is 1999, and that’s probably not the reason for the film’s name.

Actually, there doesn’t seem to be much reason for the film to be named so anyway, except for the hero’s wanting to ‘hit a century in life’, but falling a run short every time. The film suffers from a similar problem.

99 has its intentions in the right place, it is funny in parts, is well cast and has some quirky dialogues. Yet the film drags, with sequences that seem repetitive after a point, and leaves you unmoved. At best, 99, if it has to be said so, manages to hit a half-century.

Sachin (Kunal) and Zaramud (Cyrus) are on-the-run after cops bust in on their illegal SIM-card duplicating business. They decide to escape in a Mercedez, which they end up smashing in a road accident. But the backlash isn’t only in the form of injuries.

The car belongs to a dreaded bookie, AGM (Manjrekar), who now employs the two to be his slaves in exchange for the loss they caused him. Part of the slavery involves getting money from compulsive gambler Rahul (Irani), who owes money to a number of people, including another bookie, Kuber (Amit Mistry).

So the two go to Delhi, where Rahul lives, and where Sachin meets Pooja (Soha Ali). Sachin and Zaramud corner Rahul, who convinces them of a plan that would make enough money for all of them to share. It involves an element of risk, as Rahul, Sachin, Zaramud and Pooja take on the might of AGM and millionaire JC (Vinod Khanna), in a battle of wits.

The film is set against the match-fixing scandal that rocked cricketing circles in 2000, when South Africa captain, Hansie Cronje, admitted to have received money from a bookie to fix a series. Majority of the film unfolds with the India-South Africa series as a backdrop, which has been woven well into the screenplay.

But the film in itself keeps oscillating between being as entertaining as a high-scoring ODI run-chase to being as tepid as a slow, boring session of a Test match. At one point, a character exclaims, “India can’t sustain an innings beyond 20 overs. If there ever was a 20-over world cup, we’d be world champions.”

Witty as it is, the dialogue pretty much sums up 99 itself – 99 minutes, or so, of runtime would have made it far more slicker and enjoyable than its actual length of close to 2-and-a-half hours.

What keeps the film going are the witty dialogues, written by Sita Menon, who also shares credit with the directors in the story and screenplay. Another plus are the lovable characters, performed ably. Amit Mistry, as Kuber, is the star of the show and makes you guffaw every single time. He is a revelation.

Cyrus, with his usual yet different-from-Bollywood-standards kind of comedy, is fun to watch. Boman Irani is effortless as usual. Although Khemu acts confidently, he could do with diction classes, with his penchant to talk fast making it difficult to understand what he’s saying at times. While Mahesh Manjrekar is apt, Soha Ali Khan and Vinod Khanna (in an inconsequential role really) fail to make any kind of impact.

The director duo, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, in spite of being US-based (they have directed the Indo-US film, Flavors, earlier) have captured the Mumbai setting well, and even the Delhi scenes are well executed. More importantly, the two manage to extract some good performances and impress with their style of making too. Where they falter though, is in making the film gripping throughout, with the tempo dropping at a number of places and some inconsequential scenes.

99 is one of those films that has all the ingredients to make a mark in a big way, but still has something missing. In these film-starved times, it could be just the shot of Hindi-film entertainment you have craved for in the last 6 weeks. But television is where this film could really make a mark.

Watch with no expectations, and you might not be disappointed.