Mumbai Mirror Hindi Movie
Blame it on Salman Khan and his blockbuster 'Wanted' that every second film that makes it to the silver screens these days is either a cop drama, has Prakash Raj as the negative lead or both. The hero of this film, Sachiin Joshi, too belongs to the same rat race as his second film Mumbai Mirror promises to reflect the life and times of a cop against the murkiness of the maximum city Mumbai. Let's find out whether this cop drama turns out to be riveting or simply bites the dust.
Abhijeet Patil (Sachiin Joshi), is a corrupt and debauch cop but not without honour. He drinks, places illegal bets on cricket matches, takes drugs, visits dance bars and spends his time sleeping around with bar girls but respects women a lot and cannot bear anyone hurting them. He has his own uncle ACP Gaitonde (Mahesh Manjrekar) to watch his back as he goes about with his wrong doings. But his recklessness and fearlessness lands him in the bad books of a local don and drug mafia Shetty (Prakash Raj) as he shuts down his dance bar. Angered at being rubbed the wrong way, Shetty uses his posse to get rid of Abhijeet. How Abhijeet foils Shetty's plans and busts his racket is what follows through the rest of the plot.
Mumbai Mirror thrives on blockbusters that too are take offs from the 80s. It turns itself into a cheap rip off right from the very first scene. So you have a typified bad guy bribing every cop who comes in the way of his evil works, a heroic aviator donning, moustache sporting cop who beats criminals to pulp, some item numbers, some romance, romantic songs and wholesome drama with fists fights.
The team of filmmaker Ankush Bhatt and writer Ghalib Asad Bhopali who last made gritty drama Bhindi Bazaar Inc. come up with a film which isn't even half as interesting as their previous work. The filmmaker pointlessly opts for a non-linear narrative to a linear plot. The film starts off from the penultimate sequence and the rest of the film is nothing but flashback leading to the very first scene. Quite like their previous work, the duo use the chess metaphor again in this film however, this time around the battle of wits fails to engage the mass and only turns out to be humdrum.
A film's fate usually rides on the shoulders of the lead star but the miniscule Sachiin Joshi in this case takes the films to further lows. Right from his look which appears nothing but a lift off from many cop films including his Salman Khan-Ajay Devgn style aviators and a drooping moustache like that of Aamir Khan from Talaash to the Bodyguard inspired tacky punch-lines he mouths for example - mujhe sirf ek cheez se darr lagta hai... mujhe kisi se darr nahi lagta, main ek hi baat pe bharosa karta hoon... ke main koi baat pe bharosa nahi karta - everything about him is tawdry and rehashed. His meek and thin voice with which he delivers heavy duty dialogues only makes matters worse.
Prakash Raj as the antagonist has a character completely similar to Wanted or Singham. Mahesh Manjrekar sleep-walks his role and still manages to give a brilliant performance. He is reason alone for a few chuckles in the film. Aditya Panscholi as betting king Lala is wasted just like Prashant Narayanan and Sudesh Berry.
To sum it up, Mumbai Mirror fails to impress and leaves you bored and annoyed. Watch Dabangg instead.
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