During the 1970s Charles Sobhraj committed at least 12 murders throughout Southeast Asia of tourists on the hippy trail. After spending 21 years in prison he was released in 1997 and retired comfortably as a celebrity in Paris, charging large sums of money for interviews and 15 million dollars for the rights to his life story for a movie. After he went to Nepal he was arrested by Nepal officials for the murders of 2 of his victims. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. . Main Aur Charles is a movie directed by .The notorious criminal played by Randeep Hooda. I went into the movie without knowing anything or any expectations. I purposefully didn't even watch the trailer of the movie before watching it.
Let me start with some nice things about the movie. There is a stranger but interesting humour depicted in the movie. Police is shown making hilarious ghoofups. There is also a custodial battle between the various state police to get the prize of catching shobraj
And the best part of the movie was that I forgot I was watching Randeep Hooda. He was hands down the best part of the movie. He was amazingly convincing as the protagonist. It reminded me of Jake Gylanhall's character In Night Cralwer. Richa Chaddha playing a law student & Adil Hussain playing Amod Kanth did a good job as supporting actors. The movie actually picks up pace in the second half and is worth the watch.
Now the bad part; As soon as the movie started my initials thoughts were that the movie was very confusing. We are introduced to the antagonist very quickly and little time is given to the develop the character. This was case for the entire first half. It felt very rushed to the point that it became even boring.
There is even a long 15 min sequence where people are talking about shobraj, we see newspaper clips etc. But it just helps in creating an Image and does nothing to help the viewer understand character. Throughout the movie, I felt the director was more interested in Creating the Image rather than dismantle the character.
The movie offers little to the audience with respect to any insight into Shobhraj's criminal mind. Why he does what he does. For a script to be strong we need to understand why a certain character it taking an action. The movie did not provide any clear answers.
The movie keeps narrating to us that Charles shobraj is hypnotic, brutal, intelligent and ruthless but it does not show what makes him as such. Many places where we could have expected an interesting dialogue, the scripts decides to take a shortcut, with saying annoying it gives us a distant shot of the characters talking and we are left to our own imagination.
The title of the movie suggests that its from the point of view of an officer who is chasing Charles. The film is weak in this area as well. We get no insights on the exact thought process that is motivating the police.
Making it more difficult was the fact that the movie didn't have any subtitles for any French or other languages used in the movie. Hindi movies don't go deep.. they are just surface.. didn't understand why Charles did what he did... hi psychology... it did not delve why he was charmer for women.... what is the psychology of women who fell for him...
I think the movie was afraid to admit that its about a serial killer. They added Bollywood masala to a real life horror story of brutality. The psychopathic mindset of this killer was not explored rather what we got a typical crime genre Bollywood movie. It wasn't a psychological portrait of Charles shobraj but a dumbed down version to make him look good on screen
