Shaitan: It's mad, messy, but doesn't stink

3/5

Director: Bijoy Nambiar

Lead: Rajeev Khandelwal as Inspector Arvind Mathur, Kalki Koechlin as Amrita Jayshankar a.k.a. Amy, Shiv Pandit as Dushyant Sahu a.k.a. Dash, Neil Bhopalam as Zubin Shroff, Gulshan Devaiya as Karan Chaudhary a.k.a. KC, Kirti Kulhari as Tanya Sharma

There's a very nice dialogue in this film. "There are two kind of friends. one, you can call them even at 2 am, Second, you can call them only at 2 am." Shaitan is the story of second kind of guys. From these five, three are brats of super rich parents, one is an upcoming actress and one is a drug champion. Brats include Amy (Kalki), Zubin (Neil), and KC (Gulshan). Tanya (Kirti) is a budding actress and Dash (Shiv) frequents jail in drugs dealing. Doping, drinking, casual sex, one to one fights, roaming around streets of the city till morning is their regular schedule. But their routine goes for a toss when they knock down a couple on scooter. You can see their merciless nature when they run away from the scene crushing the dead bodies under the wheels of their super cool Hummer. Now they must pay 25 Lakhs to the corrupt cop to close the case. They decide to kidnap Amy and ask for ransom from her dad. But it doesn't go as smooth as they had planed from the moment Mathur (Rajeev) is handed over the case. He's a brutal, bad ass but honest cop who will not think twice two push a politician from his bungalow terrace as a girl complains that he misbehaved with her. While Mathur is behind the kidnappers as well as Amy's disappeared friends, our Shaitans' lives go up side down as they are running around and getting in to the mess created by themselves. 

     What is worth watching about this one is, you love watching these guys getting in to one mess or other while they are still cracking jokes and create dark humor that makes you laugh, though you are scared to laugh because you are foreseeing the problems that they are delving into. While they are trying to smoothen their issues, Mathur keeps giving them goose bumps. The soundtrack by various music directors and a heavy metal number by an awesome Indian band, Bhayanak Maut keeps you engrossed. A chasing scene makes you feel itchy and at the same time tickling you with a retro song "Khoya khoya chaand" as the background music, brilliantly remixed. Cinematography is mind blowing by Madhie, and screenplay by the director himself doesn't give you feeling of a small budget film. Nabiar does a great job of a director, still you can taste Anurag Kashyap flavor in between. 

     Apart from all this super exciting and almost never before story line, it has it's own loopholes. There are some irrelevant fillers like Kalki's flashback and a flashback story of another brat who has nothing to do with the story, which is played by "Udaan (2010)" lead Rajat Barmecha. The climax turns out to be a very regular 'good vs evil' drama, so 'non-Anurag'. These things make the film look longer because they keep breaking the link between the main story and the audience's scared minds. This film has bits and pieces of Anurag's debut film "Paanch". A few scenes where these kids visualize their planning, is shown on screen, which turns out to be a very nice experiment to see. If you forget some loopholes in the story, it also has many scenes you may have never scene before. These boys don't think twice before breaking someone's head for no reason or bashing a TV on someone's head because he was trying to rape one of them. These kind of scenes are very nicely filmed with no assumed moments, all on screen. 

Overall, Shaitan is not something if you are looking for an entertainer, it's not a time-pass. I recommend watching this to experience something unusual. Don't miss the those hidden details and a sharp direction.