Film review - Mickey Virus

 

Quite a Hack

Film: Mickey Virus

Cast: Manish Paul, Elli Avram, Manish Choudhary

Directed by: Saurabh Varma

Duration: 2 hrs 15 mins

Rating: * *

Mickey Virus is one of those films that have an interesting premise and characters but ultimately, the whole is much smaller than the sum of its parts. It desperately wants to be hip and different but yet it falls in some of those standard Bollywood traps.

Thrillers are a rare breed in Hindi cinema these days and that too ones involving modern technology. So we have Mickey Arora (debutant Manish Paul, reminding you of Virat Kohli) who is a numero uno hacker in the Delhi-NCR and beyond. He has also designed a computer game and the main character is called Kung Fu Chameli who looks more like Savita bhabhi.

The company he keeps is also a bunch of hackers including a girl curiously called Chutney (Puja Gupta). I was most fascinated by the kind of computers and monitor screens they use, it is something you see only in movies, that too Hollywood ones. In an underground office in Delhi, they looked a little out of place.

An international gang of hackers who call themselves Bhram gang (bhram as in illusion) are on the loose in Delhi so a top cop (Manish Choudhary) decides to recruit a hacker to tackle them. After all, as we know, loha hi lohe ko kaat ta hain.  

Since Bollywood films can barely do without romance, our hacker guru meets a foreigner Kamyani (Swedish-Greek model Elli Avram) and falls in head over high heels in love with her. The rest of it involves an ultra complex plot with wheels within wheels.

In the first half, Mickey Virus tries to be too clever and in the second, it is too silly. If they had found a middle ground, it would have been more effective. The dialogues written by the director Saurabh Varma are the best part of the film, the lingo is authentic Dilli with quite a few smart lines thrown in. Take for instance the hawaldar who sees Mickey working on the computer and says “Pata nahin ke www type kiya jar aha hain” (I don’t know why you keep typing www)

Manish Paul in the lead role is not the most smashing actor to make a debut but he is likable. As for Elli Avram, she still needs more lessons in acting. This virus business is okayish if your mental security levels are on the higher side.

(Published in The Navhind Times on 27th Oct. 2013)

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte