‘We are the referee, we have the power to issue a yellow card or a red card,’ says the upright police officer.
‘You may have the yellow or red card, but I am the federation,’ comes the retort.
Only Jeet can possibly get away with a line as cheesy as that.
A Jeet film is to the Bengal film market what a Salman Khan film is to the pan-India market. They even time their films to Eid. And like the latter’s films, Jeet’s too is an experience to savour in the theatre, preferably single-screen ones in the mofussil. I have been fortunate enough to have watched a couple of his films on opening day, and nothing beats the palpable excitement he generates. There are the fans with garlands and incense sticks, huge cut-outs of the star, and the theatre a cauldron waiting to bubble over. And that first glimpse of the star on screen – usually, it’s a foot landing on the ground, in slow-mo, accompanied by appropriately thunderous music. The rest of the film, almost every film, runs to the same template: the kick-ass hero as much at ease with seeti-maar dialogues as with munh-tod action. A Jeet film is a Jeet film. It exists in a rarefied world, impervious to everything else but the star in the service of his fans. And it works every time.
Ticks all the right boxes for a Jeet-starrer
Chengiz is no different. If you have seen the 54 other films starring this unique star, you know what to expect. And you get what you expect. But there’s something riding on this one that none of his previous films had. Chengiz is being touted as the first Bengali film to go pan-India. The film is co-written by Neeraj Pandey of A Wednesday and Special Ops fame, which gives it a heft denied to most Bengali films. It released in approximately 800 screens with over 1,200 shows. The Bengali version premiered in over 120 screens, with approximately 300 shows; the Hindi version in over 650 screens, with over 800 shows. It attempts to do to Bengali cinema at the national level what the RRRs, the Pushpas and the KGFs have done with the potboilers emanating from the south.
Does it work on that front? On the evidence of the first couple of days in Delhi, no. The Bengali version I attended on the opening day had exactly one viewer – me. The Hindi version, about 11 more. But more importantly, I am not sure this is the film that should have been projected as Bengal’s answer to the south. There is nothing wrong with it as a generic, formulaic entertainer (barring some sexist dialogue and sequences which are particularly jarring, but then none of the southern megahits that Bollywood swears by these days cover themselves in glory on that front). It ticks all the right boxes for a Jeet-starrer.
The problem lies in its premise
It’s just that Chengiz never breaks any new ground in the realm of the spectacle that a pan-India film is required to do. Not to mention that RRR opened in over 3,500 screens. On the same day that Chengiz released, the new Salman Khan-starrer Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan made its way to approximately 4,500 screens. On its opening day, RRR made Rs 20 crore. Chengiz made something in the vicinity of Rs 10 lakh on the Hindi version, and approximately Rs 25 lakh on its Bengali version. Even KKBKKJ, despite being proclaimed a dud, made Rs 14 crore on Day One. Occupancy for Chengiz (Hindi) hovered around the six per cent mark, while the Bengali version fared marginally better, between 30 and 40 per cent across shows. So, the numbers don’t scale up at all.
However, for a film that aims for the Bahubali reach, the problem lies in its premise. The story is a jaded rehash of dime-a-dozen gangster dramas tracing the rise of a mafia don. A 10-year-old boy witnesses his parents being killed by a gang lord. He vows revenge and becomes a gangster. You even have a kindly ‘uncle’ police office a la Gaitonde in Agneepath. Yes, the karmabhoomi has changed from Mumbai and the Hindi heartland to Kolkata. The Haji Mastans and Davars and Narangs have become Nalli Bhai and Kalu, very Kalu and very very Kalu (yes, there are characters going by those names). But this is essentially a tired retread of Once Upon a Time in Mumbai territory.
But that’s about it. Nothing else, not the dialogues (particularly the Hindi version) nor the songs and definitely not the action (despite star stunt director Stunt Selva) bear any comparison to what made the southern blockbusters work. For an audience used to the pyrotechnics of a KGF or an RRR, Chengiz is almost soporific. And the quick repartee that works well enough in Bengali simply does not resonate half as well in Hindi, and surely not well enough to overcome the limitations of the action and the moth-eaten narrative. Also, at two-and-a-half hours, it is way too long and lumbering. Srijit Mukherji’s Zulfiqar had one sequence lasting a couple of minutes that laid down what Chengiz takes 150 minutes to do.
Original voice of young filmmakers versus assembly-line clones
Which is a shame. The director, Rajesh Ganguly, delivered a really different film in 2014. The Royal Bengal Tiger, also co-written and produced by Neeraj Pandey. Though more an Abir Chatterjee vehicle, that too starred Jeet in probably his most atypical role, which despite that played on his star flamboyance. It was a cerebral film that made an emotional connect too, unlike the vacuous world that Chengiz inhabits.
It says something about Bengali cinema that an industry that once prided itself on representing the country at an international level, and that regularly made waves at international festivals, now has to fall back on being a clone of the assembly line that churns out pan-India hits. There is no way that Bengali cinema can beat its southern brothers in the stakes. The movers and shakers of the industry have to understand that a budget running into millions or a 76- member star cast (as the makers of Chengiz proudly announced) is no guarantee of a pan-India hit if the content does not offer anything new.
Young filmmakers like Aditya Vikram Sengupta (Once Upon a Time in Kolkata), Prasun Chatterjee (Dostojee), Ishaan Ghose (Jhilli), Indranil Roychowdhury (Mayar Jonjal), Indrasis Acharya (Niharika), Joydeep Mukherjee (Akash Ongshoto Meghla) and Bappa (Sohorer Upokotha) have shown the way to being aesthetic without compromising on narrative fluidity. Some of these films have made waves at international festivals. They may not have broken through commercially in the Indian circuit, but give me the original voice of a Dostojee and Once Upon a Time in Kolkata over the derivative Chengiz any day. The latter performs no better at the box office despite having the budget, the marketing and the distribution at its disposal. The other two films, at least, say something that not too many Indian films do.
(Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer)
