Ankush Bhatt's 'Bhindi Baazaar' has all the ingredients of an intriguing crime thriller. It's shot with style and there are plenty of twists. The story is interesting but at the same time the writing is flawed. The first hour is repetitive and tends to drag at points. Certain subplots are underdeveloped. The characters played by Pavan Malhotra, Kay Kay Menon and Deepti Naval were among the most interesting and yet they are underused in the story. Darzi's romantic track is portrayed like a typical Bollywood romance with too much plot convenience and a little out of place with the overall feel of the movie.
The style of camera-work and editing is a little too erratic and overdone in the beginning. The score should have been more subtle in these sequences. The rawness of the slum and its detail are well captured. The item number should have been left out.
Pavan Malhotra is brilliant and so is Kay Kay Menon but an actor of his calibre is wasted. Same goes for Jackie Shroff. His character seems to have been added merely for plot convenience. Prashant Narayanan does tend to go over the top at times but otherwise he's fairly good. Vedita Pratap Singh is adequate. Shilpa Shukla is not given much to do but she makes her presence felt. Deepti Naval is superb. Gautam Sharma is passable. Perhaps it's the presence of his more experienced costars that overshadow his performance.
The dark humour is effective. If the whole film was treated as a dark comedy, this may have been a better film overall. Yet, despite its flaws, it's still an enjoyable movie. The twists are manifold and most of them work except for the final one which, again, appears a little too convenient. Once one is gets passed the repetitiveness of the first half hour or so, there aren't many boring moments (with the exception of a few hiccups, such as the romance between Darzi and Simran).
