Bank Chor Movie Review: Bank Chor is a damp squib right from the word go. It does not have any potential to score.

Bank Chor Review {1.5/5} & Review Rating

BANK CHOR is a simple film about three amateur crooks who plan to rob a bank and the situations which arise after their robbery. The film starts off with a Vaastu Shastra believing sloppy thief Champak Chandrakant Chiplunkar (Riteish Deshmukh) along with his two inexperienced accomplices Ghenda (Bhuvan Arora) and Gulab (Vikram Thapa). Citing unavoidable ‘personal reasons’, Champak and his two friends land up to loot the ‘Bank Of Indians’. Seeing the helplessness of the staff and the customers inside the bank after the robbery, Champak has a change of heart and decides to surrender to the police who surround the bank by then. On the other hand, the CBI officer Amjad Khan (Vivek Oberoi) is ‘handed over’ the case. As a part of his plan, Amjad declares that there is an undercover cop who is inside the bank. This creates total unrest amongst everyone inside the bank. On probing, it gets ‘revealed’ that the undercover cop is someone by the name of Jugnu (Sahil Vaid). Just as everyone thinks that the situation is under control, Amjad Khan confesses to his lie about the presence of an undercover cop inside the bank. There’s also a possibility of one more chor hiding inside the bank. Amidst all this, an unexpected twist takes place, thus changing the course of the story completely upside down. Does Amjad Khan manage to catch hold of the real ‘bank chor’, who is the real ‘bank chor’ and what is the real reason behind this bank robbery plot is what forms the rest of the film.

Despite the quirky title, BANK CHOR’s promos failed to leave the desired impact on the viewers. Similarly, the film is a complete disaster, right from the word go. In other words, it’s nothing but a constant bombarding of the sense and the sensibility of the viewers. The film’s writing and screenplay (Baljeet Singh Marwah, Bumpy, Omkar Sane, Ishita Moitra Udhwani) comes across as one of the most absurd works of recent times. Besides that, the film's proceedings are slow and un-relatable, which makes it extremely difficult to find resonance with the audience. The film's dialogues (Ishita Moitra Udhwani) are hardly anything to write about. Despite being a film belonging to the comic genre, there are hardly any punch lines and gags that succeed in evoking laughter. Instead in the name of comedy and humor, the film is loaded with futile performances and rather tacky gags.

After having made a handful of TV shows and a Bollywood film LUV KA THE END, director Bumpy aka Vivek Mathur (that’s his real name) lends his directorial expertise to BANK CHOR. The way in which he has handled the tongue-in-cheek humor laced film BANK CHOR is extremely weak. This only goes onto prove that films of such genres definitely require an 'experienced hand' for the film to be worth its salt. While BANK CHOR’s first half is relatively funny, it’s the second half where the film becomes worse and gradually starts getting on your nerves. One cannot deny the fact that BANK CHOR has been heavily inspired by films like BANK JOB, SPECIAL 26 and YRF’s very own DHOOM series. But the makers try so hard to make the film look smart and cool towards the end that it becomes a failed Bollywood potboiler from the 80s. There’s one twist after another and everyone starts outsmarting the other person. Sadly, these gimmicks fail to impress.

After having worked together in films like MASTI, GRAND MASTI and GREAT GRAND MASTI, Riteish Deshmukh and Vivek Oberoi come together yet again with BANK CHOR. Speaking about Riteish Deshmukh, he exudes his versatility as a performer. He manages to handle the role with utmost sincerity. But the poor script does him in and he starts looking helpless as the film progresses. Ditto for Vivek Oberoi, who tries to deliver a decent performance as a no-nonsense cop. However after his stylish entry, the super cop from CBI does nothing to save the day. He just waits outside for things to sort out magically and keeps talking to the press. After winning everyone’s hearts and attention with his performances in HUMPTY SHARMA KI DULHANIA and BADRINATH KI DULHANIA, Sahil Vaid tries to consolidate his position as an all-round performer with BANK CHOR. Though he tries his best, he fails to look menacing. On the other hand, Bhuvan Arora and Vikram Hazra do their roles with sincerity. After HALF GIRLFRIEND and DOBAARA: SEE YOUR EVIL, Rhea Chakraborty again gets a very small part in BANK CHOR.

Even though the film boasts of multiple music directors (Shri Sriram, Kailash Kher, Baba Sehgal, Rochak Kohli, Shameer Tandon), the film does not have any song. The film’s background music (Shri Sriram, Superbia) is average.

While the film’s cinematography (Adil Afsar) is decent, its editing (Saurabh Kulkarni) is average.

On the whole, BANK CHOR is a damp squib right from the word go. At the Box-Office, it does not have any potential to score.