REVIEW: Crook (2)

MENTAL TORTURE

Mohit Suri's Crook is shocking, both in its take on racism and its rabidly boorish sexism. Both Suri and lead actor Emraan Hashmi have done better work in the past and the Bhatt camp has made relatively ok films on topical issues. This one then, is singular in its senselessness. Like nobody knew where the film was going and nobody cared anyway.

Hashmi plays Jai, a petty Mumbai crook who keeps saying "it's good to be bad". In typical filmi style, he carries a chip on his shoulder about having witnessed his father's brutal murder by the police commissioner when he was a boy. His uncle (Gulshan Grover) is willing to do anything to get Jai back on track and hence gives him a new identity as Suraj and packs him off to Australia. There he meets pretty Suhani (Neha Sharma -- where do the Bhatt's source their heroines from?) and there's instant attraction etc etc.

But there's also one nutty Serd too many in Melbourne who drink, make merry and hit on local girls, and two loony brothers. One Indian called Samarth (Arjan Bajwa, terrible) the other an Australian called Russell, and Suri sketches them so similarly, you can hardly tell them apart. Suraj has a stake in both their lives. Suhani is Samarth's sister, while another girl who takes a fancy to Suraj for no apparent reason, is the white guy's sister. She works as a pole dancer like all debauched white girls do, and thinks nothing of sleeping with the hero at the slightest provocation, being clueless about his Hindustani morality which lurks behind all the cockiness, eve teasing and bravado.

Both brothers abuse their sisters verbally and torture them mentally -- the Indian, in the name of 'culture' and 'family values', the Australian because he hates Indians and his sister seems to like them.

What ensues is a bizarre turn of events where the racism issue is reduced to a ridiculous personality war between the two evil brothers and, if Crook is to be believed, that's the root cause of the hate killings of Indians by locals. Melbourne is burning and its all because one freaky Indian refused to let his other sister marry an Australian, who decided to retaliate by beating up every Indian in sight and so on...