Doesn’t add up
film: Zee5 Hisaab Barabar
Director: Ashwani Dhir
Cast: R Madhavan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Kirti Kulhari, Rashami Desai and Sukumar Tudu
With a title like this, one expects the ‘hisaab’ to be a metaphor for some score to be settled between the hero and the villain. But as far as the lead character of ‘Hisaab Barabar’ is concerned, the word is literal, sometimes physical too, with digits flying all over the frames and a haunting tune playing in the background.
Well, a wizard with numbers, Radhe Mohan Sharma (R Madhavan), a ticket collector with the Indian Railways, gets his calculations right till the last decimal, but did Madhavan get his hisaab right when he signed on the dotted line? We are coming to that.
The story starts with a missing amount of Rs 27.50 in Radhe’s bank account. He soon figures out that this is a scam worth thousands of crores. A common man, he soon embarks on a crusade for justice. Good enough for a premise, but only if good intention translated into a good film!
The introductory scene for Mickey Mehta (Neel Nitin Mukesh), the morally bankrupt owner of a bank, is as cringe-worthy as it comes. Mickey breaks into an atrocious dance number, delivering bombastic dialogues. His caricaturish persona remains consistent throughout. It evokes neither fear nor laughter, only disgust towards the character as well as the scenes where he appears.
In contrast, juggling a job, a minor son as a single parent, filing tax returns for others and teaching maths to a bunch of boys on the railway platform, Radhe takes on the bank for his missing Rs 27.50. He even gets into a fist fight with an employee and all the while, writer-director Ashwani Dhir keeps tossing the phrase ‘hisaab barabar’ to remind us that the righteous aam aadmi is on the right course, and we should root for him. This is quite a task even though Madhavan plays his usual affable self and is the only bright spot in the film.
There is a brief romantic interlude between Radhe and P Subhash (Kirti Kulhari). They have a past but before it has a chance to grow on us, the track changes. P Subhash turns out to be an investigative officer who has to handle a case against Radhe. It’s a non-existent flimsy case, which comes between them.
Well, the entire length is littered with unnecessary details, unbearable dialogues and random characters. Here are some samples. One of the antagonists lands straight into a bowl of raita and sheepishly says, “Raita phail gaya!” Pesky neighbour Monalisa (Rashami Desai) who babysits Radhe’s son, appears and disappears without any rhyme or reason. And then, the accidental death of Radhe’s student is supposed to add gravitas to Radhe’s fight, but does not.
If Dhir thought he could fit a serious subject in a humourous setting and pull off another ‘3 Idiots’, he got his hisaab all wrong. He should have known that even getting one of those famous ‘idiots’ wouldn’t be enough to salvage his jumbled-up plot.