Special26- My take

Directed by Neeraj Pandey, whose “A Wednesday” is still etched as a masterpiece in our minds, Special 26 stars Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher , Manoj Bajpai and Kajal Agarwal in lead roles, with many faces from his previous film making appearances too.

The plot, as was evident in the trailers, revolves around a fake CBI team conducting raids on Ministers and businessmen.  Taking us to different places where one can hide money, from secret safes behind Idols to ceilings packed with money to crooked walls and what not. The “Catch me if you can”-isque attitude with which Akshay and his team conducts raids with sincerity to rob the black money from corrupted people where no one wants to file an FIR for obvious reasons or “for reasons best known to them” as would be corrected by one. All goes well until the Real CBI gets involved and here comes Manoj Bajpai.

While this chor-police game continues to take shape, there is a complicated love story running along with it between Akshay and south-starlet Kajal, where we don’t exactly know the reason why they cannot be together, maybe “for reasons best known to them”. There’s also a “wedding song” pitched in, of obvious reasons of being a Bollywood film.

Akshay comes out good with this Special26, and may have finally realized that movies shouldn’t be just made for commercial success, and that’s a good sign. Anupam kher, Manoj Bajpai, Jimmy shergill and all the others do put up decent performances to make special26 special.

There are of course loopholes, but in the end everything falls into p;lace and you are made to believe that this was the same guy who directed Wednesday, with evident touches of that amazing movie coming in.

The sluggishness in some parts has been tried to be fast-tracked forcefully, which gets evident in the frst half, but automatically gains pace in the second. The movie is a good watch, if you are okay with keeping this in mind that it captures the late-80’s in its backdrop, yet tries to entertain you in 2013 and does a pretty decent job.

So, here’s a  3/5 for Neeraj pandey’s special26 and a suggestion to not miss Akshay’s Once-in-a-blue-moon act in this movie with some fine touches of a wednesday.