A callow youngster (Samir Dattani)- an innocent victim of an indiscriminate arrest, an orphan without anyone to call his own- is plucked from a jail by a senior intelligence officer (Om Puri). The youngster is then trained to be Mukhbiir (an inside informer) and sent on different secret undercover missions. Will he prove tough enough for the moral, ethical and emotional challenges posed by his unusual profession? With his well-wishers falling by the wayside one by one, will he be able to summon enough courage to carry out his dangerous mission?

Chamku

Dir. Kabeer Kaushik

Cast: Bobby Deol, Priyanka Chopra, Irfan Khan

Somewhere in the interiors of Bihar, a local strongman shots a father and a son at pointblank range. The father dies but the boy is saved and raised into a militant in a naxalite camp. Born Chandramohan Singh, he is now rechristened as Chamku (Bobby Deol). Recuperating from a near-death after a police encounter, Chamku is inducted as an undercover hit-man into a secret RAW – IB funded program. While carrying out his unlawful killings for the supposed protectors of law and order, Chamku will have to battle his personal demons and the so-called ‘System’ at every step! Will he win?

Review:

As said earlier, both these films adopt a practically similar theme and approach. Both, Mukhbiir and Chamku are created by the ‘System’. They are orphans picked up from a wayward life of obscurity and lawlessness. Emotionally they both are fragile but still they have to tough it out. They are being used as programmed tools for so-called loftier ideal of preserving the honor of the land, but that is being done without offering them any other choice and without giving them a life of honour. At every step, both keep questioning their inner self but there is no way out. Both realize that in their undercover life there is no value for values and no truth in any truth!

For the first half, Mukhbiir tries to do a Maqbool when the hero is sent to mingle with a Hyderabad-based Mafia don’s clan. That provides some of the interesting moments of the film but then, the film loses its grip when it changes its track into a high-tech terrorist plot. Samir Dattani delivers a neatly composed role as Mukhbiir, which augurs well for his future. Sudhanshu Pande is good as a Hyderabadi gangster with love for anything loud and lewd.

Chamku begins promisingly with a breathless, blood-drenched train sequence, which immediately brings back memories of Kaushik’s Sehar- climax. The UP-Bihar setup, the power-politics, the police encounters, the bloody killings- Chamku has a lot in common with Sehar. But whereas Sehar was essentially a raw, earthy and that’s why a creditable film; Chamku tries to be slick and glamorous and ends up nowhere. Bobby Deol does well in his limited capacity to make the central character- ‘Chamku’ credible but the rest of the cast is mostly wasted in insignificant roles.

Both, Mukhbiir and Chamku try to cash on stylized violence but they both suffer from excesses- that of characters, events and plot-tracks and that proves to be their undoing.  This mainly happens because of selling out to the so-called box-office equations like needlessly planting a good-looking heroine, some irrelevant songs and a feel-good climax! Both films could well have shed plenty of screen time wasted on unnecessary drivel. What could have been taut, on-the-edge, watchable thrillers thus peter out into long-drawn clichéd potboilers. Same old story of Bollywood!