Mumbaikar begins with two thugs attempting to scare a man (Vikrant Massey) in a cafe by telling him they’ll throw acid on the woman they believe is the man’s girlfriend. (Later one of them will have the same acid he brandished in the first scene poured down the back of his own pants, which one of the film’s heroes will use as the premise for an acidity joke. That’s Mumbaikar’s attempt at serving progressive values, thank you very much.) From there the story shifts to Vijay Sethupathi eyeing himself in a mirror, vowing to be the coolest gangster while looking upon stickers of Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone from The Godfather films as well as Amitabh Bachchan and Rajinikanth. As Mumbaikar continues to unravel, we get a job interview, the kidnapping of a child, drinks at a bar, and Sanjay Mishra throwing pleading glances at his assailant in a fight scene, as though he’d rather be bludgeoned by a brick than actually have to plod his way through this film.
That Mumbaikar was greenlit in the 21st century and has such an impressive ensemble cast suggests projects still find their backers and collaborators on the basis of a pitch, rather than an actual script. As a one-liner, Mumbaikar seems watchable enough. It’s about a group of unnamed strangers — policemen, gangsters, office workers, kids, unemployed men — who are brought together by a set of random incidents that show different aspects of life in a big city. By the end of the film, the fact that you don’t know anyone’s name shouldn’t matter. All you need to know is that they feel like Mumbaikars despite their varied backgrounds. Add to this premise actors like Vijay Sethupathi, Vikrant Massey, Sanjay Mishra and Ranvir Shorey, and it promises to be an enjoyable watch. Reader, it is not.
There are no redeeming features to the juddering logjam of awfulness that is Mumbaikar. Himanshu Singh’s screenplay has picked up nothing from the long list of films and streaming shows that have attempted to put together portraits of Mumbai. Instead, we get stilted dialogues and an outsider’s perspective upon the city that is superficial and uninsightful. Singh’s most inventive moment is when a group of gangsters explain to a newbie that if the police catch them, they’re to tell the police that their name is “Mukesh bhai” and if a rival catches them, then the name to drop is “Anil bhai”. You’re supposed to laugh in appreciation of this wink-wink-nudge-nudge reference to the Ambani family.