Lucky Baskhar – My Flash Review!

This film with the title scripted as Lucky Baskha₹ was originally made in Telugu by Director Venky Atluri and I watched it in Tamil on Netflix. The title and its graphics tell that the film is about money and the hero’s tryst with it. A few minutes into the movie, it reminded me of at least 3 films with a similar theme – Shahid Kapoor’s Badmaash Company, Kannum Kannum Kollaiadithaal in Tamil which also had Dulquer Salman as the main lead as in this film and more recently – the web series Scam 1992, which was based on Harshad Mehta’s life. Now, this sort of gives an idea as to the film’s theme.

Lucky Baskhar is set in Mumbai or rather Bombay to be precise, in the backdrop of the stock market boom that was hitting the headlines back in the late 80s and early 90s. The production design trying to re-create the Bombay of those times looks artificial and very filmy. Scam 1992 had done a far better job in this area. There is also a lack of attention to detailing in production design. For example, you can see someone requesting for a bank statement when actually only passbooks were in vogue in that era. There are a few other glaring misses like showing a sleek laser printer being used in banks back then. They were not and I can vouch for that.

The film is about the travails of a youngster who is an entry-level clerk in a bank going through the grind of a tough day-to-day middle-class life seemingly burdened by an ailing father, aspirational wife and related peer pressures. Now, the director uses this context to sort of justify the behavioural shifts the character undergoes in his quest for wealth, all for a better life for his family or so he claims.

Throughout the film, the director structures the screenplay and the scenes in such a way that there is a huge build-up of suspense every time the hero gets close to getting caught for a crime but soon, we are shown some back scenes where he does everything to cover all his bases and therefore gets away. After all, the title is “Lucky” Baskhar and not otherwise. This structuring of scenes, when we see them for the 1st time, is interesting but soon gets into a predictable mode when the same is repeated throughout the film. Yet overall, the film is engaging as we get invested in the character of Dulquer Salman who plays the title role of Baskhar.

While the Director takes his own time in setting the context in the first half, it is in the second half that the film gathers pace and keeps us hooked. But again, in the last 30 odd minutes, the hero has a change of heart sparked by a couple of incidents he encounters in his vicinity and that leads to a very weak and predictable climax. Ramalinga Raju of Satyam fame in his open letter while accepting the scam they had carried out, used the phrase – “I was riding a tiger and didn’t know how to get off of it” to allude to his condition. We see a similar thing happening with Baskhar but here, he gets off the tiger pretty easily and unscathed.

The Director who has also written the film tries his best to keep the technicalities of the banking and stock market system simple but I am not sure if he fully achieved his objective. I guess that G.V. Prakash who has scored the music was told that he should imagine Rajinikanth as the male lead. He goes ballistic with a massy background score akin to Rajini’s films to highlight the mass moments but I felt that they came up a cropper.

Dulquer Salman as the male lead who goes through a character evolution from being a staid middle-class man to a scheming and even arrogant person when success gets to his head, gives an inspired performance that is easily relatable. Meenakshi Chaudhary who plays his wife often bewildered by the change in her husband while also happy to enjoy the fruits of this change, is also good. Among the other supporting cast, Tinnu Anand makes his presence felt.

The writing of the film and the screenplay except for some attention to detail are engaging. For example, the Baskhar character is shown to take morality lessons from either his 7-8 year old son or his elderly ailing father. These are the key defining moments in the film which change the course of the film. Overall, Baskhar is an interesting film that is a one-time watch for its subject, performances and screenplay. It is streaming now on Netflix.