If a film is clearly promoted as a prison break thriller wherein a group of prisoners form a band with a hidden plan to escape before their performance on stage, then one excitingly expects some great entertainment with many intense, engaging sequences. And the expectations grow in many folds when you have names such as Farhan Akhtar, Deepak Dobriyal, Rajesh Sharma, Inaamulhaq, Gippy Grewal (from Punjab), Manav Vij, Virendra Saxena and Ronit Roy in the cast playing the key roles.
Sadly LUCKNOW CENTRAL not only fails to deliver in terms of exciting, adventurous content dealing with a prison break, but also remains unable to exploit the talented cast ensemble that comes as the biggest disappointment from the film that could have been a worthy winner.
Unnecessary stressing upon long introduction of its lead actor Farhan Akhtar, the film delivers some silly, illogical scenes regarding his sentence for murder and then continues doing the same when it comes to the completely flawed planning for the crucial jail-break depicted in the second half. The entire build up at first looks fine but soon becomes annoying as it was supposed to be a film revolving around jail inmates and their execution of an escape plan with proper detailing and execution. Strangely the writer-director come to that much publicized part of the film only in its final hour and then vaguely try to be philosophical defining real freedom in the end resulting in a painfully long climax.
As a first time director Ranjit Tiwari certainly shows some sparks in a few well-conceived sequences. However he surely needs to work upon his scripts and chracterisations making them more logical and descriptive in his next projects, particularly if they happen to be crime thrillers revolving around an exciting plot.
In the performances, Farhan Akhtar strangely acts too casually which never justifies his character on screen of a falsely convicted murderer serving life sentence. He honestly fails to add anything intense into the film strongly demanded by his character. Deepak Dobriyal is entertaining yet wasted and the same can be said about Rajesh Sharma, Inaamulhaq and Gippy Grewal too, who otherwise gets a perfect look playing an angry Sikh. Ronit Roy is both effective and repetitive acting in a seen-before kind of mode, but Diana Penty, Ravi Kishan and Virendra Saxena do make their presence felt especially Diana looking gorgeous on the screen in her simple Indian outfits.
With its dialogues making an impact in some selective scenes, LUCKNOW CENTRAL scores well in its cinematography and art direction. Whereas its sloppy editing unnecessary results in a 150 minutes long film becoming a drag in the end. “Teen Kabootar” comes as a fine situational song serving the purpose well and "Rangdaari” sounds good only in its opening phrase, with nothing else works in its soundtrack, not even the remake of the cult Sukhwinder track “Kaavan Kaavan” that was originally there in MONSOON WEDDING released in 2001.
Coming to the inspirations, the film is supposed to be based on real life events as declared in its end-credits but surprisingly just a few weeks back we had QAIDI BAND having an exactly same premise talking about a musical band formed by the inmates in jail. Besides the final 30 minutes also strongly reminds you of ESCAPE TO VICTORY aka VICTORY (1981), which was also interestingly inspired from real life happenings.
Lastly, LUCKNOW CENTRAL might find some audience in its official TV channel telecast in the coming weeks, but its sure not going to find many visiting the theaters buying a costly ticket.
Rating : 2 / 5
