"SETTERS" Movie Review: A Well-Set Plot Ruined By Shallow Script

SETTERS

Director: Ashwini Chaudhary
Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Aftab Shivdasani, Mahesh Manjrekar,...
Rating: 1.5 / 5

Bollywood has started diving deep into the realms of distinctive narration. The stage is being set for the topics related to the examination malpractices in India. And it’s not something which we haven’t heard off, but it is a topic which we are least introduced to.

Emraan Hashmi's Why Cheat India is a very recent example, and now another story which revolves around the examination misconducts surfaces on the big screen in the form of SETTERS.

The movie is set on the very soil of Hindi heartland, Varanasi. Director Ashwini Chaudhary does a stupendous job setting up the film with all the bijou of the land with breathtaking shots of the ghat, the Ganges, the famous Aarti and not to forget the slang.

Pavan Malhotra plays the role of Bhaiyyaji, the bossman of the criminals and his henchman is Apurva Choudhary played by Shreyas Talpade. For a change, it feels nice to see Shreyas Talpade in a role which has nothing to deal with comedy. And then the movie takes us to the honest policeman and the trouble maker for Bhaiyyaji, Aditya Singh helmed by Aftab Shivdasani. The film becomes a stereotypical cat and mouse game between the men in Khaki and the gang.

SETTERS is not a movie where we witness stereotypical one-man action sequences or the hero and the heroine wandering around a picturesque location singing a romantic song. The movie tries to bring out the crude mentality and desperation of people to ace an examination. Although it breezes us through bygone chemistry between Aditya’s wife and Apurva. It also hints us with the probability of Apurva being Aditya’s friend once but currently not. And that’s it. It tries to touch all the corners but never narrates it entirely, and that makes the movie drag. The characters seemed lost trying to find their foot in the movie. All the characters penned by the writer had potential which remained unexplored. They could have extracted more out of Apurva, Aditya, and Bhaiyyaji.

The intention was very clear from the director to set up a movie which resonates films like Baby or Special 26. What backed those movies was a script which had depth in them. Writing which backed the strong performances of the characters, and it's the shaky script that made a tedious task to watch the entire movie at one go. Actually, they could have drawn much more aspiration from Neeraj Pandey's movie Special 26. The film shows us how the characters are put in such an uncomfortable situation that the audience watching it feels the same. There weren't any such gripping moments in the entire films. The plot twists were something which tends to amuse you. But the twists needed more meat to it. More subtle narration explaining the twists and thus keeping the audience at the brink. Just like how Baby did.

There are many methods adopted by the gang which will amuse you too. For example, the code language they use over the phone is easily deciphered by the police. The way they deciphered was never explained. This needs to be fed to the audience, and only then the audience could stay on course with narration.

The movie was very well set up, but it is clearly demanding a script which would back the narration that follows in the second half. It was a film which takes you to the highs but later on falls like a pack of cards, all scrambled and messy. Ashwini Chaudhary's narration remains the same as it was in the movies like Good Boy, Bad Boy or Jodi Breakers. Check out the trailer here: