LUCKNOW CENTRAL and its unacceptable absurdities (An overview by Bobby Sing)

Specifically promoted as a prison break film, the major drawback of LUCKNOW CENTRAL is that it never talks about anything related to the crucial jail break in its first hour and the narration reaches there just before the intermission leaving everything for its second half.

Besides, some ridiculous absurdities begin when the team is formed working on a seriously vague plan that even involves filling up the bass drum with fake police dresses to be worn while escaping, which they never wear in the end, leaving the dresses in the jail itself to be caught by the authorities.

Further mentioning its most illogical insertions, a court gives Farhan life imprisonment without even considering any other important evidences in his case such as the murder-weapon and then the film never excitingly reveals any concrete or logical plan made by the team in details that ideally forms the most important part of a script based on a jail-break.

Farhan is brought into the jail governed by Ronit Roy and all of a sudden he starts pretending to be a person who cannot speak just for nothing. Later he starts speaking and nobody is concerned by this sudden revelation at all among the jail authorities.

A person convicted for murder easily convinces a young, smart, educated girl from an NGO (Diana) about forming a band in the jail, when she doesn’t even know him, his musical background or capabilities to head such a musical team.

In no time a new young entrant in the jail is able to take into confidence four other hardcore criminals serving their sentence since years in the same jail (with a reputation) without any solid reasoning. Moreover for no reason Deepak Dobriyal suddenly decides to ditch Manav Vij (his chief in the jail), joining Farhan that never gets justified in the film by the writers.

A jailor orders the team of inmates to perform their song, asks his subordinate to make a video of the act and then orders to post it in the social media making a fool of himself, posing as an irresponsible officer leaking his own jail videos.

The most ridiculous scenes are the ones where the band members are shown learning vocal music and some instruments as if it can easily be done by anyone in just a few days. Moreover the choice of instruments is so stupid including a tuba, trumpet, flute and a drum set. Plus none of the instruments they are shown playing (or learning) are there in their final performance on stage (except a keyboard placed in front of Gippy Grewal).

Such is the intelligent planning made by the lead hero that he only talks about escaping the jail (by jumping a wall) and never talks about what needs to be done individually after getting out hiding in different locations.

However the biggest flaw in LUCKNOW CENTRAL lies in its basic premise itself where a murder convict wishes to escape the jail to fulfill his desire of becoming a singing sensation, a stage artist winning people’s hearts through his songs, album and stage performances. Now how that can even be imagined by a sensible person (read writers), when the person is an escaped convict, sentenced for life for a murder, chased by police all over, with his posters to be out soon (post his escape) for a clear recognition.

To be fair, ignoring its strange similarities with the recent QAIDI BAND, a few well-conceived sequences do give us the glimpses of a capable director here working on a silly script. So hope debutant Ranjit Tiwari takes good care of this decisive shortcoming in the future coming up with a much better film.

Cheers! 

(The article also got featured in UC-News App in September 2017)