A film talking about a group of criminally inclined youngsters, a wannabe fashion queen, a corrupt politician, an honest police officer, his incompetent subordinates and a naxalite leader getting involved in a bank robbery might have appeared pretty interesting in its first story narration. Plus every character of the script speaking in a typical local (Bihari) lingo must have sounded cool with a pinch of dark humour.
But sadly the end result neither looks interesting nor sounds cool in its onscreen execution, turning out to be a really tough watch despite the presence of many veteran actors. Making vague mention of heist movies like OCEAN’s ELEVEN, the film never establishes any kind of connect with its viewer right from the first scene and the biggest reason of the same remains its spoken local language which all looks forced and doesn’t match with the actors, otherwise having a completely different persona.
Co-produced by Anupam Kher, who also features in the film in a short and unimportant role, this seems to be a project made to showcase the talent of his acting school students to be very honest. However I seriously doubt it would be of any help in their individual careers, since it fails to present them in a highly likable or impressive manner leaving a solid impact.
So without making any immediate judgment on their acting skills, I would simply like to call it as no-show kind of film made by the debutant director Sattwik Mohanty, wasting a golden opportunity given by the producers. Probably he could have proved himself much more in a different young subject, not getting into the genre of dark, black comedy forcibly relating it to the real-life instances of Naxalites and Demonetisation.
Apart from Anupam Kher, the film also cruelly wastes Satish Kaushik in a small comedian kind of role but thankfully has Jimmy Shergill, once again proving to be the only saving grace of a project playing an honest police officer. With a decent cinematography and background score RANCHI DIARIES actually falters big time in its mismatch writing, characterisations, songs and language resulting in a poor show. At times it looks like such a vision-less film, particularly when a villager repeatedly mentions ALIENS out of nowhere coming to take away the cattle (and that should give you a clear idea).
In short, it's really tragic that the young team missed such a rare opportunity. I really wish they had come up with something fresh and noteworthy as last week’s TU HAI MERA SUNDAY.
Note : Strangely Multiplexes are ready to cancel shows of small films like Ranchi Diaries but are not ready to reduce prices for such films inviting more viewers.
(Note: The article also got featured at UC-News Mobile App in October 2017)
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Shared below are views - Beyond the initial write-up with more interesting insights.
Giving the much awaited chance to the newcomers, this is indeed a noble task undertaken by co-producer Anupam Kher, the founder of an acting school (The Actor Prepares) in Mumbai. And that is the best a veteran can do for his own students.
Subhash Ghai also tried the same making a few small projects some years back taking forward his mission of establishing Whistling Woods International in Mumbai. But unfortunately the debutants failed to take any advantage of the opportunity given and the trend continues with RANCHI DIARIES this week, making no impact of any kind being a pretty badly made movie.
Here though the film has nothing to be mentioned as any big positive feature but the question remains that how many would opt for such non-starcast, lesser publicized films at such a high priced ticket and many other free entertaining options available at the mobile devices. And how can these films be successful even if they turn out to be above average to good?
Strangely multiplexes are ready to cancel shows of these films on the very first day of their release but not ready to reduce the prices for such small unknown films inviting more viewers.
Anyway RANCHI DIARIES is yet another film wherein the youngsters waste a rare opportunity given that many others keep waiting for.
Rating : 1 / 5 (including 0.5 for the only saving grace as Jimmy Shergill)
