Movie Review : Samrat & Co.

Cast: Rajeev Khandelwal, Madalsa Sharma, Gopal Datt, Priyanshu Chatterjee, Indraneil Sengupta, Navin Prabhakar, Rajneesh Duggal; Director: Kaushik Ghatak; Rating: *1/2

Another case, where the director seems confused about the movie's genre. What was supposed to be a gripping detective flick just turned out to be a spoof on one of the most iconic detectives' Sherlock Holmes. A major part of the film seems heavily "inspired" by the hit series by the same name. The film has a very illogical story line and eventually the director does a shabby job in connecting the dots. Eventually when he realizes that a few dots are not yet connected an extra plot is forced into the film leaving the audience clueless.

Samrat & Co. tells a tale of a young, beautiful and rich girl, Dimpy Singh (Madalsa Sharma), who approaches Samrat Tilakdhari (Rajeev Khandelwal), a private investigator, with a strange case. Their garden got ruined for reasons that appear natural but are not known; leading horticulturists examine the fading plants but they have not been able to identify the probable reason. Further, her father's favorite horse dies; once again the reason for the pre-mature death remains a mystery. That's not the end; Dimpy's father Mahendra Pratap Singh (Girish Karnad), otherwise a very strong and balanced man, has been experiencing deteriorating health. All these aspects when combined make the case sound weird and that grabs the attention of Samrat.(Yes it does, don't ask why, but it does!)

Samrat along with his assistant friend, Chakradhar Pandey (Gopal Datt), visits the huge estate of Mahendra Pratap Singh. As he starts investigating, he discovers lots of mysterious facts. The story progresses when a murder takes place in the house, which leads to a series of events, complicating things for Samrat. Every character around seems to be hiding something. How will Samrat unfold the mysteries? Will there be more mysteries while he is investigating? Will the case be solved? Is what the movie is all about.

As evident the movie doesn't have an intriguing story or a mystery that you want to make pain to solve either.  It seems like a resultant factor of a haphazard mix of plots, suspicious characters and too many underlying stories in itself. Usually rajshri does a great job with a huge star cast, but that trick also doesn't save Samrat & Co.

Performances are average from the entire cast. Rajeev Khandelwal, who was once a heart throb in the television space, tries very hard to look cool, and the effort is noticeable. As opposed to his earlier films, Aamir and Table No. 21, this one seems very disappointing. But then that is ironically the only good part of the film too. Other characters have hardly some screen time and do not add to any interesting twists in the movie. Madalsa Sharma, the female lead in the film is just a dressed up doll in the frame with nothing to do at all in the film. The music has no sense in the course of the movie. And background score is very jarring. All in all nothing much to look forward to, but in any case you are a die-hard fan of Rajeev Khandelwal, then is only why you could think of going for this one or else you could give it a skip.