A superficial drama that never rises above its boring sentimentality, notes Mayur Sanap.
There's an inherent appeal to the David vs Goliath theme as narrative device that depicts the journey of an underdog going against the high and mighty in order to conquer things.
Irrespective of a film's genre, most of these films can easily connect with the audience at the rooted level with their emotional and inspirational qualities.
In Director Ashwini Dhar's Hisaab Barabar, the same storytelling device is placed to tell the story of a common man's fight against a hefty banking fraud. While the film is achingly sincere with its ambition and intention, what Hisaab Barabar lacks is smarts and wits in its writing for an effective social commentary.
R Madhavan's Radhe Mohan Sharma/Sharmaji works as a railway ticker examiner and proudly wears his morals on his sleeve. He is a doting single father to a son after his wife leaves the family without any trace of contact.
Radhe gets a rude shock when he notices an unreasonable deduction of Rs 27.50 from his bank. He grows paranoid and begins to question the bank that instead snaps at him for dwelling on such a meagre amount.
The bank is owned by an influential person Micky Mehta (Neil Nitin Mukesh) who hijacks the rules to cheat his customers. Radhe Mohan's paranoia slowly grows into suspicion of a massive banking scam.
Radhe teams up with a local inspector Poonam Joshi (Kirti Kulhari) and learns that the bank is cheating its account holders by bluffing around the promised interest amount which paves a way for a financial fraud worth thousands of crores.
Written by Ritesh Shastri and Director Ashwini Dhar himself, the subject they tackle is novel and interesting, but the sloppy drama that moves the plot forward reduces the impact.
It almost like the makers are aware they are dealing with a heavy subject matter so they saddle the drama with a series of clichés for easy viewing.
These detours are seen in form of a generically written romance between Kirti and Madhavan, oddly placed comical gags (featuring a credit card-selling bank employee) and a barrage of futile side characters (which include an overly dramatic Rashami Desai as a Bihari-speaking soppy neighbour).
The film doesn't even attempt to interweave these multiple sub-plots, including Radhe's estranged wife whose character is mentioned earlier but has no relevance in the story later on.
It makes you wonder why derail the focus with these extra bits when you already have such a strong central story?
With a more restrained approach and tightly woven narrative, Hisaab Barabar would have offered us a sharper look into how the bank scams work and their far-reaching ramifications.
What we get here instead is the superficial drama that never rises above its boring sentimentality.
Hisaab Barabar streams on ZEE5.
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