Director: Ranjit Tiwari
Rating: **
When a struggling scriptwriter runs from pillar to post to find a producer, you get a number of replicas in the industry. And Lucknow Central shares this sinister fate, being almost a replica of Qaidi Band. The similarities simply don't end here. And let's see why?
Kishen Mohan Girhotra (Farhan Akhtar), a struggling young singer-cum-musician from Moradabad ends up in Central Jail for a high-profile murder of an IAS officer. Though he didn't commit the murder still he's cooling his heels till his appeal is heard in the High court for the death penalty. There he gets cozy with four inmates in Dikkat Ansari (Inaamulhaq), Victor Chattopadhyay (Deepak Dobriyal), Purushottam Pandit (Rajesh Sharma), Parminder aka Pammi (Gippy Grewal). In the meantime, The CM of UP ((Ravi Kishen) wants a band to be formed from the inmates to participate in a rock festival taking place later in the year at this dreaded Central Jail of Lucknow. He forces the IG of Police (Veerendra Saxena) to carry out his orders. And the reluctant IG ensures the Jailor (Ronit Roy) to follow his diktat. And Gayatri Kashyap (Diana Penty), who is working as an employee of an NGO that works for reforming the inmates, comes in pretty handy to prod the Jailor to carry out this task.
So the heroine crosses the path of the protagonist of the movie, to achieve this herculean task. Kishen picks up the gauntlet, not to fulfill his ambition of being a musician but to escape the jail. The singer in Pammi and the other three are easy prey to this sinister plan. The rest of the movie is all about executing this plan to escape at the time of the performance.
The prisoners are wonderful as a team and in performing their role to perfection but Farhan slips in and out of the character as his upbringing with a silver spoon in his mouth prevents him from playing the character to the Tee. Diana is a total misfit in the role as she is more comfortable in glamorous roles. Ravi Kishen and Veerendra Saxena display their brilliance in the role allocated to them. Ronit Roy is maturing to be one of the top villians of the industry and he wouldn't let anything dent it so easily.
The story and screenplay by Aseem Arora and Ranjit Tiwari are crafted to show the hero's journey; and had it been written for all the characters, we might have got the winner in hand as the supporting star cast is too good in executing their roles.
In their attempt to glorify the actor Kishen, the tale gets slanted with over-dramatic and atmospheric scenes. Tushar Kanti Ray's cinematography is brilliant and the music gels perfectly into the narrative. Even the song "Ek kabutar, do kabutar, teen kabutara" is well-picturized and special mention to Arjuna Harjaie for his pulsating background score.
Inspite of such wonderful cast and promotion, the movie shall suffer the same fate as "Qaidi Band" but Lucknow Central shall get half a star more for a little more professional effort vis a vis Qaidi Band. One can simply wait for the movie to appear soon on cable and precious ticket and popcorn would be saved.
