Main Aur Charles

Based on the life of notorious serial killer Charles Sobhraj, 'Main Aur Charles' is a richly acted biopic, about a notorious man. Even as a film, its decent, but not as sharp as one expects it to be.

'Main Aur Charles' is Inspired by true events and told from the perspective of respected Indian cop, Amod Kanth who handled the notorious case of serial killer, Charles Sobhraj.

'Main Aur Charles' aces as far the performances are concerned. Randeep Hooda is appropriately creepy as the serial killer, flaunting a french accent & alluring women with sheer effectiveness. Adil Hussain nails every bit of Amod Kanth, portraying the honest cop to the fullest. Richa Chadda is absolutely stunning as Mira, Charles's girlfriend, who, without any remorse, defends the criminal. Its an eerie performance, performed majestically.

On the flip-side, 'Main Aur Charles' is unevenly Written. Prawaal Raman's Screenplay begins on an excellent note & the series of events that follow, manage to arrest your attention aptly. Its the second-hour, that begins to fall. The pace drops & the drama in this hour, lacks the punch. Even the culmination, doesn't leave a big impact. Raman's Writing is great partly & ordinary otherwise. Raman's Direction, on the other-hand, oozes style. The Cinematography & The Editing, deserve a special mention.

On the whole, 'Main Aur Charles' stuns in parts, sadly, not entirely.

This film is a good portrayal of Charles Sobhraj's life and journey of crime & passion in India. The story unfolds in a non-linear pattern.We view it as pieces of memories of people, whom Charles has befriended. The plot starts from how he escaped from Thailand after murders and comes to India and starts conning people ,getting jailed and jail-break. This is the first quarter of film. The film shows his charisma,seductiveness, shrewdness along with his desire for evil.The screenplay is tight,without any unnecessary stretch. Then we find how his accomplices helps him for jail-break and what a master-planner he is.

The title is apt as the film is from the perspective of Amod Kant, police officer who pursues him.Their encounters are very intense.

Randeep Hooda as Charles,with his french-Vietnamese accent,charm,seduction is brilliant. Adil Hussain as the good, stern, moral police officer is perfect. Richa Chadda also plays a bold part with ease.

The cinematography is excellent. The sets sometimes lacked the look of 70s & 80s. Direction-4/5 Acting-4/5 Plot-3/5

If after watching a film you have all praises for its lead actor, art direction and background score, but are not willing to praise the film on the whole as any entertaining experience at all, then that's a clear failure for the makers, unable to make any kind of connection with the general viewers, which is unfortunately the case with the much awaited MAIN AUR CHARLES made on the real life stories of Charles Sobhraj, a conman/serial killer active towards the end of the last century.

Recalling the news bulletins/newspapers of those decades I personally remember Sobhraj's criminal deeds being read and discussed with the element of an 'entertaining awe' and most of the people imagining him as a charming, clever hero of some Hindi pulp fiction novel, forgetting all about the blood and murders associated with his big-name willingly. So following the same pattern, one expected the bio-pic of such a controversial-likable personality to be an equally exciting watch depicting 'the cat & mouse games' played with the Police in a truly entertaining manner making the best of the opportunity given.

However it was really sad to see the film turning out to be nothing but a mere stylized portrayal of Charles's happening life scoring much less on the content level disappointing many.

Giving the deserving credit to its visible merits, yes here we have Randeep Hoodatruly enacting the character with an impressive, mesmerizing elegance using a fine mix of language, make-up and dialogue-delivery creating a hypnotic kind of impact (just like the real life Charles), an intelligent re-creation of the gone era by the art-directors, a pulsating background score (though there is no innovation tried by the composers following the past hits) and a talented cast ensemble in the key roles making it an enjoyable film for the viewers just interested in the technical part of the creation ignoring everything else.

On the other hand, when you take into consideration its less engaging script progression, the 'more than required' artistic style of narration, not so clearly spoken dialogues having a foreign accent, the deliberated inserted skin-show, lackluster music (ruining another golden hit "Jab Chhaye Mera Jadoo"), avoidable dumb characters as of Mandana Karimi and no detailed attention given on the 'How he did it all' part of the biography, MAIN AUR CHARLES seems to be a pretty confused product trying to cater the classes as well as the masses together following a jumbled vision of its director Parwaal Raman. As a result despite the honest efforts put in by Adil Hussain, Richa Chaddha and Vipin Kumar it doesn't reach out to the general viewers willing to see something exciting as well as entertaining made on the life of a negative but interesting French-Indian-Vietnamese personality of Charles Sobhraj.

Having said that, MAIN AUR CHARLES does hold you tight in its final 40 minutes showcasing the jail-break sequence and the link established with the opening scene of his murders committed in Thailand. Plus it has some exceptional strokes too played occasionally like focusing on the book 'Mein Kampf' in Sobhraj's personal collection, the old Black & White classic being played in the jail for the selected inmates and the warden referring to him as 'Sir'. Yet, one honestly misses the finer details and is forced to think that the potential subject and figure surely deserved a much better film from the makers materializing on the golden chance.

Moreover the film also couldn't give me answers for many significant questions in mind. Like what was his early childhood about, where did he learn his various arts of influencing/hypnotizing people, how he used to charge for his interviews and discuss copyrights of his personal life-content, did the 'Charles' in his name have anything to do with 'Charlie Chaplin' (as it is rumoured), what were his views about India in particular, what happened to him after the Indian chapter, where is he now and what's in his mind at the present after spending so many years in the jails of various countries? (The questions Google answers much better than the film!)

Anyway, where MAIN AUR CHARLES successfully manages to score on technical grounds, it fails to do the same in terms of 'connecting with the general audience' as desired. But you can still see it for the style quotient and Randeep Hooda in particular who simply nails it playing Charles Sobhraj …..unarguably.

Charles Sobhraj , nicknamed as "The Bikni Killer" and "The Serpant", is a French serial killer of Vietnamese and Indian origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. The dark and intense thriller Main Aur Charles is a good attempt in recollecting the activities performed by Charles Sobhraj during his lifetime but falls little short of making it a perfect watch.

Based on the true story of criminal mastermind , Main Aur Charles gives a detailed description of his dark deeds told from the perspective of an Indian cop, Amod Kanth who looked into the case of serial killer.

From the director of critical acclaim films like Darna Marna Hain and 404:Error Not Found, Prawal Raman divulges into new territory of adapting a biography of a criminal using his knowledge of directing previous dark-thrillers and come up with intelligent, brutal and alluring plot. He defines each characters to tell their own version of Charles in the first half and uses the second half to present the main protagonist. The movie does not waste anytime with unnecessary song-dance routine and sticks to the main point which is the highlight of the film. Hats off to Raman for making it crispy and watchable film. The Tihar jail escape is well-executed. On the flip side, the screenplay sometimes looses the track and is unable to weave things around. Cinematography and art direction is excellent introducing to the 70's era with aplomb

Performance wise, you cannot think of anyone apart from Randeep Hooda playing the character of Charles Sobhraj. The actor perfectly gets into the character as it was tailor made for him. He adapts the charm and persona of Charles with ease. Richa Chadha is a delight to watch. Adil Hussain gives in a brilliant act as Indian cop, Amod Kanth.

Overall, Main Aur Charles is dark, intellectual and brutal film with brilliant performances. Good 3/5

– Ketan Gupta

After a TV series or two and a documentary or two, the infamous Charles Sobhraj on the big screen. His story is certainly interesting and the TV series from the 1980s managed to translate his reported hypnotic charisma on the screen, as far as they could go in the 80's of course. And this is this movie's first problem, that when it tries to convey the atmosphere of the 1970's, it fails to do that but rather gives it the look of made-for-TV cinematography from the 80's. It's bad, really bad and poor acting doesn't help. I couldn't make it past the 30 minute mark. The director and the cameraman should go study modern Korean cinema to see how to pull off period atmosphere while still using modern cinematography technology and techniques.

Which brings me to a question; what is it with people from India and rating movies? Why do you keep giving Indian movies unrealistically high scores? With more reviewers they somewhat come down but it's still not realistic and there's no by nationality breakdown in the stats. You act as if it's somehow unpatriotic to give a movie from one's own country a bad score. It's not.

For those interested in Sobhraj I recommend Neville's book.