TNI Bureau: ‘Special 26’ is a beautifully depicted story inspired by true incident that deals with the core issue between the Law breakers and law enforcers. Akshay Kumar has given his best shot in the film directed by Niraj Pandey.
Earlier, Niraj was lauded for his ‘A Wednesday’, which dealt with the problems of a common man. This film is an attempt about con man.
The film takes its basics from the iniquitous robbery that had taken place on 19-March-1987, when 26 people acted to raid Opera house in Mumbai, a famous jeweler shop pretending as income tax officials. Then, the robbery was successfully executed and the thugs had walked away with jewels worth lakhs. This period movie in fact presents 3 such infamous episodes that had occurred in the eighties.
The story – A group of con men works out and executes a series of robberies, targeting the rich and famous, business men and politicians and walks away with their black money, by posing as CBI or IT officers.
Specialty of the film is that though it encompasses a crime story there is very few instance of action or fighting sequences keeping the story intact. In other words the film conveys that if you are doing justice to the script, masala is not needed.
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Performances – Akshaya Kumar plays the character Mon Singh, leader of the heist group and this is one of his best presentations ever. In this film neither he is doing comedy nor performing action but still it presents the Khiladi in the right way. This is one of the most challenging roles in his career and he has done complete justice to it.
Manoj Vajpayee is playing the real CBI officer, Waseem Khan and he is also very good as usual. This is one of the best from Manoj to recall. Again, veteran actor Anupam Kher, who plays Sharmaji in the film, also adds a lot to the success of the film. In fact, the team Akshaya, Anupam and Manoj has offered a nice work.
Besides these three, Jimmy Sheirgill (plays the character Ranveer Singh) has also done well whatever he has been given. The only lead female actor Kajal Agarwal has not much to do in this heist drama. Also the romantic scenes in the first half could be chopped to keep intact the virginity of the film, though the second half is outstanding. Divya Dutta has a short role, which she enacts well.
Coming to music of M M Kareem and Himesh Reshamiyah, the film neither had a requirement of music nor was any of the tracks so memorable. Bobby Singh’s cinematography is very good.
We recommend the film as a ‘must watch’ for Akshaya Kumar, who has come up in a totally different avatar, and for the script, which has perfected been presented in ‘Special 26’.
Director – Neeraj Pandey
Stars – Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Vajpayee, Kajal Agarwal
Our rating – **** stars out of 5.