PremiumCrakk Review: Too many abs, too little logic; Vidyut Jammwal and Arjun Rampal shot for Khatron Ke Khiladi but called it a film
If you think I am about to talk about the plot of Crakk, brave of you; how do you discuss something that doesn’t even exist?
Last Updated: 09.00 AM, Feb 23, 2024
One misguided young man Siddharth (Vidyut Jammwal) is aspiring to get qualified for Maidaan, an illegal company that runs extreme sports that either make you win big money or lose your life. He realizes that the champion of the game Dev (Arjun Rampal) is the killer of his brother who had won the same championship. Begins the same age-old game of revenge.
Crakk Review:
Some movie reviews write themselves; I wish this one did, and I would have saved myself from the tragedy that this film made me endure and the big WHAT? I walked out of the theatre with. Vidyut Jammwal's brand of cinema is not consumed for its story or nuances. Action is what his movies scream rather than speak. But are we now also ignoring the plot and accepting a logic-less, dumb charade where Egypt and Africa are two separate countries, and there is an unclaimed country between them where Dev wants to rule? How are the filmmakers this ambitious? What are the script doctors and research teams getting paid for?
It's brave to take credit for writing a film that could qualify as a special episode of Khatron Ke Khiladi, written by Rehan Khan, Sarim Momin, and Mohinder Pratap Singh, and directed by Aditya Dutt. Crakk: Jeethega Toh Jiyegaa! tries to be too many things at once. It is a rip-off of Squid Games when it is introduced, a look-alike of Hunger Games as it progresses, and quickly the 10th iteration of Khatron Ke Khiladi, none of which any of us asked for or were ready for.
Squid Games and Hunger Games both have motives, and the contestants come with reasons. Those shows spoke of class, power, hierarchy, and society. What does Crakk speak about? Nothing. Everything is as random as Vidyut and Nora Fatehi breaking into a dance number leading to a make-out session a couple of minutes after the man was reminded of the death of his brother. Yes, really. Talking of Nora, this has to be a disservice to the clan of influencers because she is literally live-streaming an illegal event. Maidaan exists somewhere in Europe in an undisclosed location. But there are too many people who know where this place is to be called an undisclosed location. Plus, an entire watchtower with a giant Maidaan logo on it is not enough to disguise, sir!
Add to this that everyone is watching the live stream of some random illegal game. Even Amy Jackson, who plays an intelligence officer in Poland and speaks 13 languages like she has put her money in a gamble on it. Too many people have access to the dark web in this film's universe that the film exists in. How else do you explain the angry parents of Siddharth suddenly accessing the match on their phones like it’s streaming on Netflix?
If you think I am about to talk about the plot of Crakk, how do you discuss something that doesn’t even exist? In the name of dialogues, we have the most double-meaning slapstick one-liners that are sugar-coated only so the film gets a U/A certificate. The man can run on trains, move trucks, and literally climb high rises, but cannot think of informing his parents before he leaves for a foreign country on a wooden boat. Even if you let this go, how do you explain him asking for help to get him out of the Maidaan facility and Amy Jackson telling him to come to a safe place? Woman, he wants help to GET OUT; what part of those two words mean he can freely come somewhere? To our collective dismay, he even goes there, and Arjun Rampal is fooled by him again. What is even happening?
The only brief one can think of is that the actors were told to build great bodies, tan themselves, and talk in whatever accent they could catch in 7 business days because how else do you define the inconsistent job at acting, dialect, and character arc? Two hours into the movie, it refuses to end because it wants you to believe that the European police are least bothered about what is happening on their side of the world apart from an intelligence agency that only plans some very weird operations. Well, what isn’t weird here?
The action is good but is also killed by the CGI that screams it was done in front of a green screen in some scenes. People are falling in love, dying in love, and there is a Siddharth between all this scratching and equally logic-less. Crakk, after a point, tests your patience, and you are not concerned about what happened to Nora’s character, who was just the glamour doll for the film and not even used correctly. People are dying, and no one's bothered. Governments are doing nothing to find their missing people. Everyone is a heartless individual dancing on the ground where a dead body lay minutes ago. A spoof of dystopia it seems, and that’s a spoof that cannot be funny.
Crakk Review – Final Verdict:
Some ideas should not be spoken out loud; they are pretty good if kept in your mind and not shared. Crakk was definitely one such project. Only muscles shine here; rest everything is as bland as Nora Fatehi’s motivation to be an influencer for an illegal syndicate.