Film: Main Aur Charles
Director: Prawaal Raman
Cast: Randeep Hooda, Richa Chadha, Adil Hussain
Excerpts from reviews of Main Aur Charles:
The attempt here is to make a chic Hollywood-style period crime thriller spilling over with sex, crime and drugs. Much of the film is in English, since Charles hangs around with foreign tourists for the most part, and when he speaks, it is with a thick French accent. Since Charles is portrayed as a man of immense and irresistible sex appeal, the movie has any number of women with smooth backs and exposed limbs willing to shed their clothes at the slightest excuse.
Randeep Hooda’s beautifully judged and controlled performance conveys his character’s mystique. Hooda understands that the movie is about the image, not the man, and that a glint or a sneer is adequate to communicate his character’s contempt for the Indian judicial system and his victims.
Had Raman stuck with his investigation into Charles’s mystique and his self-mythologisation, this movie might have actually become the sophisticated biopic it wants to be. Main Aur Charles should really have been about the poster, not the case file.
Nandini Ramnath (Scroll.in)
It is 1968 and Raman’s film is all about the vibe, which he lathers on with Soderbergh-like style, intentionally keeping things loosely disjointed and flowy: this is a film that wears its shirt collars gigantic and leaves a couple of buttons open. The pacing, in fact, is a marvel, as the script — very atypically by Hindi mainstream standards — cuts its characters slack and moves with organic, unhurried rhythm.
Randeep Hooda, in the performance of his career, plays Charles with immense flair, hoovering up women and stunning men with his French-ish accent and overwhelming self-belief. He waxes on about predeterminism in the courtroom and Paris in the bedroom, and Hooda hits the mark with unshowy, applause-worthy ease.
Raja Sen (Rajasen.com)
Main Aur Charles is a very seductive film. Just like its deadly subject, Charles Sobhraj.
In Main Aur Charles, writer/director Prawaal Raman (better known for Darna Mana hai), along with Randeep Hooda have nailed that roguish enigmatic quality of Sobhraj. And the main weapon of lethal appeal to the senses is Aditya Trivedi’s theme music.
You don’t really mind the missing hard-boiled plot, because by the time the film ends, we are treated to well-shot frames and the amazing theme music. Style wins. The seduction is complete.
Gayatri Gauri (Firstpost.com)