'Shor in the City:' Hindie cinema's answer to a Guy Ritchie film

“Shor in the City” bears all the markings of a so-called Hindie movie: intertwining plot lines, gritty cinematography, real locations, a low-key director duo who have shown promise (Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. of “99”) and an eclectic cast.

The film tells three stories that play out over 11 days coinciding with the pandemonium of Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in Mumbai.

Of the three plotlines, one features Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), Mandook (Pitobash Tripathy) and Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) as three small-time goons who chance upon a bagful of guns which they set out to sell.

A parallel plot line tells the story of Abhay (American import Sendhil Ramamurthy) -- an expat of Indian origin who has moved to India to start a business that runs afoul of local gangsters who offer him protection for a price.

The final strand is the story of young Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), an aspiring cricketer who must make it through team selections so that he can "secure his future."

These three storylines have the potential to explore the diversity within Mumbai as a metropolis, but the characters are so thinly rendered they might as well have been played by stick figures. 

The male characters are all victims of circumstance and -- the way the writers look at it -- resorting to crime is the only recourse for any character who finds himself in a bind. This setup does an interesting job of painting the heroes and villains in varying shades of gray but it is worth noting here that this is exactly that -- a setup.

Which is a lot more than can be said of the effort put into the setting up of the female characters in this movie.

They are either passive or petulant, with the exception of the model Shalmili, played by debutante Preeti Desai, whose character is summarily written out of the script for no perceivable dramatic or creative reason and provides zero perceivable impetus to Abhay’s story.

For the short time she is around, Desai’s chemistry with actor Ramamurthy is non-existent.

Shalmili bums cigarettes off random taxi drivers, meets Abhay at an anonymous nightclub, they go on a couple of dates, have sex and then she leaves, never to return.     

On a parallel track, Sawan the cricketer’s relationship is a series of make-out encounters with his girlfriend Sejal (Girija Oak), which end in heated arguments because she is fed up with the never-ending procession of prospective grooms made to wander through her living room.

She feels it is his duty to make things right by getting on the cricket team so that they can be married. End of story.

Of the three man-woman relationships on display in “Shor”, book pirate Tilak’s inarticulate fumbling with his new bride Sapna (Radhika Apte, who does a very effective job of conveying the discomfort and enthusiasm of a newlywed) is the most engaging.

Sapna is a bright, educated woman who has been married off to the semi-literate Tilak who is easily pressured into participating in the hare-brained (and criminal) schemes of his buddies.

On the surface “Shor in the city” has the DNA of a breakout movie which explores contemporary urban Indian terrain through interesting storytelling. But because of the casual way the characters are handled by the writer-directors of this film, that surface is never scratched and over time it begins to itch.

We shouldn’t have to rely on receiving information about a film’s characters from the press tours.

If Abhay is supposed to have had a violent past, audiences might require a little more information than the cursory examination of a scar on his back by the woman he’s just slept with.

Is the book publishing pirate supposed to be sympathetic just because he forces his staff to redo a print run, over a few missed pages in the book they are ripping off?

And is the loud idiot in the gun-related story supposed to appear lovable solely because of his almost romantic attachment to a machine gun?

"Shor in the City" is, in many respects, better than the industry average and that's why viewers like it, but not by enough.