If there was, at all, a plot to this movie, it got mixed up in the ridiculous screenplay and senseless sequences taking place on screen. Champak (Riteish Deshmukh), Genda (Vikram Thapa) and Gulab (Bhuvan Arora) are three ordinary men who one day decided to rob a bank. We believe that the plan was made instantaneously just like the movie because what happens during this heist is so far-fetched that not once do you understand the chaos. A politician, more robberies and murders are all connected to this crime that these novice men are committing. The highlight of this movie was the utter stupidity and waste of talent. Sahil Vaid did somehow manage to pull a good performance out of this movie. Also the plot twist at the end was something that was not expected but it was too late in the movie to actually have salvaged it. Some Mumbai Vs Delhi dialogues made the movie bearable. Whoever made this movie, clearly was having a bad day and took out his frustration on the audiences. So, we suggest you sit this one out. Don’t even download it when a good print comes out. Just forget it was ever released!

To begin with, the story is lame and the characters plain stupid. Even the background characters, like the hostages in the bank, show traits of being completely insane. The screenplay and characters reek of laziness on the part of the writer. It is sad that the film fails to strike a chord even with a widely popular aspect. Champak wants to give a miss to the stash of cash under Bappa, an idol of Lord Ganesh, but the Delhi guys say, “Humare yaha bappa nahi aate, toh hum utha lete hain ye paise”. Perhaps the filmmaker wanted to draw attention to the futility of the north-south divide, but he fails miserably at doing that smartly. There are, nonetheless, some smart twists in the plot but the thrill lasts for a short span and fizzles out under the lame script. The film gains pace and gets interesting towards the end with a few more twists thrown in. But the cheeky references to Dhoom (a YRF production) kill half the charm. It is sad to see Riteish Deshmukh in the film because he is such a waste of talent. Vivek Oberoi, on his part, tries his best to play the supercop (an honest and smart CBI officer) who has two pistols and a whiskey bottle under his belt. It is best not to comment on the acting of Vikram, Bhuvan and Rhea Chakraborty (who plays a reporter) as the script offers little scope for them. Eventually, Bank Chor proves to be the poor man’s version of Dhoom. Only, this one leans on trying to be more comic than thriller and fails at doing so. Completely avoidable.

The first fifteen minutes of Bank Chor are pretty funny. This, then, is a goof. Directed by a gentleman named Bumpy and featuring a bank-robber crippled by vaastu beliefs, this is clearly not a film trying to be taken seriously. Which is perfectly fine. The premise of a bank robbery gone chaotic can lead to laughs, and all this farce had to aim at was to constantly and unpredictably keep tickling the audience. Tragically, after a little while the film starts to concentrate on the plot and its needlessly twisty twists, going from a spoofy little comedy to an insipid thriller where the stakes never feel real. As a result Bank Chor is neither funny enough nor compelling enough. At some point this film invokes Dhoom: 3, that most imbecilic of films from the Yash Raj stable, and, well, with idols like those... Bank Chor has a few mildly amusing moments, but it could have been a genuinely funny film. The setup is there, the characters are there, Deshmukh is around and game to embrace the nuttiness. Yet the film keeps relentlessly spinning its wheels - while insisting on showing us just how much it is spinning said wheels - and finally becomes the kind of film it is trying to spoof. Even a substandard or cliched basic plotline could have been sidestepped were only the gags smart enough, or, at least, that there were enough of them. This one spends too much time not going for the laughs. It starts off being about blank chors, and ends up a bank bore.

To make a zippy heist caper, which is what Bank Chor is aiming at, you don’t need rocket science. You just need smarts. And that is the very thing missing from this shockingly lame, juvenile enterprise, whose title seems to have been chosen because it rhymes with a cuss word. Ha ha? Not. But nothing helps. When the names of the characters lead straight to the most predictable jokes (Amjad Khan is, of course, equal to `kitnay aadmi thay’), and are the most interesting aspect of the characters, you know where this is headed. South? Yep, full marks again. The film gets a little perky right at the end, with a twist and all, but it is much too little much too late. Oberoi, who can do so much better, is reduced to puffing his chest, and twirling his ‘tache. And I’m saddest about the waste of the talented Deshmukh, so good at dead-panning and lifting the most deadbeat of films. This one’s beyond him, alas. Cuss word. Blip, blip.

The blueprint of Bank Chor must have had one instruction on it: Include jokes about people that Indian Twitter users love to cringe-watch. So there’s an inexplicable cameo by Baba Sehgal, a really (really!) forced joke about Bappi Lahiri, a reference to Himesh Reshammiya and a throwaway line about Arnab Goswami. Wonder why the writers left out Bobby Deol? The first half has puns that only the characters find funny, and situations that are too convenient to cause intrigue. You constantly find yourself coming up with better solutions to situations than the movie provides. However, it leaves logical flaws and silly antics behind and cleans up its (third) act. The bumps in the script don’t hold back the performers. Riteish’s middle-class Marathiness endears him to the viewer; Vivek’s the perfect good cop to all the thugs around him; Thapa and Arora as two Delhi goons are hilarious — there’s a spin-off waiting to happen with these two. Rhea Chakraborty has perfected the art of succeeding in small, supporting roles without shouldering too much responsibility, and Sahil Vaid’s performance singularly pulls up the movie. But otherwise, it is too reminiscent of bank-heist movies of the past; there are even clear shoutouts to the Dhoom franchise. A better plan of action and a few dry runs with the script would have ensured a product to bank on.