Ek Chatur Naar, directed by Umesh Shukla, is the story of a woman who, through her cunningness, decides to turn the life of a wealthy and influential man upside down. The story and the screenplay are not exceptional, but they are not bad either. The writers and the director have created a pretty decent playground for the actors to play upon and elevate it through their performances. Yashpal Sharma, Zakir Hussain, and Sushant Singh made the most out of the written material, whereas Heli Daruwala and Neil Nitin Mukesh put on a fairly decent show. As far as Divya Khossla’s performance is considered, for lack of a better word, I felt it was way too pretentious. What she needed to understand was that you do not need to emote through amateurish expressions to communicate what’s going on in your mind. The audience is not dumb, and sometimes you just need to “be” in a frame rather than try to do everything possible to be noticed. Every gesture, every nuance she tries to put in her character takes it further away from reality and just looks extremely crass and cringeworthy. I can actually pinpoint the time stamps where the character of Mamta does something that shocks you with this amateurish performance that lacks depth. Divya Khossla doesn’t look the part, and her performance lacks conviction. I reiterate that the film is decent, apart from its climax, where the writers try to force-fit a lot of things that seem way too convenient, and it just spoils the broth for me. That said, you should give the film a watch, arrive at your own opinion, and let us know what you think about it. So let’s find out what happened in the film and if Mamta was able to achieve what she set out to.
Spoiler Alert
Who stole Abhishek’s mobile phone?
Abhishek Verma ran a consultancy firm where he worked for various political parties to help them execute their policies in a way that benefitted him and the politicians alike. Basically, he helped the political leaders like Qureshi (played by Zakir Hussain) and Thakur (played by Yashpal Sharma) orchestrate scams in a manner that the blame never fell on them, and their real intentions never came to light. Quershi’s party was going to get massive funding, and he wanted Abhishek to launder money and be in charge of the entire execution process. Qureshi sent a list of MLAs and the amount that had to be transferred to them. He had sent a message with all the details to Abhishek, but what the latter didn’t know was that his mobile phone had been stolen. Mamta,who came from a humble background, was an exceptional conwoman. She had apparently taken a loan of Rs 20 lakhs from Thakur, which was why she’d been in hiding for some time. Thakur paid a visit to her house, in a slum in Lucknow, but every time he found her door locked, not knowing that she was hiding there all along. Mamta was a shrewd conspirator, and she stole Abhishek’s mobile, though we didn’t know at that point that she had an ulterior motive behind doing so. Mamta realized that there were some compromising videos of Abhishek and his employee Tina on that phone, and that’s when she started blackmailing him. She asked for a ransom of 2 crore rupees, and Abhishek at that moment underestimated her and believed that he would be able to catch her using his contacts. Abhishek got in touch with Trilok, the inspector of a local police station, and gave him the job of finding Mamta. Trilok tried hisbest to locate Mamta, but he realized that she was much more cunning and smart than he presumed her to be. Mamta, just to show Abhishek what she was capable of, leaked a video of him dancing, and she threatened to leak his video with Tina if he didn’t give her the money. Qureshi and the party leader told Abhishek to be a little careful if he didn’t want his reputation tarnished. They told him that he was working with the party and he should not leave any loose ends. Abhishek was paranoid and frustrated, but still he believed that a small-time thief wouldn’t be able to outplay him.
How did Mamta pin the blame on Tina?
Trilok and Abhishek were able to locate where Mamta stayed, and they went to pay her a visit. Mamta was able to hide before they came, and so they took her mother-in-law, Radha, into custody, and took her to the police station. Mamta realized that in order to save her family’s life, she needed to act swiftly and make her next move before it was too late. Firstly, Mamta went to Abhishek’s house and got the job of a house help. When Abhishek came back to his home, he was shocked to find her there. Mamta threatened that if he did not give her the money and ask his friends to release her mother-in-law, she would tell his wife that he’d had an affair. She used the opportunity to her advantage and made Thakur and Abhishek believe that it was Tina who was pulling the strings and that she was merely acting on her orders. Mamta gave a call to Qureshi, pretending to be Tina, and told him that Abhishek was trying to backstab him. Then Radha paid a visit to Thakur and told him that Mamta had an affair with a wealthy man named Abhishek and that the oppressive man was trying to take advantage of her. Radha told Thakur that Abhishek would pay him his money, since the man didn’t want his real face to be exposed in front of his family. Thakur went to Abhishek’s office and told him that he knew about his affair with Tina, since Radha had told him that Tina and Mamta were the same person. Qureshi also warned Abhishek that if he even thought of backstabbing him, things wouldn’t end up well for him. Abhishek got so fed up that he asked Trilok to get rid of Mamta. Trilok hit the auto in which Mamta was traveling to kill her and make it look like an accident. The auto fell from the bridge, but Mamta miraculously survived and went to Abhishek’s house the very next morning to show him that his plan had failed. Abhishek was running out of ideas, and he was well aware that he was in a dire situation.
Why Did Mamta Want To Take Revenge On Abhishek?
Abhishek kidnapped Mamta’s son and took her to a rail yard, where he asked her to stop her petty games and return his mobile. But Mamta already had a plan B in place. She saw that Abhishek still believed that Tina was the one who was behind everything, and so she decided to take advantage of that situation and create a rift between Qureshi, Tina, and Abhishek. She had already called Thakur to the scene, and that’s when she revealed that the boy Abhishek had kidnapped was actually Thakur’s son, and not hers. But even after so much misunderstanding, Abhishek was able to sort the matter out. He told Qureshi that it was in their best interests to join hands and work together. Abhishek asked Trilok to shoot Mamta, and that was when it was revealed that Trilok, since the beginning, was on Mamta’s side. Mamta’s husband was the branch manager of a rural bank that had given loans to a lot of farmers. Tina and Abhishek had taken a huge loan from that bank under the pretense of spending it on social welfare. Obviously, the bank didn’t get the money back, and the entire blame was put on Mamta’s husband. Her husband then took money from Thakur to repay the farmers, but before that could happen the blame was pinned on him. Many farmers and even Mamta’s husband committed suicide, and that’s when she decided to take revenge on Abhishek. She had been planning the entire thing for a long time, and it was not a coincidence that she had stumbled upon Abhishek’s phone and decided to blackmail him. Trilok told the others present at the scene that he had already recorded the entire conversation that had happened there, and that it had been sent to the headquarters. Abhishek, in a desperate attempt to save his life and escape from the scene, threatened to kill Mamta’s son. But while escaping, he got hit by a train and succumbed to his injuries. Qureshi and Tina were also arrested on charges of corruption, and Mamta was finally able to get her revenge. Mamta returned the money to the family of the farmers and even sent a bag full of cash to Abhishek’s family, as she knew it was not their fault. At the end of Ek Chatur Naar, we got to know that Mamta had accidentally dropped Abhishek’s phone in the drain and she was just bluffing all along. The film tries to make Mamta look like the smartest schemer to have ever existed, but a flimsy narrative just doesn’t let it leave the kind of impact it intends to.
