Film name: Mosagallu
Cast: Manchu Vishnu, Kajal Aggarwal and Naveen Chandra
Director: Jeffrey Gee Chin
Rating: 1.5/5
Mosagallu review: Mosagallu got a lot of pre-release buzz as it was based on a real-life scam, and had an American director as well. Slick promotions caused expectations to double, and, to add to the excitement, the story was penned by one other than Manchu Vishnu. Small wonder that it was eagerly awaited. But the film fails to live up to the hype.
Mosagallu is a story of a group of con men orchestrating a scam worth $300 million. Siblings Arjun (Manchu Vishnu) and Anu (Kajal Aggarwal) faced dire situations as children. They become experts in the con game, growing up. They meet a wicked IT head honcho (Navdeep) and a criminal (Naveen Chandra) and initiate a scam to cheat American citizens. The team poses as US tax officials and tricks people into parting with massive amounts of money. But when ACP Kumar (Suniel Shetty) tries nab them, they hit a roadblock.
On paper, the story of a brother-sister duo scamming the most powerful nation sounds interesting. The ensemble cast of Vishnu, Kajal Aggarwal and Suniel Shetty increases the stakes. The icing on the cake is director Jeffrey Gee Chin who can bring tense action to the film’s canvas. But, alas! All the big guns misfire, and the movie is anything but a thriller.
Manchu Vishnu’s ambitious attempt to tell the story of the world’s biggest IT scam includes thrills and spicy narrative, but the cheesy execution makes the film look like the work of a bunch of amateur film-makers. The magnitude of an international scam doesn’t come through, and for the most part, the action seems to be taking place in or near Hyderabad.
The suspense unfolds slowly, testing your patience, the ride is not so edge-of-the-seat, and there’s nothing much left to come to light during the big reveal. The backstories of the protagonists fail to create the right emotional ambience.
A poorly written and edited second half adds to the miserable experience. The investigation episodes lack common sense. The different character types and arcs in the latter half fail to add meat to the story. You’re left trying to make sense of total chaos. Music and cinematography are other major let-downs.
You can’t root for the characters or anything else in the film. In a nutshell, it’s an ambitious story that fell prey to poor execution.
