Producer: Nitin Patil
Director: Hansal Mehta 
Cast: Kay Kay, Sri Vallabh Vyas, Jaya Seal
Music: Viju Shah

Hansal Mehta who a couple of years back was more apt shooting with the background of the kitchen and spice up his TV show with host chef Sanjeev Kapoor seems to have finally got the strings together to make a gangsta movie.

Hansal’s last attempt at a similar attempt was Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar. The film written and directed by him showed how a village bum turns into an underworld don when confronted with situations that work as a catalyst in bringing forth the darkersides of the human.

In Chhal, written by Suparn Verma (a fantastic script), director Hansal Mehta has bought forth the rapidly mutating system where loyalties and allegiance seem to be of easy virtues. The more you embrace an ethical propriety, the more you question the very basis of modern day morality.

Chhal isn't an easy film to follow -- its dark brooding ambience, numbing moral ambiguity and defiant disregard for conventional storytelling makes the film one of the most complex gangster sagas from Bollywood.

Anyway the plot goes something like this: Karan Menon (Kay Kay) is an investigative cop with a mission: to destroy underworld don Shastri (Sri Vallabh Vyas) and his heir Girish (Prashant Narayanan). For this, he has to gain their trust and join their gang. Karan does this by rescuing Girish's sister Padmini (Jaya Seal) from being kidnapped.

Karan learns the ropes quickly and becomes fast friends with Girish. On the one hand, he gets attached to the gang. On the other, he regularly supplies Inspector Dave (Naved Aslam) with information. The going is smooth until Karan falls in love with Padmini. He finds out that the cops are planning to kill Girish.

And he realises there is a bigger game being played around him --- in which he and Girish are merely pawns.

Can he save Girish? Even if he does, will Girish ever forgive him for being a khabri [snitch]? Will he ever get Padmini?

It would not be fair, but the movie belongs to the screenwriter Suparn Verma, whose script takes on an intriguing premise -- what if a lawmaker joins the lawbreakers to beat them at their own game?

As for the director, Hansal Mehta, for a low-budget film, the director has worked wonders. Filmmakers could learn a thing or two from the manner in which Mehta creates an impact without sending his finances into a tizzy.

The gang-war shootouts, filmed on Mumbai roads, are so chillingly real that one wonders how Mehta got such raw realism into his film without losing grip on the noire vision of violence.

If there's an element of Ram Gopal Varma in Mehta's study of mobsters, there's also the elan of ace director John Woo's stunts in Chhal, especially in the climax in the water-pump factory.

However, Mehta has tried to weave love into the vista of violence and this seems to be out of place. However its wonderboy Viju Shah's songs and background score which go a long way in cementing the seemingly incompatible worlds of love and violence.

Similarly Ajay Verekar's art direction and Neelabh Kaul's cinematography create a realistic dark side of the underworld.

Performancewise, standing at the vortex of this dangerously seductive kingdom of annihilation is actor K.K. Menon. Seen mostly on TV and sporadically on screen, "Chhal" marks the advent of a formidable talent. To the role of the torn and anguished undercover cop, K.K. brings a mordant eloquence seldom seen in Hindi cinema.

Chhal also gifts to hindi cinema another fabulous actor in the form of TV star Prashant who plays the ganster Girish. Check out the scenes when he expresses sudden spurts of unalloyed love for his sister or awakening to the brutal truth that his new friend is actually a police informer.

An actress usually does not have much of a role in a gangster film. Even so, Seal's character is not just a pretty face who sings love songs. The National School of Drama graduate was first seen in Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Bengali film Uttara. Chhal is her first Hindi film. The love angle in the film serves to lighten the film from its hard-hitting violence.

Apurva Asrani's editing is another great performer in the film. Asrani cuts the sequences in an ironic salute to music videos. This ostensibly incongruous pattern of editing imparts an extra dimension of energy to the chilling narration. In one sequence, Asrani juxtaposes Girish's sister confessing her love for Karan with Girish confronting Karan about the matter.

The film throbs with violent life that creeps up on the audience like a tidal wave. Chhal, with a relatively new cast and small budget, gives the gangsters a more human look which is what it is worth a look.