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Direction: Rajat Kapoor
Cast: Ranvir Shorey, Neha Dhupia, Vinay Pathak, Naseeruddin Shah
Rating: ***
Mithya is like a rollercoaster ride that never stops even as bullets are fired, impersonations are done, people are betrayed by lies and love and the body count piles up. At the centre of all this is a junior artiste VK (Ranvir Shorey) whose life canters out of control because of his resemblance to a famous don Rajebhaiya.
Ranvir, who is proving to be one of the most gifted comic actors of our times, goes through terror, resignation, apathy, and confidence without missing a beat.
Director Rajat Kapoor infuses every scene with wackiness without resorting either to slapstick or toilet humour. He even manages to tinge a shootout scene with humour, taking it to a new plane. And it is this that gives Mithya its appeal. It is an intelligently written, ably directed and superbly acted comic thriller with enough twists and turns to keep you engrossed through its 100 minute run.
Poor old clueless VK is coerced by a gangster (Naseeruddin Shah) to take the place of a rival gangster, his look-alike, whom the first gang kills. Neha Dhupia, Naseer's moll is used as the bait to get him to agree. He is put in place and after a few false starts gets into the act (he is an actor, after all) till he has an accident and gets amnesia. This spoils everything for everyone and a whole new game starts.
As VK fumbles and dithers first to take the assignment, then to fit into boots much too large for him, you laugh both at and with him. You marvel at a man able to dead pan his way through the minefield that is a gangster war till you realise how out-of-everything he is. Eventually, he gains your sympathy as well as your empathy.
Much like Bheja Fry and Khosla Ka Ghosla, Mithya celebrates the little man, in this case a junior artiste, and gets you involved in a life that would otherwise not even touch the periphery of your awareness. The only problem is the rest of the characters fade into the wallpaper, not caricatures, but only incidental.
