Family of Thakurganj
Ratings: 2/5
Duration: 2 hrs 7 mins
Director: Manoj K Jha
Genre: Drama. Action
Release Date: 19.07.2019 (India)
Starcast: Saurabh Shukla, Jimmy Sheirgill, Nandish Singh, Mahie Gill, Mukesh Tiwari, Sudhir Pandey
Plot: Set in the small town of Thakurganj, this drama revolves around the story of two brothers Nunnu (Jimmy Sheirgill) and Munnu (Nandish Singh). After their father’s death, Nunnu takes the responsibility of the entire family on his shoulder and soon becomes a gangster called Bhaiya ji of Thakurganj who works for the powerful Baba Bhandari (Saurabh Shukla). Both Bhaiya ji and his wife Sharbati (Mahie Gill) successfully runs an extortion business, too. Even his mother supports his criminal ways, but law-abiding younger brother Munnu, who runs a coaching class, resents Nannu’s exploits. Their life takes a turn when the violence happening all over the town starts affecting their personal lives.
Review: The story is quite average, the bigger problem here is that the plot which is weakly woven as for an effective film, you need both plot and treatment. Family of Thakurganj has neither.
The first thing you notice about Family of Thakurganj is the sheer number of influences that overshadow its effort at storytelling. It is almost as if director Manoj K Jha was trying to cross the thematic essentials of Gangs of Wasseypur with the add-on of a small-town story of Dabangg and the humour-violence cocktail of Satya, in order to set up the disparity in ideals among two brothers. The borrow and steal concept from several films fails to be half as good as any of them.
It is the performances clearly that will keep you hooked and not the narrative. Sheirgill nails it as the power freak goon and Sharbati (Mahie Gill), as Jimmy’s dominating wife, is convincing. Saurabh Shukla, as a goon and Supriya who plays mom to the boys, pulls off fine performances as well.
With a decent concept at hand, had the director focused on keeping the story tight, it could have engaged the viewers. The film’s length is problematic, even the humour and the one-liners don’t help in keeping the film afloat. Sadly, writer Dilip Shukla, who carved his niche as commercial Bollywood’s ‘small-town specialist’ scripting the Dabangg films, is out of form here. As the initial interest wanes, the film fails to hold the audience’s attention.
