A better half of entertainment

It's a welcome sign to have a Bollywood release after ages. The good news is that 99 is a decent entertainer.
Small-time crooks Sachin (Kunal Khemu) and Zaramud (Cyrus Broacha) get involved with a gangster-bookie AGM (Mahesh Manjrekar) after their SIM card-duplicating business goes bust.

Sachin and Zaramud are assigned the task of retrieving money from gambler Rahul (Boman Irani). During the rollercoaster ride of recovering the money, Sachin and Zaramud's lives get embroiled with colourful characters — a hotel manager (Soha Ali Khan), a match fixer (Vinod Khanna), and a recovery agent (Amit Mistry) and his sidekick, Dimple.

The film, set in 1999, captures real-life incidents revolving around match-fixing events. Directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK have smartly woven the characters together in this comic caper but could not come up with a tight script.

Tempo on track

The first half is boring but the directors lift the tempo in the second half, when the film scores.

Khemu has matured as an actor. Broacha is a livewire and seems to be enjoying the amusing one-liners he delivers.

Irani turns out to be the scene stealer. Khan doesn't have much to do but is decent. Manjrekar fits the bill and Khanna brings class to his role. Mistry is hilarious and is a welcome addition to Bollywood's list of character actors.

The dialogues are a highlight, which compensate for the screenplay and the loose editing. Rajeev Ravi's cinematography slickly captures the Delhi bylanes. The film's music is a sore point, though.

Had 99 scored in all departments, it would have deserved applause. Nevertheless, the film is a good entertainer and should elicit sporadic chuckles from the audience.

— Abdulla Mahmood is a UAE-based freelance writer