Review - Crook: They believe in its good to be bad

Diaspora films (at least those made in India) have a tendency to comment negatively about the local conditions which the protagonists live in. They complain about racism while doing the exact same thing. It makes me cringe - because neither do all locals behave that way, nor are all Indians so hopelessly bigoted; because some people on both sides are blatantly intolerant. So, the filmmakers either propagate a stereotype the world can live without or we see scary "humans" on screen. To top it off, this film is all about racism. Very rarely, does a film even try to balance the dichotomy. Crook does. At least try. Crook doesn't. Succeed.

Crook over-compensates in the other direction. After a decent start with back and forth between characters who have different opinions on racism, the film goes overboard in villainizing the Indians. The film takes the 'clinical insanity' route to explain the fanaticism but it goes beyond the realm of acceptability and falls flat on the face.

Similarly, the motivations of the protagonist and the film itself don't hold water because of how dramatic the situation gets by the end. Also, the problems, the issues, the situations, the dialogue all get very repetitive. Yet it's a bold film.

Also for a change, I didn't mind watching Emraan Hashmi, he has a reasonable range of expressions. Neha Sharma certainly has a better screen presence than the posters give away. The rest of the cast was the usual combination of loud, filler caricatures.

How I wish the balance they struck in the first half of the film didn't go so out of control in the last hour. Oh well...I've always had this question about the Indian-culture-nazis who live abroad. I finally get to ask it out loud - Why do people move abroad if they want to stay so Indian and hate the locals from the deepest place the gut is hidden?