‘Blackout’ review: A low-wattage crime caper

In the Hindi movie Blackout, Lenny has the good fortune of discovering a huge stash of money and the misfortune of meeting people who will try to keep him away from it. Lenny frequently curses his fate; viewers might similarly have negative thoughts too, if not quite profane then certainly exasperated.

Written and directed by Devang Shashin Bhavsar and released on JioCinema, Blackout is the kind of overcaffeineated comedy in which dramatic events occur at the rate of every third gulp. Investigative journalist Lenny (Massey) is running an errand for his wife Roshni (Ruhani Sharma) in the middle of a blackout when he finds a stash that decidedly doesn’t belong to him.

Lenny will be punished – strafed, really – for overcoming his scruples. Poetry-spouting drunk Bewada (Sunil Grover), a pair of reel-making thieves nicknamed Thak (Karan Sonawane) and Thok (Saurabh Ghadge) and woman-on-the-run Shruti (Mouni Roy) pile into Lenny’s car and send him round the bend. Meanwhile, detective Arvind (Jisshu Sengupta) is conveniently keeping a close tab on Lenny.

The decision to keep a huge distance between Lenny and his intended retirement plan has its share of crackpot moments. Massey, Grover, Sonawane and Ghadge are up for more zaniness than the movie can dream up. But without much to go on beyond the imperative to keep Lenny in a permanent state of harassment, Blackout soon runs out of road.

Flashbacks with time stamps on them supply the back stories to the characters. But the movie is watching the clock as seriously as Lenny is proving his crime reporter credentials.

The 122-minute film is set over a single night that seems like several compressed nights. Like the short-form videos in which Thak and Thok specialise, Blackout could be diced into a handful of entertaining scenes, no more, and no less.