Scribe in the wrong channel

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Rush

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Night-clubs, songs with catchy hooklines, confounding situations and jazzy Janes are a must for an Emraan Hashmi movie, most often belted out by the Mahesh-Mukesh Bhatt Brothers, who first discovered that the actor is also blessed with lucky lips.

Actor? To attain that status, to be fair, Hashmi has slogged ceaselessly. With time and practice, he has become adept at high-power dramatics. Of late, he displayed a modicum of maturity, making his presence felt despite the script favouring the heroines of The Dirty Picture and Raaz 3.
Now, here’s Rush, which was delayed in the production for almost four years, and catches Hashmi in his initial search for self-discovery. Not surprisingly, he is cast as a guy with grey areas, on-the-go to be inevitably sucked into a swamp of crime and deceit. Here’s a dilemma straight out of the first of the Jannat series, and your curiosity is aroused. How will this Rush business, once again present him as a near-innocent who lands himself in a scalding hot chicken soup?
Following a scoop interview with a criminal, our hero sets off big-time trouble for his satellite channel. He’s sacked. More: he’s going through girl trouble (Sagarika Ghatge), too. Who isn’t nowadays? — in the movies at least. But it seems you can’t keep an intrepid journo down for too long. Result: he’s hired by another channel which goes to the absurd extent of creating
sensational news for high TRPs.
This involves planting bugging devices all over the tele-world. Help! Our hero is now in the thickest soup imaginable, and the ones who’re stirring the pot are none other than his bosses. Read femme fatale Neha Dhupia and satanic Aditya Panscholi — both competent performers who are once again trapped in typecasting.
Pritam’s music is zingy and so are the hot-stepping dance numbers. But that’s it. The product’s strictly average, and wears a morose look. Tragically, its writer-director Shamin Desai passed away halfway through the film’s shoot. It was completed, thanks to the unwavering efforts of his wife Priyanka.
To be fair, who knows? Perhaps Rush could have been a better and more media-savvy entertainer. In the form it has been released, it’s just about endurable.