Movie Name: Lucky Baskhar
Rating: 3.25/5
Cast: Dulquer Salmaan, Meenakshi Chaudhury, Sai Kumar
Director: Venky Atluri
Produced By:  Naga Vamsi S – Sai Soujanya
Release Date: October 31st, 2024

Dulquer Salmaan is back with another novel concept, Lucky Baskhar. The movie has managed to create great curiosity owing to its genre and promotional content and with Venky Atluri helming the project, there’s a strong buzz regarding the film. Let’s see if the Dulquer and Venky have managed to score the much awaited festive hit with Lucky Baskhar.

Story:

A cash-strapped cashier named Bhaskar ( Dulqeer Salmaan ) working at a bank embarks on a risky investment scheme and soon gets drawn into the murky world of money laundering. The rest of the plot is about how his financial journey has been so far from gaining highs and lows together in this financial crime drama thriller.

Performances:

Dulquer Salmaan shines as a con-man bank employee Bhaskar and in fact the whole film revolves highly around him and his characterization. He effortlessly does the job of fourth-wall breaking saying some heavy Telugu dialogues that not just convey his perspective but also places the audiences as the protagonist itself. Meenkashi Chaudhary as Srimathi and their son Rithvik does amazing job and are not just some caricaturish family roles that are given to them but also quite significant depth in them in this overly materialistic world of Lucky Bhaskar’s Bombay. They also emotionally navigate the journey of the film’s drama and Ramki ( Anthony ) does great job in being the partner in crime for Bhaskar ( Dulquer Salmaan) while being supplemented by his friend in need, played by Rajkumar Kasireddy.

Analysis:

Lucky Bhaskar is set in the early 1990s of Bombay where the city is not just a financial capital but also delves upon how these financial needs have made the city’s society less civil and more materialistic reflecting upon the real world aspirations of the world. The drama, crime and emotions unfolds around the materialistic needs of the people and Bhaskar is one of those Lucky Chap who just not understands this materialism but analyzes it to grow higher too in this market. Venky Atluri cleverly writes the story of the film inducing some clever mass moments in a subtle class setting through Dulquer’s excellent command over dialogue delivery in the fourth-wall breaking sequences. Not just that, the writing and execution of Venky has been excellent in the way some core financial subjects have been written and simplified with ease for the audience. The production design by Baglan and editing by Naveen Nooli complement each other in finessing the technical aspect behind the story-telling and narration of the film. GV Prakash has given some very terrific Background to the film especially at the interval point where there is a great point of both retro and metro remix version that gives an instantaneous kick to the film. However, the film has been on 6th gear screenplay throughout the film but at the beginning of the third act, when the emotional drama kicks in, it gets little sluggish which is for just some 15-20 minutes that could have been improvised but rests as the perfect TFI’s own Wolf of the Wall street.

Positives:

• Dulquer Salmaan’s Performance
• Screenplay
• Excellent BGM
• Solid 1st half
• Excellent production design
• Great Cinematography
• Clever Writing
• Dialogues

Negatives:

• Sluggish 15-20 mins in Second Half
• Weak Songs
• Pacing issues

Verdict:

A Venky Atluri’s well crafted SCAM thriller, DQ shines in this con-man financial thriller drama, with very well written characterization and screenplay that is well complemented by good set-ups and payoffs through great dialogue writing. Terrific Background score by GV Prakash and the shining DQ gave some MASSY highs in this classy film.