A tangy, flavourful often funny but not fully developed plot

With its swaggering commentary on match-fixing and middleclass over-reaching '99' is an original piece of work, if not a classifiable work of art
After almost two months of aridity at the theatres one is happy to straightaway take the plunge into the never-ending wonders of la-la land, also known as the silver screen. "99" is not the film you'd have liked to see after such a long period of deprivation. Where you'd want a big burp-inducing pickled and pappadomed thali, "99" serves up a tangy appertif that you can nibble with pleasure but not quite sink your teeth into. This is a sorted-out sly swipe at the cinema of Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone where violence is satirised into a quirky comic capricious crime caper colonised by characters who are losers by instinct, nonetheless endearing in their defeatism. The film takes some time to settle down in its groove. The first half an hour is a zonked-out mess with the co-directors indulging in a smirky we-know-it-all game of camera cockiness which leaves us exasperated. The characters, like the wacked-out crime-dud Mahesh Manjrekar and the two petty criminals - Kunal Khemu and Cyrus Brocha - begin to make sense once they move to Delhi. The two are sent to collect money from a perennial fiscal misadventurer played by the ever-dependable Boman Irani with an urbane anxiety that teeters on neurosis.