The Gang That Wasn’t There

C Kkompany (2008) isn’t just a Bollywood screwball comedy about a gang of lovable losers looking for one big score that will change their lives forever. It also flirts pretty aggressively with the populist notion of the common man standing together to achieve what the government can’t or won’t. It’s an idea that shows up often in Bollywood, and that’s understandable, given that the modern Indian state was born from just that kind of action. Granted, I don’t think that extortion by telephone was quite what Gandhi had in mind.

Our three protagonists are relatively ordinary men with relatively ordinary problems. Ramakant Joshi (Anupam Kher) is a retired accountant living with his very successful but deeply ungrateful son Purshottam (Nitin Ratnaparkhi). Labhodar (Rajpal Yadav) is short, angry, and lives in fear of the day that his horrible wife tells their son that he actually works at the mall, in a chicken costume.

And then there’s Akshay Kumar (Tusshar Kapoor), a crime reporter who is in love with Priya (Raima Sen), who happens to be the much younger sister of brutal but soap opera obsessed crimelord Dattu (former Disco Dancer Mithun Chakraborty, who has grown much scarier with age). Akshay and Priya want to get married, but they’ll need money to fly away to somewhere safe first, so that they can avoid being killed. (“Crime reporter in love with a gangster’s sister” doesn’t really strike me as a common man with common problems, but then again I don’t live in Mumbai.)

The three friends play a prank on Purshottam in order to convince him to treat his father a little better; Labhodar calls up and pretends to be a gangster looking for money in exchange for lack of violence, then Ramakant takes the phone and diffuses the situation. And the three friends note that Purshottam is really eager to pay, and they toy with the idea of another call, but then laugh and forget it.

Then everything gets worse. After a fight, Labhodar’s wife drags their son to the mall to show him his father at work. Pushottam garlands his dead mother’s picture with artificial flowers rather than “waste money” on real ones. And Dattu arranges his sister’s marriage to another gangster, meaning Akshay has to raise the money to run away with Priya within a month or lose her forever. Suddenly blackmail and extortion doesn’t seem so bad.

The trio, after much consideration, name their fake criminal enterprise “C Company,” and send Pushottam a fake DVD showing the fake murder of the fake gangster from their previous prank. Pushottam is terrified, and agrees to pay up by the end of the month. Unfortunately, Akshay leaves a copy of the DVD at the TV station he works at, and the next day the media is buzzing about the mysterious “C Company.”

That would be the end of it, but Ramakant learns that a friend is being evicted by a greedy developer, along with his entire neighborhood, in order to make space for a shopping mall. Ramakant convinces Labhodar to help, and after a flashy scheme, the developer backs down, and the media are even more obsessed with C Company, who have been labelled the “Robin Hoods of the Underworld.”

The developer in question was paying protection to Dattu, which means that C Company is now hurting his business. Dattu questions Akshay about the new gang, and Akshay claims to know nothing. He’s now really, really sure it’s time to end the C Company business, and then his network assigns him to host a reality show in which ordinary people call in to talk about their problems, and find out whether the government or C Company solves them first.

The trio can’t help but get involved when they hear the stories of the people who call in, meaning more phone calls, and the C Company craze spirals completely out of control; suddenly, it’s not a fake gang anymore, it’s a fake political movement. And then Dattu, still determined to wipe out the Company, gets the lead he’s been hoping for.

C Kkompany is pretty good, as Bollywood screwball comedies go. The three leads manage to stay sympathetic throughout, and while the plot is completely unrealistic, it’s consistently unrealistic; if you accept the conceit that three knuckleheads could manage an extortion ring without anybody finding out or saying no, then the plot holds together very well. And Rajpal Yadav delivers a strong performance as an angry man who discovers a positive outlet for his boiling rage.

Still, I can’t help but be a little frustrated by the movie. The idea of the imaginary gang turning into an imaginary revolution with real results is fascinating, but the film too concerned with Akshay’s love life and Ramakant’s family woes to really focus on the implications. It’s an idea that’s too big for this movie.