183. Operation Mayfair; movie review

 

OPERATION MAYFAIR

Cert 15

116 mins

BBFC advice: Contains  strong violence, injury detail, threat, sexual threat, domestic abuse

To avoid embarrassment, it might be wise if Indian filmmakers stopped making movies which demand insight into the British establishment or culture.

For the second time in a week, I have seen a picture which has so many simple details wrong that they became a giant distraction from the storyline.

Mind you, London-set Operation Mayfair's plot is so ludicrous and acting so bad that spotting continuity errors was probably the most fun during its two hours.

The writing was on the wall of Sudipto Sarkar's supposed crime thriller when The Metropolitan Police Commissioner (Bryan Lawrence) is seen wearing a uniform with three stripes on his sleeve. This denotes a sergeant, one of the lowest ranks in the force.

The errors continue until a three-minute climax chase ends a steam train railway, 60 miles from central London where it started.

Operation Mayfair focuses on the murder of young women by a serial killer.

It stars Jimmy Shergill in a rather strange role. On the face of it, he appears to be a former metropolitan police detective who is now an Oxford tourist guide.

Goodness knows, therefore, why he is called by the force to help with the investigation but he is and suddenly he seems to be in charge of it.

This is possibly because the officer actually heading it up is his former junior (Vedieka Dutt).

They are in a bizarrely small team, given that if a real serial killer was on the loose, there would be hundreds of officers on the case and there would be 24-hour media coverage.

In their band is a criminal psychologist (Hritiqa Chheber) who spends most of her time in low-cut tops and short skirts, throwing herself at Shergill's character, hoping to rekindle a fling from some years previous.

Meanwhile, Ankur Bhatia plays the chief forensic officer who keeps hitting his head against a metaphorical brick wall.

Strangely, the killer is revealed to the audience early in the film, so the only tension surrounds the Keystone Cop-standard detectives trying to work out what we already do.

And then comes the ludicrous finale when the truth finally dawns on them.

Reasons to watch: If you are a hardened Jimmy Shergill fan

Reasons to avoid: A mess of a movie

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 1/10

Did you know? Jimmy Sheirgill was born into a family of Punjabi Sikh aristocracy and his paternal great-aunt was the famous Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil. 

The final word.  Jimmy Shergill: "If you don’t have enough material to make a story which could be based on a real incident, the film will not come out well or look interesting on-screen, fortunately, our team had a lot of material, and we were able to connect every dot, every scene, and make it interesting." Social News XYZ

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