By Subhash K. Jha

Film: "Chor Chor Super Chor"; Cast: Deepak Dobriyal, Chandrahas Tiwari, Anshul Kataria, Priya Bathija; Director: K. Rajesh; Rating: ***

There is a very good reason why this interesting satire on petty crime and plummeting morals in Delhi is captioned "Season One".

Reality shows and their absolutely disregard for basic decency and human sensitivities play a major part in "Chor Chor Super Chor". The script by director K. Rajesh, Anil Thomas and V. Radhakrishnan creates a world of petty crime in the metropolis with a generous dosage of warm humour and a comic candour directed at the middle-class and its craving for a good life.

In this sharply-drawn satire, the Great Indian 'Muddle' Class is projected in a bright and reflective light that never blinds the director of the plot's central search for an engaging story.

The film teems with vividly-drawn low-life characters scattering their self-serving subterfuge all across the malls, highways, streets, back-alleys and loos of Delhi.

Except for the very talented Deepak Dobriyal, the rest of the characters are played by natural-born actors from theatres. One of the virtues of this large-hearted saga voicing the vices of pickpockets and other swindlers of modern life is that almost every character is played by actors we have hardly ever encountered before.

This naturally confers a sense of complete believability on the goings-on.

The narrative moves on two levels. Initially, we are swiftly familiarised with the characters' lives as petty criminals. It is the absolutely ingenious second movement of the narration where reality television enters the characters' lives in most unexpected ways, where the director makes telling comments on the rise of a working-class whose moralities are constantly challenged flexed and dilated.

The film has a very original and provocative story to tell. It tells it with warm and intelligence. The mirthful momentum is somewhat lost at the climactic moment partly because the film insists on using songs when there is no room for any.

"Chor Chor Super Chor" is a prime example of new-age cinema, which doesn't forget the basic requirement of the audience. A strong story line and characters whose dramatic potential is laced with humour.

The plot here is riddled with visuals and emotions that are peculiar to life in metropolises. Delhi, to be more precise.

So, we have one of the film's more interesting characters a petty businessman, played by Chandrahas Tiwari, who is kidnapped and kept in a cheap eatery by a pickpocket rising in life to become a kidnapper.

"Chor Chor Super Chor" is the kind of vehemently visual cinema, which the viewer needs to experience and discover on his own. Any attempt to describe the goings-on diminishes the force of the satire. Delhi never seemed so sinister and satirical and so filled with heartbreaking humour. This is a sordid squalid world of petty crime and manufactured reality on reality-shows where our hero wears a samosa costume in a mall to eke out an honest living.

It's a crazily out-of-control world held together by K. Rajesh's straightfaced non-judgemental humour addressed to fringe lives.

The performance by Dobriyal and a cast of gifted impresarios is intuitively vivacious. And the brisk goings-on never get tedious.

This enjoyable film is a surprise. It sparkles with original wit directed at lives that would have been truly sad if they weren't so funny.