‘Hisaab Barabar’ movie review: R Madhavan does the math in toothless comedy

A still from ‘Hisaab Barabar’ 

Some films suffer from a surfeit of ambition. Others—like Ashwni Dhir’s Hisaab Barabar—have none to begin with. A middling comedy about the middle class, it tracks a common man’s crusade against fraudulent banking practices. A modest, toothless satire, the film boasts sitcom staging and visuals, lacking cinematic bite. No wonder it’s streaming on ZEE5, a platform with a near-magnetic affinity for mediocrity.

It’s like one of those spec scripts that lie around in production offices gathering dust; until, one day, for some inexplicable reason, they are hurriedly greenlit. Radhe Mohan Sharma (R Madhavan) is a senior ticketing inspector with the Indian Railways. Blessed with an accountant’s eye (and ethics), he spends hours pouring over his bank statements, fishing for discrepancies. When an alarmingly high sum of ₹27.50 doesn’t tally up in his books, Radhe raises a complaint with the bank. The officials he corners first feign ignorance, then try to fob him and other customers off with compensatory gifts.

It does not take long for Radhe to raise a stink. As he explains to others, the bank has been stealing from its customers, minuscule amounts that go undetected but run up to thousands of crores in black money. Radhe’s unflagging demand for lost coins turns him into an unlikely hero. Before long, he’s run afoul of the bank’s greedy owner, a boorish clown named Micky Mehta (Neil Nitin Mukesh). There is also love blooming on the sidelines: Kirti Kulhari plays an honest police officer and Radhe’s romantic interest.

The film, for all its blandness, makes a series of strong points: the intimidation tactics used against citizen activists like Radhe, the frustrating opacity of India’s banking sector, the digs at crony capitalism and rising costs. These are potent themes, but Dhir refuses to sharpen his satire beyond a point, muddying the legacy of his writing work on the iconic TV show Office Office.

The pathos in Hisaab Barabar is gratingly on-the-nose. ‘Republic Week’ is misspelt as ‘Republic Weak’, a corrupt politician (Manu Rishi Chadha) gets a body massage before a mural of Gandhi, and, since the hero is named Radhe Mohan, I wasn’t surprised when a herd of bulls showed up in a critical scene. Madhavan has eased comfortably into his everyman roles and appears to be enjoying himself. Kirti Kulhari, a fine actor, deserves a better agent. No agent can flip the fortunes of Neil Nitin Mukesh, a fossilized wonder from the 2000s, unchanged by time or talent.

43 years since Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, few Hindi films have managed to touch the helm of Kundan Shah’s great satire or replicate its comic corrosiveness. Hisaab Barabar highlights the strains on the Indian middle class, yet folds with a patriotic nod to ‘New India’. It struck me as a cop-out. Like much else in the current creative landscape, there is a tameness to Dhir’s film that feels cynical and facile.

Hisaab Barabar is streaming on ZEE5