Name: Chengiz (2023)
Genre: Action, Crime, Period, Thriller
Released: 2023-04-21
Rating: 6.0
Cast: Jeet Madnani, Susmita Chatterjee, Shataf Figar, Rohit Roy

Starring superstar Jeet , the story chronicles the life journey of a single man who ruled the streets from the 70s to mid-90s as he makes the cut to the underworld fabric of Calcutta. 

Chengiz (2023)

Times of India

Jeet’s new crime caper is quite watchable give or take some recycled mafia tropes. But that’s no reason for it to be two and a half hours long. It’d be quite easy too to slash it by an hour or so with fewer baddies, lesser guns and even lesser (or no) songs. Maybe some more of Shataf Figar’s daunting crime lord Omar, some better one-liners or an in-depth look into the time period it unfolds in; Chengiz follows a drug lord’s journey from the seventies to the nineties, but it offers very few details and visual cues that would connect the storyline to those decades. The vintage cars, a retro racecourse and some garish costumes fall short of establishing a time period.
Jaidev (Jeet) sees his father getting killed by a mobster, he is sheltered by his uncle Samir (Rohit Roy) but steps into the world of crime at 16 when he starts working for a powerful gangster named Omar (Shataf). He grows up to be his best henchman but eventually goes in a different direction to start his own crime ring aided by betting and drugs.
He kills his biggest business rival Omar a few minutes before the film goes into intermission. He'd already killed his father’s murderer Rashid Khan when he was 16. The first part ends almost too cleanly. This may not have been the best approach for the storyline. Avenging a father’s murder or going up against the dangerous father figure are both solid tropes for a macho storyline that doesn’t quite have real trauma. But they don't factor into the story's endgame in any major way.
It may get harder for some viewers to root for Jaidev or connect with his angst when the second part introduces a fresh set of baddies and they don’t really know what Chengiz stands for.
However, as a pan-India release, Chengiz could make the team proud; it’s quite stately in production value and treatment. The action sequences choreographed by Stunt Silva are slick, well-timed and edited quite effortlessly with Jeet excelling in mano-a-mano combat scenes. The long gunfight sequence towards the climax, however, brings in too many elements. This can also be said of the film; it has too many players in the mix, and everyone is out to get Chengiz. After a point, you may stop caring about who’s the lesser (or the better) criminal.
Jeet plays to his strengths and doesn’t stray too far from his familiar zone; his swashbuckling entrances and slo-mo walks do get the whistles and claps so it’s clearly working for him. Shataf Figar is terrific as the ruthless Omar and has quite the emotional range. Susmita has very little to do in the film. Rohit Roy’s character too could use more substance considering he is the narrator. It’s difficult to gauge how he really feels about Jaydev as a cop and as an uncle.
Chengiz is likely to do good business as the heatwave subsides on a slow release month. It has the fireworks, the masala and offers bang for your bucks. And even if it wasn’t all of these things, how many Bengali gangster romps do you get?

Chengiz (2023)

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