Bhagam Bhag
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Priyadarshan
Written by	Neeraj Vora
Story by	Siddique-Lal
Based on	Mannar Mathai Speaking by Siddique-Lal
Produced by	Sunil Shetty Dhilin Mehta
Starring	Akshay Kumar Govinda Paresh Rawal
Cinematography	Jeeva
Edited by	Arun Kumar N. Gopalakrishnan
Music by	Songs: Pritam Chakraborty Background Score: Salim-Sulaiman
Production companies	Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Limited Popcorn Motion Pictures
Distributed by	T-Series Films Viacom18 Motion Pictures
Release date	22 December 2006 (2006-12-22)
Running time	159 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Box office	₹67 crore[1]

Bhagam Bhag (transl. Running Around, especially aimlessly) is a 2006 Indian Hindi-language comedy thriller film directed by Priyadarshan and written by Neeraj Vora. It is based on the Malayalam film Mannar Mathai Speaking (1995), was directed by duo Siddique–Lal. It was produced by Sunil Shetty and Dhilin Mehta under their banners Popcorn Motion Pictures and Shree Ashtavinayak Vision Limited. The film stars Akshay Kumar, Govinda and Paresh Rawal as the three leads alongside Lara Dutta, Rajpal Yadav, Jackie Shroff, Arbaaz Khan, Shakti Kapoor, Manoj Joshi, Razak Khan, Sharat Saxena and Asrani. The film adapted certain subplots of Malayalam film Mannar Mathai Speaking which itself was based on the 1958 movie Vertigo.^[2]

The film tells the story of a theatre group which travels to London for a show only to be accused of a murder they did not commit, while mistakenly becoming the enemies of a drug dealer and a gang.

The film released theatrically on 22 December 2006, during Christmas, and received mixed reviews from critics but was a commercial successful and became the 9th highest grossing film of the year.

Plot

Champak Chaturvedi runs a theatrical troupe in India. He hires two men, Bunty – a graduate in arts, and Babla - who cannot read nor write English. One has to play the role of the play's hero, while one the villain. Both men end up squabbling with each other, as both want the hero's part. Champak finds out that Bunty has harassed the play's heroine, Anjali, and punishes him.

The group gets a contract to stage 30 plays in Britain by Ravinder Teja, however, on the day of the departure, Anjali opts out, leaving Champak no alternative but to travel without a heroine, but hoping to recruit one while in Britain. Upon arrival, Champak tells his whole crew that whoever brings him a heroine will be given the role of the main hero. Babla sets about to find a suitable heroine from the Indian population. In order to find one, on the advice of Gullu, a cab driver, he goes to a garden where he is followed to by Bunty, and the two agree to take the turns in the role of the hero. Babla has his suitcase accidentally switched by two men containing heroin, and as a result, both men, Bunty and Babla end up being considered suspects by the local Police, whose Commissioner is an Indian, J.D. Mehra.

The two men who switched the suitcase are revealed to be working under Manubhai Gandhi, a builder who is also a drug smuggler and trying to sell drugs to his buyer Sher Khan. Bunty looks for a heroine alongside Gullu. Two goons, Guru and Hakka, know a woman who lives in Germany and insist to drive to Germany with the two along with all their men. The two trick all the goons into falling out, and Guru breaks his leg in the process. Bunty recruits a woman named Munni after she attempts to commit suicide in front of their car. Munni is accepted as the heroine of the play and through the course of time, both Munni and Bunty fall in love with each other. Munni suddenly throws herself in front of a vehicle one day and ends up in hospital.

When she regains her senses, she tells everyone that she is Nisha Chauhan, and is married to Vikram, who lives in Liverpool. The doctor tells Bunty that Munni/Nisha has suicidal tendencies and thus had attempted suicide by jumping in front of the vehicle. Vikram arrives, thanks to everyone, and takes his wife home. A few days later, Bunty receives a phone call from a frantic Nisha, who tells him to come over immediately. He, along with Champak and Babla, arrive there to find her body in flames. She is declared dead in hospital.

One day, Bunty briefly sees Nisha on the streets but no one believes him. The group then decide to enact the play in which there is no need of a heroine. Guru and his men find Bunty and chase him to get their revenge, but Bunty escapes and Guru breaks his other leg while chasing Bunty. On the play night, a frightened Champak also sees Nisha in the washroom of the theatre. All of a sudden, Vikram bumps into Babla, Bunty and Champak with a gun in his hand and Bunty accidentally presses the trigger of the gun, killing him. They hide the body of Vikram and a blood stained kurta of Champak to avoid any suspicion. They go on to perform the play, but Vikram's body falls on the stage out of nowhere.

JD Mehra, who was present in the audience, investigates the case and find Champak's blood stained kurta and Babla's chain on the body of Vikram and has the trio arrested. When the trio is being taken in a police car, Gandhi's two men throw a bomb in the car out of revenge as they suspect the trio to be secret police, which compels them to escape. Bunty suggests that they'll have to prove their innocence to get out of this trouble and for that, they need to find Nisha. They find out that Nisha has booked a ticket after breaking into her house to Mumbai under the name of Aditi Desai. They call at the number she registered for booking and find out she has assumed the name of Sheetal and works at the bar.

Bunty, Babla and Champak go to find the girl working at a bar and go looking for her in the bar, only to find another girl named Sheetal working there. They decide to follow her as they suspect her to be a friend of Nisha. During this time, Champak is kidnapped by Gandhi's men and they torture him to get the info that they suspect he knows about their drug smuggling business. Meanwhile, Guru and his men take Gullu's taxi and threaten that they won't give it back until he brings Bunty to them so they can get their revenge. Gullu is then captured by the taxi's owner and his men, who threatens he will have Gullu sent to jail if he doesn't get the taxi back.

Babla and Bunty follow Sheetal to a train, where they witness her handing the ticket to Mumbai to Nisha. Bunty catches her and chases her to the top of a tower. Gullu witnesses this and calls Guru and his men to take Bunty and return the taxi, and the taxi owner and his men to take the taxi back. Gandhi also decides to have the tower as the place to complete his deal with Khan, and asks him to come there. Nisha reveals to Bunty that her actual name is Aditi Desai, and she was hired by Vikram Chauhan to act as her real wife, Nisha Chauhan for some time in exchange of 20 lakh and a ticket to India. But, when her work was done and she had to go away, she witnessed Vikram killing her real wife to extort money from her. She tried to save Nisha, but failed to do so. It was the real Nisha who got burnt and died.

On the play night, Aditi had come to tell the truth to Bunty and others, but she was seen by Vikram who was also there and wanted to kill Aditi (fake Nisha), who was the only witness in his wife's murder. But before he could kill her, JD Mehra, the police officer shot him. He was already wounded when he encountered Bunty, Babla and Champak. JD then arrives, and tells his side of the story, that he killed Vikram to avenge his sister, Nisha's death. He tries to kill Aditi, as she was also the only witness in Vikram's murder, but before this happens, Gandhi and his two men(with Champak as their prisoner), Guru and his men(who have kidnapped Teja as they believe he is Bunty's boss who told him to deceive them), Gullu, Khan, the taxi owner and the taxi owner's men arrive. Gandhi believes everyone present being undercover police trying to catch him and fires in the air, hitting a nest of bees who chase everyone(apart from JD, who escapes) outside onto the clock on the top floor.

A fire brigade team tries to rescue them, but all of them fall off the ladder and get injured as they fall and land in different places. All of them are admitted to the hospital, where JD Mehra visits Champak's team, returns their passports and surrenders himself to the police.

Cast

• Akshay Kumar as Bunty Rajkumar
• Govinda as Babla
• Paresh Rawal as Champak 'Champu' Chaturvedi / Champak Seth Ji
• Lara Dutta as Aditi Desai/Sheetal/Nisha Mehra Chauhan/Munni
• Arbaaz Khan as Vikram Chauhan
• Sharat Saxena as Fredrick
• Asrani as Ravinder Taneja
• Manoj Joshi as Manubhai Gandhi
• Rajpal Yadav as Gulab "Gullu" Singh Lakhan Singh Haryanewaale
• Jackie Shroff as J.D. Mehra, London Police Officer.
• Shakti Kapoor as Guru
• Razak Khan as Hakka
• Amita Nangia as Vaijanti
• Gurleen Chopra as Nisha Mehra Chauhan (special appearance)
• Tanushree Dutta as Anjali Singh (cameo appearance)
• Prerna Arora as Sheetal

Production

Shooting took place in Oxford, United Kingdom in July–August 2006, filming at several University of Oxford landmarks. The film borrows core plot from the Malayalam film Mannar Mathai Speaking with comedy sub plots from another Malayalam film Nadodikkattu.^[3] The plot twist in the climax was borrowed from the 1999 Marathi thriller Bindhaast which Priyadarshan had earlier remade in Tamil as Snegithiye and Malayalam as Raakilipattu.^[4] The climax comedy sequence was adapted from the 1963 classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Reception

The Times of India gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated, "The actors try hard, but the script and the dialogues let them down. Even the situations aren't funny enough, except for a few. Case in point, watch Paresh trying to chew a grenade and Govinda asking for a bite too. Funny!"^[5] Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated, "Bhagam Bhag will be loved for its comedy in the first hour, but the whodunit in the second hour tapers the impact."^[6] Gullu Singh of Rediff.com gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and stated, "The real hero of the film is Kumar. He outshines everyone and has some of the best dialogues in the film. He is a treat to watch."^[7] Indu Mirani of DNA India gave the film 0.5 out of 5 stars and stated, "Ever since Priyadarshan made Hera Pheri in 2000, he has been continually repeating the formula. When he doesn't do so, as with Kyon Ki (2005), he fails miserably."^[8]

Release

The film was worldwide released on 21 December 2006. The distribution rights of the movie were sold to UTV Motion Pictures. The DVD of the movie was released by T-Series Home Entertainment. The film has been made streaming available on JioCinema, Zee5, MX Player and Amazon Prime Video since 2020.

Soundtrack

Notes and references

External links

• Bhagam Bhag at IMDb