Silicon City: A new spin on a commonplace crime

A still from the film Silicon City.

Direction: Murali Gurappa

Cast: Srinagar Kitty, Suraj Gowda, Chikkanna, Kavya Shetty, Ekta Rathod, Ashok

After dealing with the goriest forms of crime, film-makers now seem to be interested in a more commonplace phenomenon — chain-snatching. The crime is the theme of Murali Gurappa’s debut venture,

Silicon City .

The film is based on

Metro, a 2016 Tamil blockbuster by Anandakrishnan. Interestingly, while one does not associate gore with chain-snatching, the Tamil original faced a lot of problems with the Central Board of Film Certification because of the nature of its content. Silicon City is tolerable in terms of the volume of violence on screen.

The film gets off the ground quickly and the story is narrated with good pace. Silicon City begins with Sanjay Ramaswamy (Srinagar Kitty) along with his friend (Chikkanna) locking up a person and torturing him to confess to a crime. It then turns to flashback, where Sanjay, a creative director in an advertising agency, is leading a happy life with his father and retired constable (Ashok) and mother. He has a brother (Suraj Gowda) studying in a college.

Predictably, a woman is blamed for the protagonist’s entry into the world of crime. It is to satisfy his girlfriend’s “consumerist” requirements that he resorts to chain-snatching with the help of his friend, who is part of a gang of young chain-snatchers controlled by a kingpin.

The film unveils all the phases of the chain-snatching business, from how a bike-borne criminal chooses a target, to where those ornaments go after being snatched and how they return to the gold business in different forms. Interestingly, in one sequence, the kingpin asks his group not to harm any women as an “ethic”. The script writer has clearly done a lot of research on the subject. However, the tight script is slowed down by songs that look thrust upon it.

Though Srinagar Kitty is the protagonist, it is the newcomer Suraj Gowda who carries the film on his shoulders as the anti-hero. Srinagar Kitty, Kavya Shetty and Ashok have done justice to their roles. Srinivas Ramaiah as cinematographer succeeds in etching the dark shades of the characters and the locations effectively.