Special 26 review

Special 26 revolves around the idea of the "fake" CBI in the 80's in India. It shows the concept very well as well as performances of everyone in the movie were believable hence very well executed.
To be honest, this is my favourite Akshay Kumar film as this film by far has one of the cleanest stories I've seen this year.
It begins with an interview in March 18th 1987 and from there on we go into a, so to say, "flashback" where Anupam Kher (PK Sharma) and Akshay Kumar (Ajay Singh) are discussing a "CBI raid" on a minister's house. They call some policeman/women to help them which includes Jimmy Shergill (Ranvir Singh) and Divya Dutta (Shanti).
They conduct this raid and officially sieze all the money the minister had...after a while (when Ajay Singh and PK Sharma and the gang have left) the head constable, Ranvir Singh suspects something might be wrong and reports to the minister who in turn contacts the "BIG" police dudes. The "BIG" police dudes don't do much (as the minister does not want anyone to know about his black market dealings) except suspend Ranvir and Shanti.

Following the successful raid at a minister's house, it's revealed that Ajay and Sharma are fake CBI officers, along with their two accomplices. They then move to different parts of the country from which they're from and merge into their everyday lifestyles. Ajay's love interest, Kajal Agarwal (Priya), an about-to-be-married teacher is introduced here. The crew meets again in Chandigarh at the behest of Sharma for his daughter's wedding.

CBI officer Manoj Bajpai (Waseem Khan) who is introduced and his family life is shown for a small period of time, with his son and wife. His team apprehends a man named Gupta and they try and extract information about this "fake" CBI but he is no help to them. After this, a disgraced Ranvir meets Waseem Khan, who immediately feels sorry for him and eventually come to a decision of working together to destroy this fake CBI and renew the identity of the CBI in the public's eye.

Meanwhile, the next raid planned by Ajay is conducted on a traders' business in Bara Bazar in Kolkata posing as officers from the Income Tax Department. Following the more difficult but successful raid, Khan insists that this should be reported in the newspaper, despite nobody coming forward to report it themselves, as black money is involved. Upon seeing this in the newspaper, Ajay decides to conduct their "big job", a final raid in Mumbai. This came as quite a shock to Sharma, however he was right behind Ajay in this plan.

From here on in (for a while) the CBI story takes a backseat and the "love story" begins. This shows the relationship (or lack of to Priya's parents) emerge as the key goal for Ajay. He wants to do this job, disappear forever and live happily ever after with her.
Priya (who was set to be married to someone else) insists she wants to go to Mumbai with Ajay, but he convinces her to stay but asks her to meet her at the airport on a certain date at 4pm.

SPOILER ALERT!


Meanwhile, Ranveer finds information about Sharma, and Khan orders wire-tapping his phone.This is successful as when Ajay calls and tells Sharma their plan about the jewellery store "raid", Khan exactly knows where and when the "raid" will take place.

Now, Ajay, followed by a CBI officer, goes to a newspaper to advertise for "50 dynamic graduates" with details of an interview stated. Khan decides to embed his officers among the candidates and they are selected. Khan finds information about this and orders his officers to report to him as soon as the raid is mentioned, but no details are given to them.

In order to find out more, Khan and Ranveer go to the hotel and force their way into Sharma's room. He divulges the information about the raid, following a threat of violence. He also mentions that Ajay is taking revenge on the CBI for not appointing him. Khan orders Sharma to make sure everything proceeds as normal.


SPOILER ALERT!

On the day of the raid, Khan replaces the real jewellery with fake replicas and the real jewellery is stored in the store's workshop (in a more remote area).
As the "Special 26" are selected and prepped up to go on the practice "raid", Sharma is given control of the bus that has all the recruits while Ajay and his other colleagues trail in the car.The bus passes the the police headquarters and Sharma exits the bus to get some paperwork checked and orders the others not to leave the bus till Sharma and Ajay get there.
In reality Sharma waits for someone.

SPOILER ALERT!

Back at the jewellery store, Khan tells Ranvir and Shanti to go to the workshop to see if everything is going alright....little does he realise that the "INSIDE MAN" of this job is Ranvir himself and his accomplice Shanti.
OMG! RIGHT!!!!!! I was very impressed by this.
Ranvir and Shanti meet Sharma outside the police headquarters and pick him up....then they depart for the workshop. Ajay by this time has began his raid at the workshop and later Ranvir, Shanti and Sharma join him. They successfully complete the raid. Ajay goes to meet Priya at the airport as soon as they are done.

At the jewellery store, Khan is informed that the raid was conducted at the workshop and all jewellery in the workshop along with the jewellery that were moved, were stolen. Khan works it all out for himself, realizing that Ranvir was part of the gang and he wasn't a real police officer at all and they were set up right from the beginning. Khan starts laughing loudly and applauding the entire robbery.

Later, Khan receives a money order for Rs. 100 that Ajay had taken from him with the message that he could not steal the honest earnings of an officer. The film ends with Khan being told over the phone that the CBI has information about the perpetrators. At the same time we see Ajay Singh and P.K Sharma enjoying a cricket match happily with their wives.

I give Special 26, 8/10 "8 out of 10"
Rating: Great film! Fantastic Story! But might be a little simple for the more hollywood-ly apt members of the audience