The film should have been riveting. But it comes off as a slapdash, confused collage of scenes involving the famous jail break in which the real life Sobhraj broke free with several prisoners.

A film that tells its tale with calculated intent — coolly, cleverly, taking its time — mirroring the dry panache of its self-assured protagonist…

We have always been a fan of Richa Chadha’s acting and in Main Aur Charles too, the actress has tried delivering her best. Randeep Hooda is fatally charming as Sobhraj and this movie becomes worth watching because of him and English Vinglish fame actor Adil Hussain.

Main Aur Charles gains some momentum in the second half and gives us a closer look at Shobhraj, the man, but does not dig deeper into his psyche or reveals much about him. You should avoid this film at all costs: The narrative offers nothing at all and despite the good performances, badly-sketched characters leave little for the actors to do.

Watch it for not just an incredible performance by Hooda, but also how smart biopics can be made. Not all have to be like Ketan Mehta’s Rang Rasiya.

Bollywood biopics usually tend to be horrendously bloated and overwrought. Main Aur Charles is anything but.

If that isn’t enough of an incentive, watch it for Randeep Hooda’s alluring French drawl and Adil Hussain’s sturdy presence.

Prawaal Raman does a commendable job of recreating the 60s-70s. He also gets his protagonist’s physicality and smugness bang on. Working on a wafer-thin account given to him by the real-life Delhi cop, Amod Kanth, Raman still manages to infuse life (at least partly) into this film and into the life of the notorious killer.

A man who could kill so many people and was able to amble out of jail after drugging every single guard has to be some sort of a genius and a psychopath, but Raman’s narrative never quite hits the high note, unlike the background music in the film. Instead, “Main Aur Charles” is a disjointed effort that chooses to focus on the trimmings while neglecting the actual story.

Watch it for Randeep Hooda, his performance is the single most reason you might want to check out Main Aur Charles this weekend.

Writer-director Raman spells everything out to build an aura around a character that is inspired by the infamous criminal Charles Sobhraj. But words alone are never enough to convince you that this is a man capable of seduction, deception and murder. You need to see it to believe it. That’s where Main Aur Charles fails – You are never quite sold on Charles.

Main Aur Charles is too gimmicky and hence even though not Randeep’s but the film’s charm wears off pretty soon. It fails to come across as a potent criminal drama…

…an intriguing tale, neatly stitched together – it seemingly reconstructs a single incident (the jailbreak) and the subsequent events. However it provides an ambiguous insight into one of history’s most astute “criminal” mind.

Main Aur Charles is worth a watch for Randeep Hooda alone. Couple that with a fabulous performance by Hussain and director Raman’s control over his subject make this worth a very strong recommendation.

Main Aur Charles is a big yawn!

The movie is all style and very little soul. And that’s a disappointment as it attempted to tell a really fascinating story of a mastermind. But do watch it, if only for Hooda.

Raman’s greatest crime in Main Aur Charles is perhaps this. He took a real-life story almost tailormade to transform into a gripping thriller and turned it into what is at best a documentary on 70’s fashion.

Charles Sobhraj gets an unexpectedly arresting lease of life in this gutsy lucid and robust bio-pic . Director Prawaal Raman sweeps us into Sobhraj’s exploits .Once in, there’s no way out.

Suffer the seduction.

You don’t really mind the missing hard-boiled plot, because by the time the film ends, we are treated to well-shot frames and the amazing theme music. Style wins. The seduction is complete.

Watch Main Aur Charles for the thriller it is. Not for the biopic on Charles, which it clearly is not. Watch the film for Randeep Honda, not for a dose in criminal psychology .

Overall, “Main Aur Charles” is a well-made intriguing film with realistic performances.

Main Aur Charles is indeed a great attempt that recreates the sensationalism of the ’70s and’ 80s, but loses its way just when you’re hoping hard it wouldn’t.

It’s difficult to know what to make of a film that casts Chadha as a wide-eyed ingénue (surely there’s no shortage of those in Bollywood) or suggests that Sobhraj is more victim than aggressor, something Mira tries to explain to Kanth without a trace of irony. Are we meant to take this at face value? Or is it just Raman’s way of showing how completely Sobhraj’s accomplices come under his spell?

This was an attempt to make an engaging crime-drama, hoping to cash in on Charles Sobhraj’s larger-than-life image. But the makers have taken truly explosive material and tamed it down, choosing to glamourize the villain to a nauseating level. The film had so much more potential!

They are stylish snippets that have little detail in the telling. Yet again, we have a film based on a real life personality that doesn’t tell us much more about the personality than what we new from newspapers or a quick Internet search.

In Charles’ words, “Oyaltee has its own price to pay.” But investing time to watch this one will only mean making a ‘oyal’ buffoon of yourself.

There is hardly any intermingling of the black and white. Also, the jail break sequences and the subsequent chase demand more raw intensity than the slickness of the first half. And nothing is more frustrating when a thriller begins to sound like a drama!

…a grim, no-frills cop and criminal saga, but we wish the thrills were as potent and magnetic as Sobhraj’s notorious personality.

Given the list of his criminal activities especially the jail break in 1986 and considering the fact that Sobhraj’s case is one of the most interesting and intriguing stories in the history of India, Main Aur Charles is worth a watch.

Although the movie does get a little confusing, Main Aur Charles is a good one time watch especially if you have an interest to know about this “Bikini Killer”.

In the end, the film throws up a bunch of interesting ideas which doesn’t come together coherently in the plot. The prime problem is that the film is too much soul and very less substance. It was promising but half-baked, with the thrills falling short in supply.

Had Raman stuck with his investigation into Charles’s mystique and his self-mythologisation, this movie might have actually become the sophisticated biopic it wants to be. Main Aur Charles should really have been about the poster, not the case file.