Rating: * * * 1/2

There is a whiff of fresh air blowing in Bollywood which is steadily relegating its favourite genre of candy floss love and romance to insignificance. Move over running around trees, picturesque locales of Switzerland, Raj and Simran and welcome new age cinema in which what you see is what you get.

Shor in the City, a movie about Mumbai, brings you the city amidst all its harsh realities, its squalor, its desire to be rich by hook or by crook and its people, sometimes innocent, sometimes malicious but all trying to make ends meet. Shor in the City is an interesting collage of three different stories, all inspired from reportages of newspapers, that finally rendezvous in their own small way at the end. But what you are going to love about the film is its realness, its attention to detail and its honesty, no matter how ugly it may seem.

The character in Shor In the City are unbelievably real. Whether it is the children selling re-printed novels on red lights or the fair and lovely dreams of the newly-wed bride, or the fascination of petty thieves with the desi bomb found in the bag they flicked off a guy on a train, or local dons threatening the NRI returned businessman for ransom, or for that matter the aspiring cricketer who would do whatever it takes to make it to the team, Shor in the City captures Mumbai in its myriad hues, each sore but not one that hurts the eye.

Barring Tusshar Kapoor, most characters in Shor in the City are new but they seem more seasoned and real than the better known ones. Tusshar Kapoor's valour in signing up a film like this will hold him in good stead. He doles out a admirable performance in the film.