Mark Reviews Movies: FOUR SAMOSAS

Four Samosas, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 1, 2022

At a certain age, life amounts to a lot of sitting or standing around—at a job or at home, looking for work or counting the hours until it's time to go back to said job—and making big plans for how the rest of your life after this temporary—or, for most, "temporary"—period will go. That's the feeling reflected by Four Samosas, a little movie about a lot of hanging around and plenty of planning—not only about how to achieve some clear but unreachable future, but also how best to rob the local grocery store.

Writer/director Ravi Kapoor doesn't really need the robbery for this material to tell its story, examine its characters, or make its point. Indeed, it's a bit confounding how none of the firmly established plot actually matters by the time the business with some diamonds is quickly resolved. Such a detail makes for a marketable hook and a gimmick that keeps some things in focus, but this kind of story and these particular characters, trapped in that state in between youth and adulthood, almost demand an approach as unfocused as their lives.

The central character, who comes up with the plan to steal from the shop but has no plan whatsoever for his own life, is Vinny (Venk Potula). He's a young man of Indian descent living in the "Little India" neighborhood of Artesia in Los Angeles. Kapoor shows a real attention to and sense of affection for this place, with its various specialty shops (When he isn't working on composing raps, Vinny works in a store that exclusively sells saris), restaurants, official clubs, and unofficial organizations.

Of key note in the last two categories, there's a local dramatic society, rehearsing a re-enactment of the life of famous king—known for slaughtering countless foes but revered for feeling very bad about it later in life—in the background. There's also a group of wannabe revolutionaries, calling themselves by the not-to-revolutionary name "the Revolutionaries," who have big plans to buy a plot of land and turn it into an independent state. They're an amusing bunch, filled with lofty ambitions, while spending most of their time dancing and coming up with various rules for themselves and competitions for those who dare to challenge them.

In a way, then, that group is the real heart of the general outlook of and mood established by this story. Instead of seeing the rest of these characters through a similar lens, though, Kapoor gets right to the big scheme. Three years after being dumped, Vinny still pines for Rina (Summer Bishil), a young woman he dated and loved. She couldn't stand his insecurities about himself and their relationship, and now, she's engaged to Sanjay (Karan Soni), a dull guy who at least has some confidence and knows what he wants to do with his life—even if that does involve a goat manure recycling empire.

Rina's dowry from her father (played by an amusingly droll Tony Mirrcandani) is a bunch of diamonds, locked up in a safe in the office of the grocery store he operates. Vinny gathers a couple of friends, namely dreamer-of-Bollywood-stardom Zak (Nirvan Patnaik) and amateur journalist Anjali (an ebullient Sharmita Bhattacharya), and engineering school graduate Paru (Sonal Shah), who needs money to clear up her immigration status, to steal those "dirty diamonds."

If there's a major issue beyond how contrived the main plot feels in comparison to the laid-back attitude of the rest of the story, it's in how much effort Kapoor puts into making all of this come across as quirky. From the style—with its static shots, including the use of montages in order to maintain that aesthetic—to the general oddity of certain situations and characters, much of the movie's humor is too calculated, and within the context of a narrative that's meant to represent a slice-of-life, that approach is a significant contradiction to the overall goal.

The heist does figure into most of this story, and some of its planning (including Anjali's over-the-top ideas, such as landing on the roof via a helicopter) and execution (some unnecessarily convoluted disguises—not to mention Anjali's insistence on staying in character—and Paru spending the entire night going through assorted tools to break the safe) is amusing. Yes, the forced style of the material is present in these sections and gags, too, but it feels more connected to the plot's contrivances. The strange thing is how no consequences exist for any of the characters or the story in general once the robbery and its aftermath, since Vinny is pretty much the only suspect, come to an end.

Kapoor attempts to do a lot in a very short amount of time (Including credits, the whole affair runs 80 minutes). In doing so, the filmmaker essentially works around the core of Four Samosas, which is simply about characters who are stuck together in a specific place and time of their lives, trying to make the best of it.

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