Film Synopsis - Taking Down The Underworld

 Synopsis #7

Title:    Taking Down the Underworld

Idea:    Triangulation of Talent

Plot:     Three friends – a computer science jock, a film creative head, and a banker take on racketeers and extortionists when one of their lives are on the line

Genre: Crime

Script Regn No (SWA): 35689

Membership No: 49484

Seg I

A private university is set to declare the final year results. The system is hacked. Working backwards the marks in the result sheet are changed, the scanned answer sheets are replaced and examiner signatures photoshopped. Results are declared and Sunder tops his batch, Satya and Shantanu do reasonably well. 

Sundar is a nerd and a computer science jock. Satya is brilliant in elocution and drama. He can scan a piece of paper on extra-terrestrials and convince the audience that he is in regular touch with them by replaying conversations he has had with them and how he has got them to do things for him. 

Shantanu is Shakuntala Devi. He is numerically brilliant. Satya and Shantanu indulge in their passions and depend on Sundar to get them through their exam by teaching them the night before the exam and then hacking the system to get them over the board. He writes the papers in which they have not done well and uploads it into the system.   

Nobody in the university suspected anything since the three boys were brilliant in their own way and the results were a testimony of their brilliance.   

Sundar joins a cyber security company that tracks criminal activity. Satya joins a film production house and is in-charge of content and production. Shantanu along the way completes his Chartered Accountancy course and Masters in Economics of Money, Banking and Finance from a foreign university. He joins the leading bank and rises rapidly to heads risk and investments. 

Seg II

The boys make it point to meet often on weekends and also do foreign holidays together. They have their girlfriends in tow but no permanent relationships to bog them down to thinking long-term commitment and marriage and babies etc. They want their fun time without significant commitments to continue for some time more. 

Seg III

Satya has a good run with most of the films and shows that he has created and is sitting pretty delivering hits after hits. One day he gets a call from an unidentified number. One of the lead characters, Aditya, in his show needs to be dropped. No explanation is given. 

Seg IV

Satya pretends to accidentally bump into the lead character Aditya over one weekend evening and invites him for a drink. They indulge in industry gossip and the evening wears on. Satya notices Aditya looking at the entrance of the bar every time it swings open and flinching a bit. When this happens once too many times, Satya asks Aditya if he is expecting someone. Aditya eyes go back to the door when he hears the very faint squish sound that you hear in cinema theatres in their effort to make the auditorium sound proof. Satya turns around at the same time and sees a shadowy figure just standing there and staring at them. Satya gets up from his sofa chair and walks to the door. Couple of youngsters walk in at that very moment and the man disappears from there. 

Seg V

Satya asks Aditya whether he knew the person who they both saw. Aditya at first does not say anything. Then he opens up. He tells Satya that a few days back he got into a fight with a stranger who was giving his girlfriend Jacqueline a hard time by sitting at an adjoining table and making crude remarks about her dress and body. Aditya who sports a six-pack, lifted the guy off the chair and pinned him to the wall. It all happened so suddenly that the man’s friends on the table just sat there and gaped. The bouncers came in and freed the man from Aditya who was a celebrity of sorts because of his leading role in a very successful show. The man when he was asked to leave the restaurant basically said that Aditya’s time glorying in his herohood is over. 

Seg VI

Satya the next day apprises the producers of the show. They agree that messing with the underworld is dangerous and messy and not worth anyone’s time including continued risk to Aditya. In the next episode Aditya is diagnosed with a critical illness and has to leave for the UK for treatment. Aditya is asked to take a break and live abroad for some time. He is essentially dropped from the show. Satya does not get any more calls and that’s that. Or is it? 

Seg VII

Satya shares what happened with Sundar - the cyber security nerd and Shantanu - the banker. Sundar tells Satya that it is not over. He tells Satya now he is a marked man. Soon he will hear threats to leading actors in Satya’s other shows. They are basically going to spin the story that they can knock off anyone from these popular shows unless they pay up. Whoever does not pay up will be followed by a call to you to drop him or her because they see you as pliable. If you don’t drop them, they will next come after you because you have served your purpose and now have become a block to their millions. 

Seg VIII

Satya asks Sundar if he can put a tap on all his leading actors and track these guys down. Sundar says he will need to get some permissions and he will organize it. Satya shares all the contact details of his lead actors. Their mobiles and landlines are tapped. As predicted by Sundar his leading actors start getting calls one at a time. The caller relates the Aditya episode and asks for transfer to an account number. The amounts are intentionally kept small by the blackmailers to minimize resistance and confirm pliability. All who get the call pay up. Except one of his leading actors, Shiraz, who does not get a call. He is the brother of a mining baron. All the transfers are to different bank accounts in different banks which when Shantanu tracks with his colleagues across different banks are generally closed after the money comes and is withdrawn. Invariably the account is of some migrant worker who says he was approached by an NGO who helped him set up the bank account and now and then would give him a few hundred rupees. But last month end nobody turned up to pay him. Shantanu surmised that this was a huge underworld network that was operating. Blackmailing actors was just one part of their portfolio which some junior don was running on his own and like an MLM organization (Multilevel Marketing) a percentage is going to the big honchos. 

Seg IX

The taps on the phone of the leading actors across the shows also exposes the underbelly of the industry too. The anxiety to stay on top was leading to drugs, drinking bouts, broken relationships, cliques, gossip, character assassinations, deliberate attempts make any upcoming talent feel that he or she does not belong there and the general understanding of whose good books you need to be to get the in-demand roles. Sundar updates Satya on all that he is hearing. Satya took it as par for the course but he did not realize how bad it was. He followed a meritocracy in the selection of the scripts and briefed his producers / directors who then picked the actors and scheduled the production with Satya having an oversight over what is delivering success. He realized the producer / directors are the guys whose ‘good books’ the actors and other technicians contracted on the show have to cultivate by fair of foul means. 

Seg X

While Shantanu the banker is not successful in tracking down the real account owners, Sundar is able to map the mobile numbers and where the sims were being bought. These were select outlets in a dense slum area. A tap is put on these stores. A camera is hooked up on electricity pole opposite the store (under the pretext of changing a bulb or repairing a purposely tripped power shut down). All coming and goings at the different stores are monitored especially of those buying new sims. The service providers at the divisional level are asked to share copies of the application form. In a matter of weeks all suspects making threatening calls are tracked down, their mobiles tapped, and their locations mapped and recorded. Beside their racketeering with the tinsel world, a whole other can of worms are opened up which all led to one person. There are calls that come on the temporary sims from their homes and from their bosses – part of their social network. The calling-in phone numbers are tracked to bank accounts with unsurprisingly has huge inflows and outflows which Shantanu with his inner circle track without anyone else knowing. 

Seg XI

Now the matter of the findings go to higher levels and an investigative team is formed under Sundar to get to the top honcho. The mining baron whose brother never got a blackmail call is put under watch. Shantanu checks out his accounts. He finds them clean with proper taxes paid. He also finds that the mining baron runs a chain of gaming parlours where all dealings are in cyber currency. Key gamers who spend nearly all the time in the parlours have no separate job but appear to be well-to-do. Sundar puts two-into-two and figures that the extortion cash is getting converted into cybercurrencies which get channelled back into the mining baron funded films including declaring Box Office Collections through pumped in money in companies operating multi-screens. They cannot touch the mining baron. They do not have sufficient proof. Also, he has a network of industrialists and politicians that he has funded through the alternate channel. 

Seg XII

The trio put together a plan. Satya selectively de-selects scripts that play to the mining baron’s brother’s strength which has lot of machismo. Satya makes up some story about the shows overseas that are drawing an audience. Indian serials normally follow global trends, largely US, when not copying the shows wholesale like KBC and Big Brother. Shiraz thinks he is being targeted and brings up the matter with Satya. Satya suggests he build his portfolio and doing different kind of roles. Satya clears a script that has Shiraz playing a wimp. The show bombs. Shiraz like all fallen actors takes to drinking and generally misbehaving. Shiraz talks to his mining baron brother and puts the blame squarely on Satya. The mining baron says don’t worry he will fix it.  

Seg XIII

He calls an unlisted number in Dubai and basically puts a supari on Satya. The Film World award show is announced. Satya is to be commemorated for all his achievements. The underworld wants to make a show of their power. They in fact set it up that Satya must get this big Hall of Fame award where he will be alone on the stage. 

Seg XIV

Satya presents himself on stage as a character from his sci-fi show about extra-terrestrials covered from head to foot with a bullet-proof fabric that is not visible from the gallery from where the assailant has been positioned to shoot based on the tracked calls. Shots ring out. Satya collapses and is rushed offstage bleeding. Backstage he is cleaned up off all the ketchup by the investigative team and bandaged seemingly where he was hit. 

Seg XV

There are congratulatory phone calls being exchanged in the underworld on the neat job. The investigative team sweep in on the suspects at all the identified locations they have been tracking including the home of the mining baron. The biggest folder of evidence is on the mining baron and the confession of Shiraz who spills the beans on his brother to get reprieve for his part in the supari on Satya. 

Seg XVI 

Post hospitalization and recovery, Satya continues the charade of being shot. The actors stop getting extortion calls. There is lot of enthusiasm on the shooting floor. Aditya returns after recovery from his ‘critical illness’ and gets back on the show. The movie ends with the last few scenes of the script on the screen. The credits come on. Satya’s name shows up for screenplay. Satya is applauded by his friends Sundar and Shantanu at the special preview of the film heading for a potentially box office hit. 

Curtain. Curtain.