Earlier Hindi films had a very compelling emotional motive for a crime like someone’s mother dying due to poverty or some such. What’s the motive behind the heist in ‘Happy New Year’? We put that question to the man himself and he described the thought behind it in detail. Check it out:
?We have a line that Boman Irani says, ?If there is no motive, there is no crime’. So everybody in this film has a motive which is based on that grey area that all of them want to achieve something. Everyone feels that life has passed one by. So maybe the motive for someone is the desire to get rich. And then somewhere down the line, the motive changes and becomes one single motivation.?
?’Happy New Year’ is not a story of six professional thieves who keep doing this regularly. They can live their lives as they are, losers, not using their talent. Or, they pull off the heist using it. It’s not just ki chal aaj chori kar lete hain. Tere ko aata hai taala todna? Tere ko goliyan chalaani aati hai to chori kar lete hain. They have those talents, but they needed a motivation. They are not bad people, just people who have lost out in life due to certain circumstances. None of them want to steal, actually. One man brings them together and motivates them. There’s one scene where Boman says, ?So you are saying that we should become thieves now?? So Charlie says, that there’s a reason for it. It’s a wrong move, but it is in the space of Robin Hood, rather than being just bad professional thieves. Although, maybe if this film does well, they might become professional thieves.?