Robbing a bank is traditionally a man’s job. According to the FBI, the few women caught in bank robberies are mostly accomplices or driving the getaway car. Of course, the phrase “traditionally a man’s job” is anathema to Kangana Ranaut and the defiant characters she plays, which is why Simran – a story based on a real-life female bank robber – sounds tailored for the actress. Hansal Mehta’s Simran works best when breezing along with a light touch, when Ranaut effervescently befriends bartenders and cheerily refuses to take no for an answer.
Simran opens well, with Ranaut’s character Praful Patel cleaning a hotel room. Part of the Hilton housekeeping staff, she picks up an upturned Milan Kundera book, dusts beneath it, and replaces it carefully as it was, before she makes a bed and scrubs a sink, thorough as can be. This is a laser-focussed Gujarati girl who wants to buy her own house, even though the “Indian temple” in the neighbourhood holds no attraction (it’s a Gurudwara), and neither does the nearby kebab shop (she’s vegetarian). She wants it because it’s a minority housing bargain, and the divorcee can’t wait to move out of her parents’ house and do her own thing.

One evening, Praful Patel meets the game James Bond plays. Everything changes once she wins her first hand of baccarat, and soon she’s looking up YouTube videos on how to hold up banks and spook cashiers. This is the meat of the film, yet the robberies soon feel repetitive. All her robberies are performed in the same outfit using the same technique – handing a bank teller a note scrawled in lipstick – and while news channels are constantly showing footage of her thefts, people in banks seem blissfully unaware of her modus operandi and fall for it over and over again. Most banks, it seems, don’t even have security guards. Just cashiers, one of whom Patel even blows a kiss to as she escapes. Besides Praful, every character in the film is one note, from the rigid father to the helpless mother to the scary moneylender to the sincere suitor. These actors seem particularly stagey and theatrical in contrast with Ranaut, who shines with a spontaneous and often irresistible performance. Kangana performance with a Gujarati accent thrown on, but there’s something special about the way she makes the character appear constantly amused by herself.

The finest scenes in Simran are the ones where Ranaut is playfully bantering with a Las Vegas bartender. There’s true charm and crackle to these moments where he takes a shine to her. She asks him for free fries and, undeterred by their absence, demands and settles for free peanuts instead.