Vinny is on a mission. He’s been stuck in a rut, his ex-girlfriend is about to get married and he needs to prove himself to win her back. To make some fast money, he assembles a crew and sets out to steal a cache of dirty diamonds – from his ex’s dad.
Sonal Shah, Venk Potula, Sharmita Bhattacharya and Nirvan Patnaik in a scene from director Ravi Kapoor’s film, “4 Samosas.” Venk Potula, Sharmita Bhattacharya, Nirvan Patnaik, and Sonal Shah in a scene from director Ravi Kapoor’s film, “4 Samosas.” While some stylistic flourishes pay homage to Quentin Tarantino and others, this bright, colorful movie is a gentle comedy, with the feel of a Wes Anderson film.
“We’ve seen a million heist movies and a million romance movies but maybe not one that looked like this,” says Kapoor, best known as an actor for “Crossing Jordan,” about his second directing effort. There’s not a lot of demanding material for South Asian actors to sink their teeth into. I remember coming out of drama school and saying, “If they won’t let us play Hamlet, then we have to write our own Hamlets. My first play was a retelling of the Rumina written in verse. It’s gratifying now for me to say to young actors, “Here’s a role you might not otherwise get to play.”
Most of the places we shot I had in mind while writing. I go to Artesia whenever my family comes into town. Even those railway lines that cut across the main boulevard — I always knew I wanted to set something there. This was very low budget so we couldn’t give people typical Hollywood fees and there were certain places we couldn’t get, but generally people were excited and super generous. They want to elevate Artesia and hope it will bring people to the community.
But it didn’t feel right — it felt like we were denying our audience something, the joy of what we could do with the color. In that sense, the film made its own demands of what it wanted to be. You have an idea of what you think the film is going to be, but the film is talking back to you. The film said you can’t deny the color in this world — we have Bollywood touches in there too with the dancing — and you can’t deny what this culture is.