Chambal has stood for the Wild Wild West in India. Macho men carrying guns, ruling the land through terror -- we have all grown up on such stories. Beneath the humdrum of our daily lives, we all would like to live that fantasy. That, in short, is the story of Phamous. Our hero, Jimmy Sheirgill has always idolised the local dhakad -- chambal term for a strongman -- played by Kay Kay.

Pankaj Tripathi has come to a point where he can make sense of any role you cast him in. Here he is the innocent looking but menacing Chambal politician Ram Vijay Tripathi with a roving eye and endless libido. Looking at him working earnestly at his character you pity all the effort wasted at the alter of a bad film. He is not alone.

For all those who have grown up in the '60s and '70s, the typical Bollywood films with a daku (dacoit) in the central role were aplenty. And so one has seen the usual moustachioed burly hero who would time and again roar but only if he saw any wrong. Unmistakably, he had a heart of gold, and was the Indian Robinhood.

In the dusty and lawless hinterland, guns fire without hesitation and a bullet is your ticket to fame. This is the premise for writer-director Karan Lalit Butani's Phamous, set in the Chambal region of Madhya Pradesh. The first three to four scenes of Phamous barrel through a number of plot lines: a gangster with a penchant for guns and power, a local politician with an overactive libido and Radhe Shyam, a school boy with a crush on his teacher Rosie (Mahie Gill).

The first thought that runs across my mind as soon as the atrocious Phamous ends is: Thank God, it's over! I wipe the sweat off my brow and thank the Almighty for giving me the strength to sustain the most brutal torture of all my senses for the past 114 minutes.

For lack of a better descriptor, Phamous can be said to be about men and moustaches. The kind of men who lord over the arid hillocks of the Chambal, who shower more affection on their 'mooch' than their 'mashooka'. Or should we hazard the guess that their 'mooch' is their 'mashooka'?