Saturday, April 26, 2014
Revolver Rani
Gangsta Queen
Alka Singh, the gun-toting gangster politician in macho, crime-ridden
Madhya Pradesh, could have been India’s Modesty Blaise. But after establishing
this quirky character, Sai Kabir lets the film slide into confused and tedious
chaos.
As played by Kangana Ranaut with curls, fake tan and dreadful fashion
sense, Alka has the kind of power that allows her to get away with the murder
of her husband (and many others) and pick up a man she fancies. Rohan Kapoor
(Vir Das), a small town Bollywood aspirant, impresses Alka Singh in an
underwear contest for males, and becomes her kept man. She produces a film for
him (no sign of it, though), builds a Chambal Film City for him but keeps him
on a tight leash. It’s not quite clear why the coke-snorting duplicitous actor
simply does not escape, since Alka’s influence remains in the Chambal, but he
turns out to be the reason for her downfall.
It is not enough to just reverse roles (he gets kidnapped by her enemies
and she rides to the rescue) and amuse the audience, there has to be more to a
character like Alka Singh than just male swagger.
Her political rival, Udaybhan Singh (Zakir Hussain) plots and schemes,
but is out manoeuvred by Alka’s uncle Balli (Piyush Mishra), who also wields a
mean pen for speech-writing.
Pity that Alka is neither a tough as she tries to look, nor sympathetic
in her dying-to-be-a-“Mummy” turnaround. It’s as if Kabir put this woman on a
pedestal only to have her crash into the pit of domesticity—it implies that all
women have this wife-mother-homemaker genetic weak spot.
The film with all those gangsters and politicians tries to portray the hinterland
in the way Anurag Kashyap and Tigmanshu Dhulia do, but the inspiration is
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. If the film does have a sequel, as
promised in the end, it is bound to be a violent rehash of the Hollywood film.
It’s a pity filmmakers cannot see strong women as anything more that
imitation males. Alka does not even seem to have a mind of her own—her uncle is
the puppet master.
Kangana Ranaut does bring flashes of fire to her part, but when the
director is not quite clear what he wants, it’s difficult for the actress to
get the right key. To be told that she is Revolver Rani and end up having her
coo to teddy bears could throw any actress. It was brave of Vir Das to accept
such a thoroughly despicable character, and he balances various shades well;
the other men are all one-note thugs. Sai Kabir’s mixing of mofussil Indian
lawlessness with Hollywood noir, and comic-book action remains uneasy. The only
bit of drollery he pulls off, is in the reporting of all the mayhem around Alka
by a solemn newsreader trying to make sense of the absurdity.
Labels: Cinemaah
Samrat & Co.
Almost Elementary
Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective Sherlock
Holmes is rediscovered by TV series and filmmaker fans every few years and each
new work starring Holmes and his sidekick Watson, has the maker’s own stamp on
it. Robert Downey Jr. Benedict
Cumberbatch, Johnny Lee Miller have all played Holmes in recent times with
varying degrees of cool.
Kaushik Ghatak hat-tips Holmes in the credits
and then goes on to make Samrat & Co.,
which is more a parody than a tribute.
The good-looking Rajeev Khandelwal plays
Samrat Tilak Dhari, with the unfortunate initials STD; his assistant/companion
is Chakra Dhar or CD, an annoying anchor of TV crime shows. A young woman, Dimpy (Madalsa Sharma)
approaches him for help. Her father
Mahendra Pratap’s (Girish Karnad) Shimla Estate has had some strange goings-on
and she wants STD to investigate.
In the huge Shimla mansion, there is the
usual assortment of family members, friends and employees who provide the list
of suspects and red herrings when Mahendra Pratap is murdered. Before that, there is a giggle-inducing scene
in which he shows off Shakespeare’s feather quill to Samrat. This astonishing prop then never reappears.
Ghatak slavishly uses the detective story
format perfected by Doyle, Agatha Christie and other writers of classic crime
fiction. As a result, even though the film is set in the present, it looks and
sounds antiquated. Everything is tacky, from the over-stuffed sets to the
costumes (Dimpy, for instance, is dressed in outmoded frocks, when everybody
else is bundled up in winter wear.)
As Samrat investigates, more corpses turn up,
which just ups the boredom quotient of the film. Khandelwal has tremendous
screen presence (you try not to notice his frequent hair style changes) and
could have made for a fine private eye in a better film—this one does not even
reach the entertainment value of TV’s CID.
The way the film ends, it looks like there are plans for a sequel. This sort of thing just might work as a TV
series, a film needs much more imagination... and novelty. Otherwise, to use a
Samrat-ism: what’s the point?
Labels: Cinemaah
