Saturday, August 23, 2014
Mardaani
Wo-Man
It happens too often that talented actresses
are tempted with films in which they are not secondary to the hero, and then
are let down with half-baked scripts; Pradeep Sarkar’s Mardaani is a case in point (after Bobby Jasoos a few weeks ago). The title is presumably inspired by
the famous “Khoob ladi mardaani, woh to
Jhansi wali Rani thi” poem by Subhadha Kumari Chauhan, giving the lead
character in the film a tragic grandeur she doesn’t possess.
Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukerji) is a crime
branch cop, a tough-taking, one-of-the-boys type, but with bangs and braid
perfectly in place. She lives with her husband (Jisshu Sengupta) and niece, and
has taken a street flower seller under her wing, after rescuing her from her
wicked uncle.
When this girl, Pyaari (Priyanka Sharma) goes
missing from the children’s shelter home, Shivani uncovers the tip of a widespread flesh trading ring, that has been out of the police radar because its kingpin
is an evil and smart operator. When she
steps on to his turf, and won’t be bribed, he hits where it hurts—by publicly
humiliating her husband.
He has a running phone conversation with
Shivani, in which he talks in a civilised voice, and she like a ‘filmi’ cop
with coarse lines. She promises to trace him within 30 days, and instead of
throwing insurmountable odds in her way, the script hands it all to her on a
platter.
Because Sarkar already takes a risk by making
a film without the trappings of commercial cinema, he could have gone the whole
hog and made a one that exposed the workings of child trafficking gangs,
instead of just picking the voyeuristic, skin-show bits. It also puts cops off
the hook, when it is obvious that a crime ring like that cannot run without the
complicity of the police.
Rani Mukerji is in terrific form, and even
though the film has no depth, she doesn’t let her intensity falter. Why should
a film about a woman who does her duty even be called Mardaani? It’s as if being janaani
is somehow inferior.
Labels: Cinemaah
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Singham Returns
Roar Shor
Rohit
Shetty’s Singham Returns does not
demand that you leave your brain at home, just turn it down a bit. At full
alert it would be difficult to sit through such a noisy and mostly senseless
film without the said brain ‘satko-ing.’
When Bajirao Singham’s bheja ‘satakto’ he goes on a rampage. What is the
cinema audience to do?
Shetty must
have designed all those grand action sequences-- in which the hero and his band of cops
don’t get hit with machine guys and rocket launchers, but they decimate armies
of bad guys with revolvers; in which the baddies stand in front of Singham with
guns, but don’t shoot. There are several fist fights, which are more thrilling
than gun battles, and would have been less ear-splitting if the stunt men were
not breaking so much glass.
Anyway,
after all this work was done, Shetty must have ordered a plot to fill in the gaps. Some romance with an irritatingly shrieky
Kareena Kapoor (she should have grown out of playing the cretinous roles by
now), some emotion, which comprises more shrieking women, and the standard
issue villains—one politician, one godman.
Surprisingly, no gangsters and no corrupt cops. In Singham’s world there
is no corruption in the police force. That’s good to know!
Bajirao
(Devgn) is a DCP in Mumbai now, and starts with trying to reform errant teens.
One of his men is killed in suspicious circumstances and the trail leads to a
phoney godman (Amole Gupte) and his political cohort (Zakir Hussain). They are
amassing crores to win elections (really?) because a Gandhian type of Guruji
(Anupam Kher) wants to initiate progress by getting young people to stand for
elections, and that bothers the godman-politician combo. In such films, with a
pseudo-political backdrop, elections are always coming up.
The godman
obviously has enough manpower, money, wheels and weaponry to go after Guruji
and a potential turncoat with massive attacks on the roads. The media reaches
all over the place (with a smirking Barkha Dutt type leading the pack), except
where the action is!
There is one
scene that has the audience cheering--when Singham is told a cop in uniform
can’t take the law into his hands, he takes his shirt off and marches to the
villains' den, with thousands of ganji-clad
cops following him. Then Daya (of TV’s CID
fame) gets to break down the door to more cheering.
The film
needed more of this kind of masala than its half-baked politics. Still, at least it is respectful towards cops, who are
routinely battered in films, and Ajay Devgn plays Singham with a sober dignity
and even allows some cracks at his age.
After the
film is over, the brain can be restarted, tested for noise damage and life be
resumed with no memory of the film just watched.
Labels: Cinemaah
