Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz
Happy
Hitman
Babu Bihari
(Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a gun for hire, and he does his killing work with
relish, which immediately makes him despicable and unworthy of the ‘hero’
status Kushan Nandy accords to him in the film Babumoshai Bandookbaaz.
Set in a
completely lawless Uttar Pradesh, where cops act as go-betweens to connect
clients with a hitman for a commission, nobody cares how many people die in ego
clashes between rival politicians. When Babu wants to woo a pretty cobbler
Phulwa (Bidita Bag), he kills two men, “for free” as he tells his employer. (Does
anyone in UP and Bihar ever get arrested for murder?)
He is pretty
much the killing champ till his copycat Banke Bihari (Jatin Goswami) turns up
to both aid and challenge him. Apart
from a cop who brings him work, Banke is the only friend he has, and he lets
his guard down, which proves fatal. Babu is not one to let a bullet stop him—he
laughs at pain, and believes he is invincible, but even he has no shield
against betrayal and deceit.
Nandy and
his writer Ghalib Asad Bhopali, have tried to ape the amoral universe of
Quentin Tarantino and his Indian disciple Anurag Kashyap; nobody is clean,
honest or trustworthy. Living in a place where they have no power except as
sexual beings, even the women are manipulative and treacherous.
At the top
of the heap is Sumitra (Divya Dutta), married to an old man, and seeking
political power through any means. She is Babu’s frequent client, but when she
thinks he has double-crossed her, she is vicious. Her rival Dubey (Anil George)
is equally nasty and also kinky. Then there’s another corrupt cop (Bhagwan
Tiwari), whose household is overrun by sons, and he forces his wife to keep
having kids because he wants a daughter.
If Nandy’s
idea was to show that there are places like this in India where evil abounds
and there is no hope at all, then he succeeds up to point, but then why would
viewers want to watch such an ugly film? These days controversy, sex and
profanity do not make for box-office magnets.
Siddiqui is
a fine actor, but he’s like spice in a dish—too much and it’s ruined. The other
actors are competent and look like they belong to that grungy world; casting
directors are getting better at their task.
Labels: Cinemaah
Sniff
The Nose
Knows
It is difficult for a filmmaker making a movie
for children in India to compete with the technically superior products from
Hollywood. But Amole Gupte has been making unusual little films like Stanley Ka Dabba and Hawa Hawaai. Somehow the intention to
please the target audience and the relentless good cheer of his movies seem to
work.
What he lacks in budget he makes up with
imaginative subjects. His latest, Sniff, is about a little boy (Khushmeet Gill) who is born without a
sense of smell, which, for a family that manufactures pickles is worse than
blindness, as his grandmother (Surekha Sikri) says. (The opens with
mouthwatering shots of a pickle being made.)
In a sweet scene, his friend Adil teaches him
expressions that go with various good smells; the reaction to bad smells he
gets when he goes to class after stepping on dog poo.
Then, when the best doctors have given up on
Sunny' s nose, an accident involving chemicals in a derelict lab, gets him his
sense of smell back and so strong it is now that he can smell things two
kilometres away. This power gives him unique crime fighting abilities since he
can literally sniff out crime.
It so happens that there have been car thefts
in the vicinity and the colony kids decide they have to solve the crime even
though the fierce ACP Bhaswati (Sushmita Mukherjee) lives there. Her
relationship with her husband (Putul Guha), mocked by the neighbours for
being jobless, is delightfully loony.
Gupte did workshops with school kids so the
children are utterly natural; Sunny's friend Adil is a charmer. But more than
that he has worked with real people from a suburban housing society and they
all seem to be enjoying the experience. However, the film could have done
with a faster pace, and more magical moments.
Sunny, with his extra sensitive nose will
return, it says in the end, making the Sikh kid our first kiddie superhero.
Labels: Cinemaah
