Saturday, August 17, 2013
Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara
The D Thing
The spectators are waiting, the captains of
the two teams are impatient for the toss, but the cricket match cannot start
till Shoeib Khan enters the stadium. And he strides in like royalty, waving to
fans. And while he fixes the match, he also picks up an excitable women in the
stands, telling her to come to his party dressed in a black sari and red
inners--which she does and looks happy about it too. He always wears dark
glasses, because his future is so bright (he says), smokes like a bonfire and
uses his fingers to put out his cigarettes. He enjoys being evil, and speaks in
bombastic style, like he were a cross between Genghiz Khan and Alexander the
Great, only his conquest is limited to the Mumbai underworld.
Bollywood has consistently glorified the
don—he who cannot be named—but Milan
Luthria’s Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara is one step short of erecting
a monument to the man in the middle of the Arabian Sea. Maybe after the inevitable ‘Tibara’ they will,
and get it over with...they might as well also declare his birthday a national
holiday, while they are at it.
Shoeib (Akshay Kumar) captured the reins of
Mumbai, even though the only show of strength he has are two henchmen. For a change, the cops are not seen as
nincompoops, but actually trying to do their jobs well. There’s a scene in
which cops tail Shoeib’s friend Mumtaz (Sonali Bendre Behl), and suddenly find
themselves surrounded by several taxis with the same number, carrying one burqa-clad passenger.
The don who stays one step ahead of his
rivals and the cops, falls helplessly in love with a dim-witted starlet Jasmine
(Sonakshi Sinha), who doesn’t know who he is. But she is in love with Shoeib’s
protégé and loyalist Aslam (Imran Khan). She conducts a wide-eyed flirtation
with both, however, and is dismayed when Shoeib makes a play for her.
The plot is thin, and the film long, which
means that after half the film is spent in building up Shoeib’s image, the
rather uninteresting love triangle gets second place. Since you can’t bring
yourself to care for any of the three characters, it hardly matters how the
situation is resolved.
Apart from the excellent production design
and adventurous cinematography, Luthria has got his writer Rajat Aroraa to pen
old-style dialogue, so the characters just never have a normal
conversation—they speak in clever one-liners.
Akshay Kumar smirks like his face would fall
apart if he faltered, and Imran Khan looks like he was playing fancy
dress. Sonakshi Sinha’s ‘innocence’ would
have been charming if it wasn’t so fake; a girl who comes from Kashmir to
Mumbai and becomes an actress, can hardly retain such little-girl naivete.
The first One
Upon A Time... film had a plot and a level of authenticity in capturing the
rise of the organised crime in Mumbai, this Dobaara
has no reason to exist, except perhaps as a bridge to part three of the
franchise, presumably when the don runs his criminal empire from exile.
Labels: Cinemaah
