Saturday, October 11, 2014
Tamanchey
Off Target
Confession: This is the review of half of Tamanchey. Here’s why: the press screening of the film at a suburban multiplex was 45 minutes late, because the tickets were not printed. The unfortunates who made it all the way there in rush hour traffic had to wait downstairs in the heat; the hosts did not even have the manners to escort the press to the lounge of the moviehall. Since one had made a two-hour effort to get there, one waited.
Then, the intermission went on interminably, without explanation or apology. On being asked, one was told there was a server problem. If the organisers of the preview had no respect for the reviewer’s time, the reviewer had every right to leave a painfully bad film at mid-point. One might have walked out anyway, the PR team’s lack of basic courtesy just helped make it guilt free.
First of all, the makers of Tamanchey cannot decide who the director is. Suryaveer Singh Bhullar is credited as ‘creative director’ and Navneet Behal as ‘visual director’; there is also a song director, so nobody takes responsibility? Ah well!
The film is about two criminals, Munna (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Babu (Richa Chadda), who have to hang out together when the police van in which they were being taken to prison, turned turtle. Babu is the smart one and foul-mouthed too, while Munna is a bit dazzled by her badass attitude and English speaking skills.
They take stops to eat, sleep, watch a porn movie and make love in a train, on a floor covered with tomatoes. Then Babu disappears, the besotted Munna forgets all about the bride waiting for him back in his village, and goes looking for her. She is the moll of a gangster called Rana (Damandeep Singh), and the two immediately get caught up in some inter-gang mayhem.
No matter how hard it tries to project the two characters as cool Bonnie And Clyde outlaws, they are just scruffy petty criminals, and there’s no reason to invest time or thought in their ‘crime doesn’t pay’ story. Nikhil Dwivedi and Richa Chadda (the camera focuses a lot on her bust) are well cast, and speak their ‘gangsta’ lines with a fair amount of conviction, but the film is still clichéd and boring.
Labels: Cinemaah
Sunday, October 05, 2014
Haider
Hell in Kashmir
That Vishal Bhardwaj and other filmmakers (the many recent Romeo
& Juliets) run to Shakespeare when short of ideas, is a tribute to the
Bard, whose works transcend barriers of time, language and country.
Of the three Shakespeare plays that Bhardwaj has picked, Haider
(Hamlet) is the most difficult and hence the most painstakingly put
together. It is set in Kashmir of the mid nineties when militancy was at
its peak, as was army presence, and the accuracy of the conditions depicted
must have a lot to do with Basharat Peer’s script—the journalist who wrote the
award-winning book Curfewed Night about the Kashmir conflict.
The people of Kashmir were caught between the violence of separatists and
the resultant repressive measures the Indian army was forced to adopt to fight
the menace. Many lives were wrecked, and families torn apart as the
paradise of Kashmir turned into hell. Bhardwaj’s cinematographer (Pankaj Kumar)
captures the grandeur of the old homes as well as the doomed beauty of the
landscape.
Haider (Shahid Kapoor) was sent away by his mother Ghazala (Tabu) to
Aligarh to get him away from his fascination with the militants. When he
returns it is because his father (Narendra Jha) has been arrested for operating
on a terrorist, and his home burnt down.
His mother has moved in with his uncle Khurram (Kay Kay Menon), and it
hurts Haider to see her laughing, when according to him, she should have been
distraught at her husband’s absence. He makes it a mission to hunt for his
father, one of the many who go from camp to camp, search jails and morgues to
find some trace of their loved ones’—alive if possible, or even dead to seek
closure. The terms for women whose husbands had disappeared was “half
widow.”
In trying to capture all angles of the Kashmir tragedy and also staying
more or less faithful to the play, Vishal Bhardwaj does seem to have tied
himself up in knots and his attempt to lighten the relentlessly dark and morbid
narrative falls flat—like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern characters called
Salman, who are fans of the star and act like him. The word “chutzpah” will
never be the same again after the way it is used in the film. Shraddha Kapoor’s
love interest has no spark, but Irrfan Khan as a substitute for the ‘ghost’ is
fabulous. And the ‘To be or not to be’ line sound poetic in Hindi-Urdu.
The burden of the heavy film is shouldered by Shahid Kapoor, whose
strenuous performance works at both the cerebral and physical level. Tabu’s mature performance of the complex woman is also worthy of appreciation.
Never mind the eventual box-office fate of the film, it means something
that the audience for this film was higher than that of Bang Bang in
the same South Mumbai moviehall. At least some people do not want mindless
entertainment.
Labels: Cinemaah
Bang Bang
None For The Buck
It’s a pity that we have come to associate mainstream cinema with
mindless entertainment, but if the mindlessness does not entertain enough, then
what is it worth?
The official remake of Hollywood actioner Knight And Day ticks
all the right boxes—A-list stars, a humongous budget, and spiffy action
sequences, that fail to thrill in spite of the expense and expertise involved,
and Hrithik Roshan getting seriously injured doing some stunts.
Commercial Hindi cinema wants desperately to emulate Hollywood and try to
outdo it, but is also too scared to drop the tried and tested Bollywood
elements—songs and dances, ‘dialoguebaazi,’ personal vendatta and
Ma-Babuji-Bhaiya-Dadi. So what should have been a brisk, tongue-in-cheek
save the world flick, becomes a plod.
A terrorist, Omar (Danny Denzongpa) is sprung from a high security prison
in London, rather easily, but wants to scuttle an extradition treaty with
India, so in future none of his gang can be sent to face trial. For this he
orders the Kohinoor diamond stolen. Presumably the Brits would be so enraged
that they would keep Indian prisoners for themselves. Yes, it’s that dumb!
The diamond is stolen by Rajveer (Hrithik Roshan), an “international
thief” and while he is fighting off cops (Pawan Malhotra, mainly) and hoods, he
makes time for a blind date with Harleen (Katrina Kaif) in Shimla. This girl,
believe it or not, is single, works as a bank receptionist (really?) and lives
a boring life with her granny.
Since Harleen is spotted with him, he is responsible for her safety and
as she keeps getting into ‘distress’ situations, he has to keep zooming in to
rescue her. Then he decides, he might as well lug her around as extra baggage, even if that means drugging and transporting her from one exotic destination to
another, where their lack of passports and visas is never a problem, and they
always have time to shop for the right outfits for the right occasion, from
bikini to evening dress.
Hrithik Roshan cannot do silliness the way Salman Khan does, and can’t
fake intelligence like Aamir Khan does, so all he has to show are some mean
dance moves and a chiseled body that makes the heroine gasp in
admiration. At least there is some role reversal here—the man is the eye
candy and the woman the gawker. Katrina Kaif is comfortable since she doesn’t
have to act much, but has to shriek “Rajveeeeer” a lot. Bang Bang could
have been much more fun, too bad it chose to be as bland as a travel brochure.
Labels: Cinemaah
