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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.


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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.


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