Khiladi 786: Review

Khiladi 786 is number eight in the Khiladi series, a loose franchise that began in 1991 and introduced a new kind of action hero in the husky-voiced Akshay Kumar. All subsequent Khiladi films have starred Kumar, though it’s been 12 years since the last, Khiladi 420. Ashish R Mohan, making his directorial debut here after assisting Rohit Shetty on the Golmaal series, pops the Dabangg/Singham/Son of Sardar template into the microwave, lets it heat for a bit and serves it up to a public that seemingly can’t get enough of silly action comedies.

Apart from Khiladi Kumar, the biggest name attached to the film is Himesh Reshammiya, who’s written the story, composed the music and lent his nasal twang to most of the songs. He also plays an inept matchmaker who, in an attempt to get back into the good books of his father, vows to bring Bahattar Singh (Kumar) and Indu Tendulkar (Asin Thottumkal) together in holy matrimony. Given that Bahattar is a criminal – albeit one who beats up other criminals to help out the Punjab police – and Indu the daughter of a Mumbai don (Mithun Chakraborty), it would seem a pretty straightforward match. But that’s too easy for Reshammiya and Mohan, who contrive to bring the entire Singh clan to Mumbai, and have both sides pretend to be policemen. With Rahul Singh filling in as Asin’s jealous boyfriend and token villain, the stage is set for a lot of over-the-top muscle flexing, pronouncements of Punjabi pride and songs that go “lonely lonely tere bin”.

It’s not like there’s no fun to be had. Kumar, a less tightly wound star than Salman Khan or Ajay Devgn, tosses off all his lines with a wink, while Raj Babbar (as Bahattar’s father Sattar), Chakraborty and the perpetually on-edge Rahul Singh are effectively hammy. Some of the gags – Kumar walking on top of a row of afros, for example – are so outrageous they work, and character names like Margaret Mandela Kaur are weird even for Bollywood. But Mohan seems terrified of boring the audience – he’s constantly speeding the action up and slowing it down, a trick which was already stale in 2010. For all the progress made by just-outside-the-mainstream Hindi films this year, no one seems to be giving the slightest thought to changing the staple Bollywood action comedy formula. Considering the brisk business these films do, no one’s likely to attempt it in a hurry either.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

2012: The year in close-up

As 2012 draws to a close and critics across the country start slotting the year’s releases into hits and flops, good films and awful ones, here’s a year-end list with considerably smaller ambitions. Instead of looking at the year in long shot, as it were, I’m going to do an extreme close-up. Here are a handful of moments which, for me, best represent what Bollywood’s been up to these past 12 months. Some are stand-out scenes in bad films, others disappointing interludes in good ones. For one reason or the other, these are likely to be the little details that come to mind when I look back on Hindi cinema in 2012. (Unlike the makers of Barfi!, I’d also like to acknowledge upfront my debt to Richard T Jameson and Kathleen Murphy’s yearly column ‘Moments Out of Time’, whose structure I’ve borrowed for this piece.)

Irrfan Khan training his would-be dacoits in Paan Singh Tomar, reminiscent of similar scenes in Bandit Queen. Tomar’s director Tigmanshu Dhulia was in charge of casting on Shekhar Kapur’s film.

The touching concern shown by Parambrata Chatterjee’s young cop towards the very pregnant Vidya Balan in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani. The ordinariness of Bob Biswas, insurance agent and serial killer. The use of the city of Calcutta as a character in itself. If this was the year of the Bengali director in Bollywood, Kahaani was the first blow delivered.

The camera gazing voyeuristically at Manoj Bajpayee taking a bath in Gangs of Wasseypur I; a neat reversal of the traditional ‘bathing beauty’ gender roles in Hindi cinema.

A mother pointing out to her daughter the man she once loved but gave up – the precise moment when one realised that Barfi! wasn’t a tribute but a rip-off. Stealing silent movie gags is all very well (The Artist got five Oscars for it), but who steals from The Notebook? 

The ‘Raabta’ sequence from Agent Vinod. This flawlessly executed, intricate, unbroken shot – clocking in at 3 minutes and 22 seconds – was the set-piece of the year. Saif and Kareena dodge a motel-full of assassins as the camera weaves its way around arguing couples, blind piano players and baby strollers with machine guns in them.

The year of the chameleon: Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a cop in Kahaani, a mafia boss in Gangs of Wasseypur and a freedom fighter in Chittagong. (He was also in Miss Lovely and Patang, both of which did the festival circuit rounds, and will play a pivotal role in the much-anticipated Talaash.)    

Annu Kapoor in Vicky Donor, delivering the weirdest history lesson in ages, one that relates Alexander the Great and Partition to sperm count. Plus, a new high: Mummyji and Dadiji sitting in the dark and drinking whiskey.

Run, run, run: Joginder Parmar sprinting for his life, CPU clutched to his chest, in Shanghai; Perpendicular skidding through the narrow lanes in Gangs of Wasseypur II; Paan Singh Tomar running for a country that wants his medals, not his problems. 

The two most anti-feminist, say-it-ain’t-so decisions of the year: Parineeti Chopra forgiving Arjun Kapoor for taking advantage of her in Ishaqzaade; a betrayal by the film of its only appealing character, and of Chopra’s thrilling defiance up to that point. A close second: Deepika Padukone deciding that she needs to become a Bharatiya nari to win her love back in Cocktail.

Films with exactly one successful joke: Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, with a bemused Imran Khan sitting through a job interview in Japanese; Fatso, where heaven is a red tape-riddled, error-prone government office; Rowdy Rathore, in which Akshay Kumar ‘rewinds’ Sonakshi Sinha walking by; Kya Super Kool Hain Hum, just for its title (will they add a ‘duper’ for the sequel?).

Abhay Deol in Shanghai, praying as his laptop plays ‘Vishnu Sahasranamam’. Also, from the same film, Farooque Sheikh’s reading of the line “Haathi ho tum. Insult nahin bhoolte”. 

Roshan Seth, a bulldog and a haggard-looking Salman Khan in a bags-under-the-eyes conversation for the ages in Ek Tha Tiger. If Khan was losing sleep over the opening, he shouldn’t have. Ek Tha Tiger’s earnings (250 crores and counting) will probably see him end this year as he’s done the last three – the star of the highest-grossing film. (The fact that Ek Tha Tiger, Bol Bachchan, Rowdy Rathore and Housefull 2 – all panned to various degrees by reviewers – were some of the top money-earners this year tells its own little story about the gap between critical opinion and public taste.)

Best use of soundtrack in 2012: The unexpected change from ominous strings to the gentle rain of Sneha Khanwalkar’s ‘Moora’ in Gangs of Wasseypur II. It’s an indication that even though he has a bullet in his leg and gunmen desperately looking for him, Faisal Khan’s hard day’s night will soon be over.

This piece appeared in GQ's year-end issue. It was written a while back, but nothing especially compelling has happened since then, with the exception of Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana. If I sat down to write it today, the list would mostly be the same. 

Stardust Memories and Zelig

By 1980, Woody Allen had already made Bananas, Sleeper, Love and Death and Annie Hall, and through them established a comic persona that was identifiably and uniquely his. In 1979, he made Manhattan, his love poem to New York. Then, a year later, he pulled the rug out from under everyone’s feet with Stardust Memories, a vitriolic comedy about the utter difficulty of being a celebrity that riffed on Fellini’s 8½. Allen played a seeming self-portrait called Sandy Bates. Sandy is a neurotic director of comedies whose every joke is analysed, and who keeps getting asked why he doesn’t make them like his early, funny ones anymore (Allen had directed the Bergamanesque Interiors in 1978). He ping-pongs from girlfriend to crush to meaningless fling, the memory of his troubled former lover haunting him all the while.

Stardust Memories is funny, but it isn’t much fun. The jokes keep coming, each more sour and sarcastic than the next. No one is spared – the greedy, grabbing public, the supercilious critics, even Sandy/Woody himself. Everyone assumed Allen was drawing from his own experiences, though the director denied this in later interviews. In either case, explorations into the nature of celebrity have been a recurring theme of Allen’s films since then. This includes his most recent release, To Rome with Love, which has a lot in common with Stardust Memories. The phrase “Ozymandias melancholia” is spoken in both, and Ellen Page’s Monica is a close cousin of Jessica Harper’s Daisy. Both are sharply satirical of fame and its attendant vulgarities, though To Rome with Love does with a wry smile what Stardust Memories does with a sneer.

After Stardust Memories, Allen began work on a film called Zelig. Once again, the subject was the slippery nature of celebrity and public expectations. This time, however, instead of using a framework that could be interpreted as autobiographical, Allen structured his film as a mockumentary. He played Leonard Zelig, a Jazz-era human chameleon who assumes the personality of whoever he’s with. This makes him a huge sensation, but what price fame, Allen asks, if you’re not really your own person? Allen inserted shots of himself into footage from the 1920s; we see Zelig on the field with Babe Ruth, and sitting behind Hitler during a rally. It’s a witty, elusive film, unlike anything else directed by Allen. It was very well-received upon its release in 1983, and Allen liked the idea of disappearing into the 1920s so much, he returned to the theme in 2011’s Midnight in Paris.

Jab Tak Hai Jaan: Review

Meet Samar. Like most penniless Indians in London, he sells fish, waits tables and sings Punjabi folk songs to survive. Meet Meera. She’s a rich girl, prone to making deals with Jesus in empty churches. They meet, and because they’re Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif, they fall in love; never mind that she’s engaged, or that he comes on like Clark Gable (“If I kiss you, will you slap me? I don’t think so”). Then, just when she’s about to leave her fiancé for a penniless singing waiter, he’s hit by a car. As he fights for his life, Meera makes one of her divine bargains, something along the lines of “Save him, and I promise I’ll never see him again.” (Don’t ask.) At any rate, the god of flawed screenplays intervenes, and next thing you know, Samar is a Hurt Locker-style bomb disposal expert in Ladakh. (Please don’t ask.)

Difficult as it may be to imagine, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, directed by the late Yash Chopra and written by Aditya Chopra and Devika Bhagat, becomes even more implausible in its second half. Suffice to say there’s another accident, a diagnosis of retrograde amnesia and a complex game of pretend suggested by a doctor whose license may need examining. Is this the same Aditya Chopra who wrote Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge? It must be, because there’s a scene in a European church, another in a green field with yellow flowers, and a character who gets to say “Jaa, jee le…” But these Yash Raj staples are all the more depressing because they no longer seem genuinely felt. It may sound cynical, but a Hindi film with a climactic speech in English surely has at least one eye on the NRI market.

As Akira, a journalist who finds out about Samar’s love story by accident and tags along with his unit for a TV documentary, Anushka Sharma pumps some young blood into a picture that’s badly in need of a transfusion. But despite a few attempts to make the film seem hip (sex jokes, a dance sequence straight out of Step Up), by the end, Khan is reduced to making self-deprecating statements about being an old-fashioned lover. Truth is, it’s not just the 47-year-old Khan (who, it must be said, remains 100 per cent committed throughout) who’s aging. The whole roses-and-eternal-love formula may be past its expiry date.

We’d rather not point out more flaws in Yash Chopra’s swansong. Instead, let’s celebrate what has been a singularly important career. When we reached Delite theatre, a huge crowd had gathered in time for the first show. Banners were up, and the famous Jea Band performed hits from Chopra’s films. It was a good old-fashioned first-day first-show – a small but fitting send-off for a man who’s helped shape Bollywood’s trajectory over so many decades.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Chakravyuh: Review

Welcome to the cinema of the painfully obvious. Prakash Jha’s Chakravyuh is a dramatisation (one might say melodramatisation) of assorted tussles between Naxal forces and the State. Names and locations may have been changed, but it would be surprising if audiences are unable to figure out that Mahanta’s a stand-in for Vedanta, Nandighat for Nandigram. Some may even realise that the character Om Puri is playing is based on real-life activist Kobad Ghandy, or that Jha is doffing his hat to the left-leaning Jana Natya Manch by calling a group of singers Jana Natya Mandali.

All these details are supposed to make Chakravyuh look like it’s an accurate portrayal of real events. Yet this is a film whose grip on reality is consistently tenuous. Kabir (Abhay Deol) is a police academy dropout with a short fuse – just the kind of person you’d trust to infiltrate a gang of Naxals and act as an informant. He’s given the task anyway, by Nandighat’s chief of police Adil Khan (Arjun Rampal), an old friend. It stands to reason that the Naxals will trust him, never frisk him for a cell phone, and provide him with ample opportunities to sneak off and chat with his pal. It also makes perfect sense that Kabir will eventually have a change of heart and decide to become an actual Naxal fighter.

This is the kind of film where people find it necessary to yell “Police aa rahi hai, bhaago” when there’s a helicopter in the background and a man standing on the edge with a gun. The kind of film where a dozen armed policemen are ordered to stand back and let their commander take on a deadly militant in hand-to-hand combat. To make matters worse, the script, by Jha, Anjum Rajabali and Sagar Pandya, is riddled with clichés. Rampal brings this into sharp relief by intoning all his lines as he usually does – slowly and seriously. Deol, an actor whose comfort zone is moral ambiguity, seems confused by the conscientious character he’s playing. Only Manoj Bajpayee, as the leader of the Naxal outfit, and Anjali Patil, his second-in command, escape with their dignity unscraped.

Prakash Jha is a rare Bollywood filmmaker who’s consistently drawn to unfashionable, socially-conscious subjects. This film, however well-meaning, must count as one of his lesser efforts. As the audience snickered its way through an increasingly ludicrous last hour, it seemed clear that somewhere between intent and execution, Jha had gotten caught in a chakravyuh of his own.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi. 

Rush: Review

Even if you’ve never read John Grisham’s The Firm or seen the 1993 Tom Cruise-starrer based on it, you’ll spot the twists in Rush long before they arrive. Within the first ten minutes of the film, it’s established that Samar Grover (Emraan Hashmi) is a TV crime reporter, out of a job and with bills to pay. Enter Roger Khanna (Aditya Pancholi), head of an implausible TV channel called Crime 24, who offers Samar a senior position, a new BMW and the illicit attentions of slinky Wharton graduate Lisa Kapoor (Neha Dhupia). Samar joins the channel and ratings soar. But there’s something murky about the way this 24-hour crime channel is always first on the scene..

Rush was directed by Shamin Desai, who died last year (his wife Priyanka completed the film). It’s mildly entertaining in parts, and Gary Shaw’s cinematography is impressive, but the plot’s too predictable and the media-baiting too paranoid for it to develop into anything significant. As the morally malleable Samar, Hashmi is smooth without being arresting. He fares better than Pancholi, who seems to be playing a parody of a playboy villain. Dhupia and Sagarika Ghatge are the token vamp and girlfriend (there’s an unintentionally hilarious stay-away-from-my-man scene). There are a few scattered laughs – the channel’s head of security is called Cujo – and the second half has split screens and a screeching Skrillex-like background score to try and get some adrenalin flowing. But even when it does, it’s never a real rush.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana: Review

Even if Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana was a total washout, it would still have rendered an important public service by highlighting how closely a clean-shaven Kunal Kapoor resembles Anil Kumble. As it happened, Sameer Sharma’s directorial debut was diverting enough to banish thoughts of Jumbo, even if we did find ourselves scanning the horizon from time to time for a Nayan Mongia lookalike.

Omi Khurana (Kapoor), a layabout in London, owes a Punjabi gangster by the name of Shanty a large sum of money. (“Pounds”, the bald, revolver-flashing gentleman insists, “not paise.”) Threatened with an involuntary kidney donation, Omi offers to get it sent down from his home in Punjab. Shanty insists that Omi bring back the money himself – not the most intelligent move, even for a cartoon gangster. But Sharma, who wrote Swades and assisted Aditya Chopra on Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, obviously knows that the emotional impact of a good return trumps logic.

So Omi, now minus beard, reappears in the small town of Lalton. We soon find out why he was so reluctant to return, even with a gangster pointing a gun at him. It transpires that Omi, who was raised by his aunt and uncle after his parents died, had chloroformed his grandfather, stolen money and run away from the house years ago. Luckily, his folks are big on forgiveness. There’s only one problem – the family’s restaurant business, which he’d hoped would fund his debt to Shanty, has closed down. The solution, as the movie starts hinting early on, might lie in his now-infirm granddad’s secret recipe for “Chicken Khurana”.

Lalton is not too different a landscape from the one Gurvinder Singh mapped out with unnerving seriousness in Anhey Ghorey Da Daan last year. While Luv Shuv is markedly different from that film – it’s an entertainer, with artistic flourishes kept to the minimum – it does respect, in its own way, the reality of its small-town Punjab setting. Portable radios double up as boomboxes. When there’s a chase sequence, it’s a jeep followed by a scooter followed by an auto. And when Omi wants to meet his childhood friend Harman (Huma Qureshi), he does so in secret, so that people don’t start pointing out that she’s engaged to his younger brother (their impending union, clearly untenable for a bunch of reasons, is the film’s one unnecessary subplot).

Since Luv Shuv is set in the Punjab, not Punjab-via-Delhi, it’s possible that some of the accents will be dismissed as insufficiently authentic. That aside, the cast is winsome and cleverly assembled. Rajesh Sharma is great as the crass uncle, Vinod Nagpal from Hum Log is the grandfather, and Dolly Ahluwalia has a nice cameo as a religious leader who likes to get high. Kapoor downplays Omi’s charm and focuses on his shiftiness, while Qureshi continues, post Gangs of Wasseypur, to work wonders with minimal change of expression. Capping an experimental year for Bollywood music, Amit Trivedi unfurls a mish-mash of guitar riffs, bass-heavy EDM and Punjabi folk. The film’s resolution of its characters’ dilemmas is a bit disingenuous, but Sharma has a knack – again, befitting someone who worked on DDLJ – for the sweetly engineered plot twist.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.