Race 2

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Jacqueline Fernandez, Anil Kapoor, Ameesha Patel

Director: Abbas – Mustan

Dishy looking star cast without any soul to their on screen characters. This whole movie can be summed up in one simple line!

And now the elaboration – In this movie, each and every character is the epitome of fitness & fashion and each and every frame seems to be straight out of Dabboo Ratnani’s calendar! The director duo have attempted the Hollywood style canvas and storyline, but have been unable to create the magic and energy of their past hits like Baazigar, Soldier, Race etc. Essence of the movie is supposed to be betrayal which is enticing to watch in thrillers. However, it becomes senseless when you watch betrayal upon betrayal throughout the movie. Because of this even some good enactments lose their valor as the audience half believe in their authenticity and eventually their sentiments turn out to be correct!

Entire cast has worked very hard on their looks and build up and in a couple of scenes John and Saif do stand out. But then again those scenes get absorbed in your mind as mere individual scenes and don’t do much to your experience of movie watching as a whole. Keeping with the tradition of the movie’s prequel, Anil Kapoor has been given some corny (read sick) lines and he mouths them with as much of innocence as he is capable of depicting. Youngsters may enjoy this flick just for the looks of it. Audience who are not much into Hollywood movies may also get awed by the display of fascinating (read goofy) technology in the film. But many will feel let down as much was expected from the sequel of high energy flick ‘Race’.

Inkaar

Cast: Arjun Rampal, Chitrangada Singh, Deepti Naval, Kanwaljeet

Director: Sudhir Mishra

Seems that the age old debatable question “Can a boy and a girl be just friends?” will now get precedenced by “Can a boss and his subordinate (read muse) maintain both love and work relationships alongside?”  This movie deals with the complexities of such a relationship with the focus on harassment in the workplace. Again, this so called harassment has been given two perspectives – one of the male boss who considers his eventual stance of non-cooperation, snide and improper remarks as getting back and flirting respectively, and the other of the female subordinate (at high post) who considers the aforesaid comments as insulting and non-cooperation as an attempt to curb her career. She also thinks that somewhere she is being pressurized to compromise with her dignity as well. An interesting observation that has been portrayed very well in this movie is – the same look, nudge and dialogue between the same duo holds poles apart meanings in two different situations, that is when they are in love by admittance and when they are not!

Now the question is – in our kind of society where very few women happen to reach powerful positions in cut throat corporate sectors and wherein ambitious plus woman does not equal to focus, hard work, struggle and sacrifice, but to most it equals to running away from basic womanly duties, indulge in merry making and overall have a selfish existence, what percentage of population will actually understand the pain and frustration of a senior woman executive being harassed by a boss whom she once loved? Very few actually. Hats off to the makers of this movie to still work upon such a project and that too without any item number or even normal song and dance sequence!

Sudhir Mishra has made a fine movie with a new age topic, sans any unnecessary sleaze and showing different perspectives of so called ‘workplace harassment’ starting from its cause and origin to its climax. The whole movie shuffles between past and present of seven year period and at times the chain of events gets little confusing. The end of the movie is also quite bizarre. The director has played with light maybe to denote past and present in the scenes, but in such type of movies where past forms most of the story narrative, continuity in the lighting is advisable. Otherwise, most of the times you feel that the lighting is inadequate. Casting of the supporting characters is superb and so is their costumes, body language, acting etc. Deepti Naval has done full justice to her character of a social worker. Kanwaljeet has a very short and passable role. Coming to the main protagonists, Arjun Rampal is experimenting with different roles and is succeeding as well! He is now a polished actor. Chitrangada Singh is lucky to get such screen space at the onset of her career and has managed good enough. But a lot more expressions could have used by her character.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Cast: Pankaj Kapur, Imran Khan, Anushka Sharma, Shabana Azmi, Arya Babbar

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

Promos of this flick look very promising with – reed thin and glowing Hollywood like caricatures of Imran and Anushka, Pankaj Kapoor dipped in full-on rustic flavor, an innovative pink buffalo, and top of it the association of ace director Vishal Bhardwaj who knows and delivers his kind of cinema (read rustic) with meticulous ease.

But the movie seems like a carelessly strewn necklace of different beads – some small, some big, some different, some flashy and some absolutely new. You definitely cannot ignore the necklace, but at the same time you cannot call it beautiful in conservative, designer or experimental category!

No one can question Pankaj’s acting, but many may not make any sense out of his Haryanvi drawl. However couple of his Haryanvi scented dialogues are really hilarious. Imran has not been able to impersonate the Haryanvi dude both in accent and persona. Otherwise this would have been one of the characters he would have been remembered by for a long time. But this new kid on the block definitely possesses most honest and beautiful set of eyes. Anushka’s characterization is rather unclear. Dancing without inhibition may look beautiful, but uninhibition portrayed through dancing does not. Shabana Azmi has done this movie fully laced with botox. But she seems to be the only actress herein who has somewhere displayed the sentiment which Vishal wanted to be portrayed via the film. Special mention needs to be given to Arya Babbar for holding well to his character throughout the film, something which you cannot say for the lead pair.

Some scenes in this movie are really new and well written, but you can only admire them as beads and not as a part of the necklace.

Table No. 21

Cast: Paresh Rawal, Rajeev Khandelwal, Tena Desae, Hanif Hilal, Dhruv Ganesh

Director: Aditya Datt

This movie is a crossover between ‘Zinda’ and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ but without the star cast (Sanjay, John, Lara) of the former and the director of the latter (Danny Boyle). The makers have tried to convey a social message in the shroud of a thriller but both of them fail to make any impact. Object of the movie becomes clear only towards the end. By that time you happen to loose all interest!

Paresh Rawal is an acting stalwart and he dons his hat good enough. Surprisingly, though Rajeev made great impact in his debut movie (Aamir), he is just average in this one. He needs to work a lot on his timing and camera shyness. Tina on the other hand seems to have worked hard in all the departments, but still lacks the X factor. Maybe she will achieve that in time. There is a sense of continuity in all her scenes and she deserves to be applauded for the same. Dhruv has acted very well. Such movies give you the clear idea that small budget multiplex movies by Rajat Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey, Konkona Sen Sharma, Vinay Pathak etc. were hit not just by chance or due to them being in new format, but only and only because of the aforesaid actors.

Social messages may differ in different movies, but it all boils down to the condemnation of exploitation and stripping one of his/her dignity without leaving any route of escape! Rightful and dignified existence is everyone’s birth right and we should be very much instrumental in availing the same for ourselves as well as others. And this implementation should start from home. Any prolonged scenario of injustice is bound to create havoc later and affect multiple lives. So why not curb it in the initial stage itself?

Dabangg 2

Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan, Vinod Khanna, Prakash Raj

Director: Arbaaz Khan

Ever experienced that family tradition, wherein all members get together during festival and order that ‘special’ dish from that ‘special’ shop which is patronized by them from years. And when they devour the dish together, the idea of enjoying it together is more important than the taste of the dish itself. Somewhere you desperately want each and every morsel to be ‘tasty’ and even if some (or most) are not, you don’t complain because you don’t want to kill the festival or expectations of the clan from the festival. Same is the case with Dabangg 2. Here Chulbul Pandey aka Salman Khan is that ‘special’ one which everyone has been waiting for, and the masses for whom this character has been created, so utterly want to enjoy it that they are actually enjoying it irrespective of the enjoyment available in bits and pieces in the movie irrespective of the movie in itself not being an enjoyable one. Large section of educated and thinking people who have not actually enjoyed the movie also ultimately have contributed to the box office collection and they cannot make excuses that they purchased the ticket because of exceeding expectation and/or absence of any other movie!

Undoubtedly, Salman currently is the golden boy. TV or movies, whichever media he chooses to play with, he comes across as a winner because of his unbelievable ‘connect’ with the audience. The movie happens to be a collection of dance and fight sequences, a desperate attempt by Arbaaz to generate ‘cetees’ of the masses and ensuring that his first directorial venture doesn’t fail, especially after the stupendous hit given by Danangg earlier.

Khiladi 786

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Asin, Mithun Chakraborty, Himesh Reshammiya, Raj Babbar, Johny Lever

Director: Ashish R. Mohan

Its again one of the mundane films that Akshay has been doing of late. Most aesthetic thing one could find in this movie is AK’s family truck. It has been painted and decorated real beautiful. Full marks to the concerned  Art Director for that. Bibi Russell (dynamic Bangladeshi fashion designer) recently had a show themed upon ‘Truck Designs’ and thus she perhaps will the happiest person watching this flick. Talking of designs, AK’s keffiyehs have been designed well too.

To do justice to his Punjabi superhero character, Akshay seems to have worked out enough to get that forbidding wrestler like personality. But he has always been so fit, that one tends to miss this special effort of his for this particular movie. After trying all the cards, to sustain himself in the acting line, Himesh, the unstoppable this time has tried to encash the popularity of a superstar. Given the fact that he is an absolute non-actor, he has managed to give a decent performance. It shows that this Gujju bhai can do anything that he sets his eyes upon. But someone please make him understand that he doesn’t need to do everything! Mithun as always has given a polished performance. His character may belong to any community, but his dialect unmistakably is that of a Bengali! Asin is unnoticeable.

Ever went through the emotion of laughing purely out of irritation? To experience this, keenly follow the movie climax which starts after Akshay gets his first punch. The producers have made this movie with the sole objective of raking in some quick moolahs.

Talaash

Cast: Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Shernaz Patel

Director: Reema Kagti

'Talaash' is one movie, which is not about plot but totally about characters and their respective quests i.e. 'Talaash'. All three main characters are well defined and fine layered, a rare sight in our Bollywood movies. And all three actors have done full justice to their roles. An added feather to their acting cap is Nawazuddin. Shernaz as usual is good with her job.

Aamir is in search of offloading his self imposed personal guilt, Rani is searching for lost emotional connection and Kareena is looking for justice. All three are in constant state of ache and despair and this has been beautifully portrayed. An extra point goes to Kareena for looking surreal in the film. Alongside,  an extra point goes to Reema, for aptly showing two parallel but different journeys of Aamir without any overlap or confusion. 

This may be Reema's second directorial venture, but she is all set to carve a niche of her own. As Karan Johar is a pro in portraying various shades and intermittance of friendship and love, this lady is a master craftswoman with different interpersonal relationships. Various type of connections exist between two souls and she can understand and direct them very well. Also there is fine detailing in production design. Reema has kept the film as close to reality as possible. There are no item numbers or star specific make-up.

Though the plot is new for the Indian screen, but Kareena's character is very much inspired from a Hollywood movie.

Hats off to Aaamir for constantly spinning out 'different' movies one after another. This is one star who keeps you guessing, even after 24 years!