Singham Returns (15 Aug 2014)

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Amol Gupte, Anupam Kher, Zakir Hussain, Dayanand Shetty, Sharat Saxena, Pankaj Tripathi, Ganesh Yadav, Ashwini Kalsekar

Director: Rohit Shetty   Writer: Farhad, Sajid, Yunus Sajawal, Rohit Shetty  

Music: Ankit Tewari, Jeet Gangulli, Meet Bros Anjjan, Yo Yo Honey Singh

Running Time: 145 minutes

This movie celebrates the successful actor-director partnership of Ajay Devgn-Rohit Shetty and the Mumbai Police. Of course, the movie has a good enough storyline and a popular heroine. But, in spite of being substantial, they haze out in the aforesaid celebration. Also, it is one of the very sequels, which is better (also read original) than it’s prequel i.e. ‘Singham’!

Instead of a core story, there is a core villain Satyaraj Baba (Amol Gupte), who is a religious preacher with enough power and clout, enabling him to have a substantial say in the functioning of the ruling political party! In contrast to him, there is Guruji (Anupam Kher), the party mentor, who is a man of principles and enjoys great respect of Mumbai DCP (Ajay Devgn), as well as the Maharashtra CM (Sanjay Manjrekar). Guruji’s strategy of introducing new and young candidates for the upcoming elections is not well received by Baba. While Guruji perceives their enthusiasm, professional training and capability as the door to better functioning of the new government, and thereby better living of the common man, Baba cares a damn about any of this and worries about loosing constituencies, in the absence of old and popular candidates. Soon Guruji gets assassinated by masked and heavily armed professionals. Alongside, a van is found in a river body, along with a dead driver and crores of rupees. The dead driver is a trusted subordinate of Bajirao. Both these events and their repercussions instigate the super cop in Bajirao and he goes into full fledged investigations, interrogations, arrests and secret follow-ups, so as to obtain enough proof to – a) arrest Baba, and b) clear his subordinate’s name.

The movie has good energy, cool stunts, weak villain, new but not in tandem storyline, and for a change, it only highlights the glory of the police force. It highlights - the demanding and risky nature of their job, unrealistic expectations from an aging cop, thankless attitude of media and public in general, mass attack protocol (‘lathi’ charge) followed only in times of sheer crisis and the perennial chance of nullifying of all their hard work by anyone in ‘power’.

As expected, Ajay Devgn is the ‘Singham’. If he throws a punch, then it is a real punch and not a make believe one. And he is particularly good in depicting pain and anger simultaneously through his eyes. Kareena Kapoor plays his friend cum girlfriend (Avni), runs a beauty parlour and is supposed to eat like a glutton. She has well experimented with a new style of comedy. But for the glutton part, you instantly miss the hogging of Aamir Khan in ‘Rang De Basanti’. You will find Kareena picking on many foods, making enough face and hand gestures, but her food bites are very small and very few actually go into her mouth! But she is adorable all the same. Sadly, Kareena seems to be making the sole attempt in establishing the hero-heroine chemistry! Amol Gupte has performed well. But you need a much bigger (impactful) villain for a movie of this caliber. Anupam Kher, Mahesh Manjrekar, Ashwini Kalsekar (reporter) have small roles and they have done justice to it. Earlier Dayanand Shetty (cop ‘Daya’) was breaking doors on TV (soap ‘CID’) and now he is doing the same in films! Like TV, herein too, he has well played the second-in-command. Zakir Hussain (Prakash Rao) and Pankaj Tripathi (Altaf Khan) have now become constant with important side roles. Ganesh Yadav (Mahesh Jhadav, the dead cop) and Sharat Saxena (Shiv Rathod, Mumbai CP) have also acted well.

Mardaani (22 Aug 2014)

Cast: Rani Mukerji, Jisshu Sengupta, Tahir Bhasin, Priyanka Sharma, Sanjay Taneja, Anil George, Mona Ambegaonkar

Director: Pradeep Sarkar   Writer: Gopi Puthran   Music: Salim-Sulaiman Background Music: Julius Packiam   Casting Director: Shanoo Sharma   Editor: Sanjib Datta

Running Time: 113 minutes

During our school years, most of us must have come across these famous lines from an inspiring patriotic poem “Khoob ladi mardaani, wo toh Jhaansi wali Rani thi”. Watching this movie would instantly remind you of the same. The simile is hard to miss. During British rule, Rani Laxmi Bai fought fearlessly with the Britishers in order to attain freedom of her motherland. And in this movie, Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukerji) fights with focus sans any fear, to attain freedom of young girls trapped in the human trafficking ring. Also, both are Marathi women.

Shivani Shivaji Roy is a hands-on senior crime branch officer. She stays with her husband (Jisshu Sengupta) and orphaned niece. In the past, she had rescued Pyari (Priyanka Sharma) from being sold by her uncle and placed her in a shelter home. She considers her like her daughter and Pyari is an important part of Shivani’s life.

Unfortunately, Pyari gets abducted by human traffickers. Shivani gets a whiff of this and gradually realizes that a powerful and organized syndicate is behind it and the bosses will leave no stone unturned to keep their identities hidden. She resolves to bring back Pyari. An action-reaction series commences between her and Junior (the core brain of the trafficking operation). Since the bosses are nameless and faceless, the term ‘Junior’ is coined by Shivani herself. It’s based on the voice quality that makes intimidating, threatening and untraceable calls to her. While Shivani single mindedly focuses on reducing the gap between her and Junior, Junior focuses on discouraging her attempt by harming her dear ones and terminating the links that can lead Shivani to him!

But Shivani is a seasoned officer, who is well versed with intimidation techniques, laws of the land and psycho profiling. She uses her absolute determination, professional training and system support to free all the victims and bring the culprits to justice.

The movie has been very well casted, directed, acted and edited. In fact the pace and visual tone of the movie is that of a prime Hollywood flick! It voices the social cause of abduction and forced prostitution, but keeps safe distance from cheap thrills. It does not have any item number or even any lovey-dovey number (to depict the blessed marital life of the lady cop)! The idea is to acquaint the audience with the inhuman and shameful bearings enforced upon the girl victims by human trafficking goons. But while dealing with such issues, there is a thin line between being realistic and being repulsive. Hats off to the makers for maintaining this decorum and also keeping the content commercially viable! Achieving this sans any thunderous dialogue or eye popping stunt is no mean feat. A great deal of input has been given in the psychological research into the making of each character, something which is almost always amiss in most Bollywood (even prime) flicks.

Most of the movie centers round Rani Mukerji and she has done a commendable job. Her character is well researched and throughout the movie, she manages to stay within it. She has enough close-up frames and she well manages to portray nonchalance, smirk, knowing glance, deep pain and mental calculation. And all of these emotions are depicted without any OTT (over the top) acting. For a change, this lady ‘maseeha’ (savior) is not born out of exploitation and tears. She is a hard core cop, well trained by mind and body, practical and dedicated to her duty.

It is a pleasant surprise that Pradeep Sarkar, the man best known for his period drama flick ‘Parineeta’  can ably direct such a movie. Special mention needs to be made of a particular scene, wherein Shivani arrives with her team to save her husband from some chaos. Going by her fireball character, you expect her to pounce, abuse and even break a bone or two. Instead, she stands and stare in shunned silence! Then, upon coming across him, she goes oblivious of her surroundings, and simply connects with the pain and sheer disbelief of her husband. And, if such a scene enactment was achieved due to the director’s visualization and direction, then, this maestro is definitely a bearer of many hidden layers.

Jisshu Sengupta (Shivani’s husband) has a small and silent role. He is a Bengali movie star and this is his third Bollywood release. As for Tahir Bhasin, this is his second Bollywood release. He plays Junior, for whom the entire trafficking operation is just a big trade (read in hundreds of crores), no more, no less. And he will do anything to keep the tap running. He is young, urban, updated, sharp and well merges with the crowd. Even when he is constantly trying to ruthlessly harm/kill Shivani, somewhere he is appreciative of her courage and intelligence and can connect to her! Tahir Bhasin has impersonated this character very well. His acting is subtle but effective. Rest of the cast has also done well. Background music also well suits the mood of the movie.

Don’t miss the climax, wherein Rani Mukerji ably shows her martial art skills! Some real hard work this lass has done to get her teeth into the character.

Kick (25 Jul 2014)

Cast: Salman Khan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Randeep Hooda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mithun Chakraborty, Archana Puran Singh, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Mishra, Kavin Dave, Sumona Chakravarti

Director: Sajid Nadiadwala   Writer: Sajid Nadiadwala   Music: Himesh Reshammiya

Running Time: 146 minutes

Three good things about this movie –

a)     Salman Khan has shown effort and has incorporated method acting (though not throughout), instead of just banking upon his inimitable charm and loyal fan following. May be the fate and reviews of his last flick ‘Jai Ho’ have a lot to do with this.

b)    Salman Khan’s dress designers have input considerable effort and the result is apparent. With time, Salman has established his impeccable look, which is woven around imported jeans and jackets. And though they must cost a fortune, unlike in this flick, they kind of look the same in most of his flicks. As per the film credits, perhaps Ashley Rebello and Alvira Khan are to be applauded for the same. Only if they can spare the superstar with the ‘kurta’ on jeans combination. It makes him look aged!

c)     Though Nawazuddin Siddiqui enters pretty late in the movie, he steals the show with his portrayal of a whacko usurper. Displaying such confidence and not letting any slip-off in the character in front of Salman Khan is no mean feat. This is Nawazuddin’s first commercial biggie and he has done full justice to it.

Three not so good things about this movie –

a)     It’s apparent that both the lead actors – Salman and Jacqueline have put in considerable effort in their acting as well as their chemistry. But the ‘X’ factor in their chemistry is simply missing. In fact the only time, you can find the lady holding absolutely on to her own is while performing the small, titillating and extremely well choreographed and picturized dance number in the song ‘Jumme Ki Raat’.

b)    The movie plot starts with deep etched sorrow albeit etched in designer wear and picturesque foreign locale, then shifts to Punjabi style dysfunctional family humor, then dangles between ‘Krrish’ style robbery by vigilante and ‘Dhoom’ style cop and thief chase! All these flavors of film making are touched with good enough production design, art direction and casting. But none is pursued to it’s extremity. All these sub-plots, get you ready for the upcoming pulsating act, only to push you to an altogether different act!

c)     For sure, this movie is Salman’s debut as a method actor, or maybe he has simply followed the lead actor of the original Telugu 2009 release of the same name. But, his new style of acting is now and then penetrated by his old one, which bores unmistakable holes in the portrayal of such a complex character, as played by him in ‘Kick’.

Three technical mistakes in the movie –

a)     The protagonist’s wall is adorned with the degrees of a civil engineer, but he is always shown working and experimenting with chemicals!

b)    A ‘youtube’ bash up-and-preach video sequence of the protagonist is shown using the same camera angles and close ups as that of the film. How can a secret mobile video recording have different angles and close-ups?

c)     Prior to any kind of surgery, generally all traces of chemicals are removed from the patient’s body. But post the little girl’s surgery, while she gesticulates with her palm and beckons the protagonist, you can see clear traces of nail polish on her little finger.

Shaina (Jacqueline Fernandez) is a Poland based psychologist who is getting over her separation from her lover, Devi Lal Singh (Salman Khan). Due to family pressure for marriage, she meets a visiting Indian cop Himanshu Tyagi (Randeep Hooda). Pursue of ‘Devil’, a masterminded vigilante has brought Himanshu to Poland. This vigilante is sought by the Indian Police for his theft of few hundred crores of rupees in India. Both of them are unaware of the fact that Devi Lal and Devil are same.

Prior to becoming Devil, Devi Lal Singh was an extremely intelligent, muscular and do-gooder forty years old lad, who lead a happy-go-lucky life. He could pursue only those things in life, which gave him a ‘Kick’. Normal mundane routine (read – a regular job) bored him and he could never hold onto them. While performing a do-gooder act, a chance meeting with Shaina made him hooked to the lady. This initial one sided love gradually turned into a mutual one. During marriage planning stage, Shaina and her father (Saurabh Shukla) became dubious about Devi Lal’s capacity to earn and support a married life and hinted about him becoming a ‘ghar jamai’. This irked and hurted Devi Lal and it resulted into - his separation with his lady love, and his solemn oath to himself to thereupon devote his life in earning big money.

The movie then gradually unfolds few robberies with cat and mouse sequences between the Devil and the cops and the human reason behind Devi Lal’s becoming the Devil. One such grand robbery entwines the black money of a corrupt politician and his maniac nephew (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Thereupon, they also get seriously involved with the cops till this chase is brought to an end.

The movie’s script is more or less point-to-point copy of the Telugu movie ‘Kick’ (2009). As a producer, in the past, Sajid Nadiadwala has given good hits with Salman Khan. His directorial debut in ‘Kick’ is an ok job. Screenplay could have been meatier and more seamless. Songs are good and a couple of them (Hangover) have been voiced by Salman Khan, who has made his debut as a singer with this film. Apart from the heroine, the casting is apt. As the leading lady, an Anushka Sharma would have better suited the role.

Jacqueline looks good and dresses with dignity. She has made good effort. But still has miles to go. Randeep Hooda has managed to hold his own in front of Salman Khan. A conscious but easy camaraderie can be seen between them. Rest of the star cast is pretty seasoned and they have delivered as expected. An item number by svelte Nargis Fakhri is good as well.

Though the movie unceremoniously shifts from one gear to another, it still has a rampant energy and star power of Salman Khan. It’s grand ‘Eid’ release with a well targeted ‘Jumme Ki Raat’ song will definitely give handsome box office returns. Last but not the least, don’t miss the impromptu ‘Saat samundar paar’ dance performance by Salman Khan towards the end. It’s totally ‘paisa vasool’.

Bobby Jasoos (4 Jul 2014)

Cast: Vidya Balan, Ali Fazal, Rajendra Gupta, Supriya Pathak, Tanvi Azmi, Benaf Dadachanji, Zarina Wahab, Arjan Bajwa, Kiran Kumar, Prasad Barve, Akash Dahiya, Tejas Mahajan

Director: Samar Shaikh   Writer: Sanyukta Chawla   Music: Shantanu Moitra

Running Time: 122 minutes

It seems that this film has been made with two primary objectives. Firstly, to encash a small budget meaningful cinema using the gem of an actor, Vidya Balan, thereby replicating the success of ‘Kahani’. Secondly, to showcase an under-represented Hyderabadi community in Bollywood cinema. May be the Hyderabad ties of the producers have something to do with this.

‘Kahani’ was a blockbuster because stalwart Vidya’s acting was well supported by strong script and direction. ‘Bobby Jasoos’ has Vidya in her full form. But the scripting needs a lot of fine tuning and the direction is average. In ‘Kahani’, Sujoy Ghosh presented Kolkata, ‘the city of joy’ like never before. In comparison, Samar Shaikh’s presentation of old Hyderabad is plain vanilla. In spite of the casting of all acclaimed actors as character artists, the required energy and richness in the scenes is missing.

The backdrop of the movie is the over populated Mughalpura region of old Hyderabad. Bilkis (Vidya Balan), the eldest daughter of the conservative Ahmed family is a self taught and self proclaimed detective aka ‘jasoos’. She has no formal training in this area. But she avidly watches the hindi detective serials and calls herself ‘Bobby Jasoos’. She gets mundane detective jobs and roams fearless in all nooks and corners of Mughalpura at all times.  In fact, she is the only one who takes her profession and her professional skills seriously till she is contacted by an elderly Anees Khan (Kiran Kumar). He maintains a rich but secretive personality and asks her to find three people, one after the other. For each endeavor, he pays her handsomely (a bit too much by her standards). But, as for the clues, he can only provide the name, age and birth mark of missing persons and not any photo. Bobby along with her working allies – Shetty (Prasad Barve), Munna (Akash Dahiya), Suhail (Tejas Mahajan), works on the assignments in her trademark ‘naïve but full-of-drama’ style. She gets success. But somewhere she gets suspicious of the whole operation and decides to unravel the root of the matter. Also, somewhere alongside she discovers mutual liking and love with Tasawur (Ali Fazal), a popular tv presenter who also lives in Mughalpura and assists her in her endeavors.

As expected, Vidya is flawless in her scenes. In her bid as the detective, she dons a wide range of makeovers – hobbling fakir, funny toothed palmist, fatso tv producer etc. She does a terrific job with each one of them. But most of these avatars simply zoom off the screen, without taking the required time and leaving the desired impact. Ali Fazal looks younger to her. But he acts well and matches her performance in the scenes where they are together. Arjan Bajwa (Lala) plays a goon and inspite of soorma and stubble, he looks like a hunk in all his scenes. His acting is nonchalant. As such, not many lines are given to him to deliver. Kiran Kumar has a substantial role and he could have made it impactful. Surprisingly, he did not. Instead, Supriya Pathak (Zebo, Bilkis’ mother) and Tanvi Azmi (Kausar, Bilkis’ khaala) have simple roles, but they leave impact! Rajendra Gupta (Bilkis’ father) and Benaf Dadachanji (Noor, Bilkis’ sister) are good as well. Rest are OK. Cinematography is good. Music is average. However, the number ‘Arziyaan de raha dil’ is good.

All in all, it’s a sweet and clean movie with Vidya occupying more than 90% of the screen time.

Ek Villain (27 Jun 2014)

Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Riteish Deshmukh, Shraddha Kapoor, Remo Fernandes, Shaad Randhawa, Aamna Sharif, Kamal Rashid Khan, Prachi Desai

Director: Mohit Suri

As per the promos, the movie is supposed to be a suspense thriller. And the suspense is that there is no suspense! In fact, the movie ends in the interval and you witness a whole new style of filmmaking in the second half, which unravels the art of elongating a film without any remaining plot! Till the last climax, the movie buff in you will expect the appearance of some unexpected twist, something that will justify your sitting through the film’s second half. But the unraveling of the (nonexistent) mystery i.e. the disclosure of the identity of the assassin will only fill you up with the desire of banging your head to the nearest wall.

Guru (Sidharth Malhotra) is the angry, young man who works for a Goa based politician cum goon (Remo Fernandes). Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor) is the perennial miss goody-two-shoes who maintains a wish diary filled with the wishes pertaining to experiencing small pleasures and helping people. She makes the agenda of ‘saving Guru’s life’ from the pathos of darkness as her latest wish. She changes Guru. They fall in love, marry and come to Mumbai for a new life. Unfortunately, she gets killed by a serial killer. This devastates Guru. The merciless, angry man in him returns. His only agenda is to find the assassin and avenge the death of his beloved wife. His search leads him to Rakesh (Riteish Deshmukh), a telephone repair guy, who is tired of being shouted upon by his lady boss and his wife (Aamna Sharif) for being good-for-nothing. Though he remains quiet and submissive in front of them and the world in general, he vents out his ire by killing other women. The cat and mouse game starts between Guru and Rakesh, till one of them is thrown into the arms of death.

Apparently, the centre plot of the movie is inspired by the Korean movie ‘I Saw The Devil’. And, as it has happened may times before, in the attempt to Indianize the screenplay, by infusing song, emotions and drama, the essence of the suspense thriller is lost. It appears that Mohit Suri, the director started with something in mind and ended with something else. The cop (Shaad Randhawa) in the movie looks very intense and interested in the happenings. But on the whole, he serves no purpose! Instances of location change between Goa and Mumbai are not explanatory. You are required to guess them on your own. To justify the existence of the movie’s second half, the makers have tried to highlight the concept of ‘karmic circle’ i.e. ‘you reap what you saw’. And they have shown two such instances with each of the leading male protagonists. But it all gets lost in the mayhem.

Interestingly, the art of crafts (especially paper cutting) has been beautifully displayed in the movie. The heroine is shown to be a practitioner of the same and her wish diary as well as her cozy Mumbai nest look beautiful. Art Director has worked well on this. Music is average. However, the number ‘Galiyaan …’ is good.

Mohit Suri’s direction is kind of better than his earlier work. But somewhere he got confused with the storyline. Or, some serious meddling was done with his work. As expected, Sidharth looks very handsome. Surprisingly, he looks more comfortable in the action genre than his previous two flicks which projected him as the romantic hero. With this movie, Riteish has got the best role of his life, and he has done a good job. But with some more honed skills, he could have done wonders. Shraddha has a small role and she has done justice to it. Aamna Sharif is OK. Item number is done by Prachi Desai. By the time, it appears, you are so much in the hurry for the movie to end, that it comes across as highly unnecessary.

Humshakals (20 Jun 2014)

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Esha Gupta, Tamannah Bhatia, Satish Shah, Chunky Pandey, Akash Khurana, Darshan Jariwala

Director: Sajid Khan

A multi cast comedy with the three male protagonists in triple roles each and all of them being successful in their respective genres and media, gives you the natural expectation of a fun filled and light headed movie time. Instead, you watch the movie with exasperation as you witness the ‘fun’ element slipping out of most of the funny lines and comic expressions and you have a thumping headache calculating what all went wrong with the movie.

In order to obtain temporary rights to run billionaire Ashok’s (Saif Ali Khan) business empire, he and his friend (Riteish Deshmukh) are wrongfully sent to a mental asylum by his General Manager who also happens to be his Uncle (Ram Kapoor) aka ‘Mamaji’. The mental facility already holds all of their duplicates i.e. ‘humshakals’. They are child-like  Ashok (Saif), Kumar (Riteish) and third stage OCD (hygiene freak) patient Johnny (Ram). Attractive lady doctor Shivani (Esha Gupta) discovers that the former Ashok-Kumar duo are not mental and in her bid to release them, out of mistake, releases the latter duo, who are spotted by Ashok’s girlfriend Shanaya (Tamannah Bhatia) and taken to his home. Ashok’s sister like secretary Nikita (Bipasha Basu) is incidentally Kumar’s girlfriend and apparently stays in her boss’ home to manage all his affairs. The home also houses Ashok’s father who is in coma.

To add to this confusion, the original Ashok and Kumar also flee from the mental asylum and reach home, only to perform Sajid Khan’s mandatory multi cast night time dance in the deserted house! The original duo are caught and carried back by the asylum warden (Satish Shah). In the mental asylum, an attendant (Darshan Jariwala) introduces them to Johnny. Now ‘Mamaji’ is equipped with duplicates of original Ashok-Kumar in the house and original Ashok-Kumar are equipped with ‘Mamaji’s duplicate Johnny in the mental asylum. Both the original parties plan to use their valuable possessions in the shortly upcoming board meeting of Ashok’s company, so as to obtain the entire control of his business. The remaining movie caters to the implementation of their respective plans and an expected mayhem climax. Don’t even bother to understand the third role of each of the protagonists.

To start with, the movie has one of the weakest opening scenes. Also, herein Saif who is almost always impeccably dressed (a Tom Ford loyalist), sports an ill fitting and unappealing blazer! His house’s entrance is super rich, interiors are rich and the kitchen is poor (small in size and with metallic workareas)! There is absolutely no chemistry between Riteish and Bipasha, though Bipasha seem to be trying hard to establish some. Last but not the least, the scenes lack continuity and impact.

Only two well crafted long scenes bring about the Sajid Khan school of comedy. The one wherein the original dup try to escape from the mental asylum, and the other wherein all the three protagonists woo their own female versions. The movie is filled with smart pun intended one-liners. Though the deliverance of most of them fall flat in the face, none of them are cheap or repulsive.

For some reason, Riteish appears taller and broader than Saif in the movie! He has built good muscle and looks wiser than his early appearances. Also, this is his comfort genre, and he makes the best of it. With enough movie experience, now he is a pro at playing a seductress. In fact apart from his eyebrows, if dressed wisely in female gear, nothing will give away that he is a man! Saif has dared to experiment with a new genre, but he has miles to go before he can make hay out of it. However, he has worked hard to deliver. Ram is the surprise package. He is the only one who has maintained clear distinction amidst all his three roles. Also, in spite of his tall and bulky frame, when required, he does manage to look cute! All the three heroines basically fill the glam quotient. They somehow don’t appear in tandem with each other. However, it’s noteworthy that, you can see a hinting resemblance of Sophia Lauren in Bipasha and Angelina Jolie in Esha. Tamannah is very confidant. Satish Shah and Darshan Jariwala have small roles and Chunky Pandey has an even smaller one. They do make the required impact.

As usual, Sajid Khan has released his movie sans any competition. With no other A-lister new movie around to snatch the audience, and with the three protagonists aimed to attract all kinds of watchers – Saif for classes, Riteish for masses and Ram for TV watchers, the movie is bound to have a strong opening. But the audience is still waiting for Sajid to repeat his ‘Heyy Babyy’ magic.

Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (6 Jun 2014)

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Zakir Hussain, Govinda, Freddy Daruwala, Sumeet Raghavan

Director: A. R. Murugadoss

This movie is the second Bollywood release of the southern maverick director Murgadoss, and it’s better executed and more apt for the Bollywood audience than his first mega hit flick ‘Ghajini’ (Aamir Khan). But as expected, the southern director could not stay away from the curvaceous heroine and unnecessary songs. Amidst a serious and thrilling storyline, except for the first song, all the rest seem highly disturbing.

Virat Bakshi is a special agent from DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency), who works undercover as an Indian Army personnel. During one of his holidays to his hometown Mumbai, he chances upon a notorious terrorist plan, and uses his entire holiday to unearth and disable the same. Throughout the operation he is well aided by a Mumbai police official who is also his close friend. Amidst all this, the director finds enough frames to accommodate a love angle between Virat and Saiba!

The movie is a remake of Tamil flick ‘Thuppakki’. But if you are unaware and unexposed to the original, then it’s definitely a new and interesting plot to watch. It deals with the terrorist unit called ‘Sleeper Cells’. And this concept is well described and depicted in the movie. As expected of Murgadoss, the movie is filled with blood and gore. But subtly it also stresses on the need to risk small collateral damage in a covert operation that is undertaken to save hundreds of lives. Meaning to stay that, if a security official is taken for granted to give his life for the country, then why can’t a civilian’s life be put to risk to save many others?

In its own way, the movie is also an ode to all the security organizations of the country i.e. the Indian Police, the Indian Intelligence and the Indian Army. They work under all kinds of taxing situations to keep the country safe. Their scope of work and action is kind of undefined as the anti social forces constantly change and update their terror techniques! Since they are expected to be 100% fit by both body and mind, any work mishap that results into weakening or amputation of their body, sadly pushes them towards an early retirement. But their training is such that, in time of need and short notice, they can still make good use of their skills and prove worthy enough for a security cause!

Beneath their rough & tough and ready-to-kill exterior, each of them is actually a simple family man who is regularly required to stay away from his near and dear ones for long months. This fact is beautifully depicted in the last scene of the movie.

Akshay Kumar (Virat) looks very fit and as always is very good with the stunts. However, when the camera is at close angles, he does appear a little aged. Sonakshi Sinha (Saiba) has performed as per expected of the role of the hero’s arm candy. In the initial scenes, the lady is required to be athletic and its worth mentioning that she throws a neat and powerful punch in the boxing ring! This is unseen of any Indian actress till now. Maybe Priyanka Chopra as Mary Kom will add to this soon. Freddy Daruwala in his debut as the new Bollywood villain needs to work a lot more on his expressions. He looks very fit though. Sumeet Raghavan as constantly aiding the operation police man could have had a more powerful appearance. Govinda has a small guest appearance. Herein, he has donned tasteful fashion wear and he looks endearing in his performance. Seeing him, you do wish to see him as one of the main protagonists in a movie soon.

All in all, it’s an impactful movie, with a balance of north and south style sensibilities. But it’s definitely not for the under aged.