Review: Lootera

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Sonakshi Sinha, Adil Hussain, Vikrant Massey
Rating: ***1/2

It is hard to pigeonhole O Henry’s The Last Leaf. Is a love story – a pathos-filled culmination of something longer? Or is it about the human psyche that causes dreams and desires, mired in the monotony of survival, to express itself in ways beyond rationalising? A short story is, by definition, short. To transform it into a feature-length film brings with it the challenge (and the freedom) of conjuring up convincing motivations and back stories. Motwane decides it’s a love story – arguably the easier route to take. And he creates powerful vignettes that aren’t all pretty and rose-tinted, but also guilty and angst-ridden. However, he sacrifices logic and motivation when convenient, and in that lies Lootera’s shortcoming.

Motwane’s familiarity with his settings is commendable. In Udaan – a superlative debut film – he depicted the sameness of an industrial small-town. A period film requires more research, and money. Motwane (and Anurag Kashyap, who once again co-wrote and co-produced this one) seems to have both. He captures the fading glory of zamindars in 1953 Bengal. It is lavish, but not kitschy, unlike Bhansali’s Devdas.

He also creates a powerful heroine, the likes of whom rarely inhabit mainstream Bollywood. The privileged zamindar’s daughter Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha) is Santiniketan-educated, recites poetry and channels contemporary Bengali actresses (a young Suchitra Sen perhaps from Sharey Chauttor; 1953). She is, however, fragile, and at times, irrational – the Johnsy of Motwane’s Last Leaf. Post-transformation, again, Sinha deftly plays the frustrated writer and disillusioned romantic, making you wonder if this is the same actor from those masala potboilers.   

In contrast, the lootera himself, Varun Srivastav (Ranveer Singh) is more predictable. He’s a retro Ricky Bahl, a charming conman keeping it à la mode with double-breasted shirts, slicked-back hair and an Ariel motorcycle. Posing as an archaeologist, he earns the zamindar’s trust with incredible ease. Predictably, Pakhi falls for him. They stroll through leafy lanes and sit by lakes, making flirting in the ’50s seem like a painstaking and sluggish affair. Varun’s decision then to depart is abrupt, making the central revelation on which the plot hinges a weak one. 

An incredible coincidence makes the protagonists cross paths again. The film briefly becomes a chor-police action sequence – an aberrant ingredient – before settling back into a languid pace. A talented supporting cast, meanwhile, is largely wasted as side characters that flit about without direction.

Flaws notwithstanding, Lootera is of a standard that’s inarguably higher than the Bollywood average. Here’s a director to watch out for. Behrman’s masterpiece came in The Last Leaf. Motwane’s is yet to come.

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see)

Review: Ghanchakkar

Director: Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Vidya Balan, Rajesh Sharma, Namit Das
Rating: **

Characters in heist films tend to follow a simple rule. Take your share and part ways. Now, imagine the unlikely scenario where Daniel Ocean’s partners decide to entrust him with the entire money. And Danny, well, simply forgets where he put it.

Why would such a stupid arrangement exist? Raj Kumar Gupta’s Ghanchakkar steers clear of such logical questions. But then, Gupta (he of the critically acclaimed Aamir and No One Killed Jessica) has set out to make an absurd comedy. And to that end, his characters are less slick, witty heist artists, and more akin to the nutty trio that dreams of a career in crime in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket. At least, that seems to have been the idea.

Master safe-breaker Sanjay Atre (Emraan Hashmi) wants out of the game. He’s reconciled himself to a humdrum life of TV, late dinners and wife Neetu’s (Vidya Balan) bad cooking. But when the chance of a handsome job comes along, he takes it. Things take a turn for the bizarre when the two partners (played by Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das) return to claim their money, only to find Sanjay suffering from amnesia.

Thankfully, we’re spared clichés like ‘Main kaun hoon…’ followed by a blow to the head to reboot the memory. However, the script is overloaded with forced jokes and unfunny, crass scenes like grown men running around in underwear.

Yet, there are quirky visual moments. During the heist, clever camera angles make expressions on the robbers’ paper masks – a smiling Dharmendra, a smug Amitabh Bachchan and a harrowed Utpal Dutt – look real and ridiculously out of place.

Hashmi’s usual acting style borders on deadpan. Somehow, it works here, as Sanjay seems (or pretends) to look lost as his memory slips away. However, Balan’s character – the shrill, garish-dressing, magazine-devouring Punjabi housewife – is caricature-ish.  

Gupta deserves points for attempting an absurd Bollywood film. Ghanchakkar, unfortunately, relies on the age-old Bollywood idea of the lost yaaddasht, and leaves you feeling as lost as its characters. The hunt – for money as much as for memory – moves with a chaotic frenzy. But it goes around in circles till it drops. Now, where were we?

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see) 

Review: Ishkq in Paris

Direction: Prem Soni
Cast: Preity Zinta, Rhehan Malliek, Isabelle Adjani
Rating: **

Consider the scenario. Boy sees girl on train, checks her out, comments on her clothes and then introduces himself with a smartass line: “A-cash; cash with an A” (Akash, really; Rhehan Malliek). Under normal circumstances, that would earn a rebuff. But the girl smiles and introduces herself with an equally ridiculous “I-s-h-k-q” (Preity Zinta).  Dear lord, they must be made for each other.  

Of course, had that realisation dawned on them so quickly, there would be no movie. There would also be no need for the screenplay to blatantly borrow the basic plot idea from Before Sunrise (1995) for its entire first half.

Instead, they agree to “spend the night” together in Paris and never meet each other again. It would sound absurd, but original, if you hadn’t seen the Ethan Hawke-Julie Delpy starrer where they too meet on a train and agree to spend one night in Vienna.

Of course, the borrowed plot is cooked with a generous dosage of Bollywood spices. So you must suffer clichés like a Paris full of French people who speak Hindi; and a heroine whose jackets are heavy but hemlines ridiculously short. This is the sort of Bollywood romance that used to set the box office on fire back in the 2000s. Producer-actor Zinta is on familiar territory, for she herself has starred in some of them. But alas, the formula is old, and this one has no Shah Rukh Khan to spread his arms out wide and save the day.

To be fair, Malliek isn’t a bad actor. But a film like this requires a star. And though another Khan – Salman – pitches in with an ‘item number’, that may not be enough. Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated French actress Isabelle Adjani is wasted as Ishkq’s mother, and speaks a dubbed Hindi that’s thoroughly unconvincing.

However, the film deserves points for production value. Paris is a cinematographer’s dream, and one never really gets tired of time-lapse shots of the evening sky around the Eiffel Tower, or the cobbled streets.

The film might get you to do two things – plan a French holiday; or pull out a particular old DVD. Somehow, one doubts that Ishkq in Paris is trying to achieve either.

-Sarit Ray 

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see) 

Review: Aurangzeb

Direction: Atul Sabharwal
Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Sasheh Agha, Prithviraj
Rating: **

Back in the ’60s – when classics like Hum Dono (1961) and Ram Aur Shyam (1967) were made – it must have been a thrilling experience for moviegoers to see an actor face his other self on screen. But that technological trick provides no spectacle in an age where 3D is as familiar as a tub of popcorn. To then make the double role the focal point of a film requires either a reversal of clichés, or a mind-blowing story. Unfortunately, Aurangzeb provides neither. Instead, debutant director Atul Sabharwal invests too much time and too many characters to build intrigue through the first half. In the second, the overburdened story meanders and comes apart even as bullet-riddled characters sputter, cough and die after showing remarkable lack of survival instinct.

The setting is the real estate jungle of Gurgaon. A family of corrupt police officers wants to bring down a family of gangsters who are in collusion with politicians and builders. Nothing you wouldn’t believe. Until a hushed-up past comes to the fore and brings an unlikely coincidence – the gangster Yashwardhan’s (Jackie Shroff) son, Ajay, and the lookalike Vishal (both Arjun Kapoor). It does not take much convincing, or much prep apparently, for the small-town boy from Nainital to replace the gun-toting, coke-snorting (so we’re told) wild child.

The film’s title might have led you to expect a deliciously etched Machiavellian protagonist. Instead, the central character suffers from clichés – of character and circumstances – rendering him predictable. Arjun, however, holds his own. Never-been-styled hair notwithstanding (the script excuses only one lookalike from a salon visit), the one-film-old boy can emote. That, in the end, his two characters aren’t distinct enough is more the script’s limitation, less his.

The character that rises beyond expectations is that of DCP Ravikant (Rishi Kapoor). Kapoor is the pick of the performers, playing the unflinchingly self-serving top cop who is, not surprisingly, a man of power in lawless Gurgaon.  

In a typical, unfortunate nod to old-school Bollywood, the women have little or no voice. They swim in bikinis and gyrate to seduce the hero and the audience, or play scheming home wreckers.  

Meanwhile, characters die foolishly, not before mouthing tiresome one-liners. At one point, a Mexican standoff in a room full of real-estate investors tries to be earnest but looks caricature-ish. The film has that in common with the set piece it ruins. It lasts till the bullets are over.  And we’re not hoping for a reload.  

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see)

Review: Lessons in Forgetting (indie)

Direction: Unni Vijayan
Actors: Adil Hussain, Maya Tideman
Rating: ***

A father investigating the ‘accident’ that made her daughter end up in coma unravels horrifying truths. A fictitious coastal village in Tamil Nadu, called Minjikapuram, is the microcosm of an India steeped in patriarchy, where gender discrimination and sex selection is rampant. It’s a world we pretend doesn’t exist; or belongs in newspaper reports, far from our glossy, urban lives. Lessons in Forgetting makes you confront these uncomfortable realities, with honesty, even if not the impact or shock value that say, a Dibakar Banerjee managed with Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (2010).

In certain ways, Malayali director Unni Vijayan’s 2012 National Award Winner (best English feature film) is the antithesis of a Bollywood potboiler – it lacks in production value (made, obviously, on a shoestring budget); the screenplay (adapted from Anita Nair’s novel by the same name) is clunky, with dialogue that works on pages, but not on film; and the actors playing fringe characters belong in a film school project.  

Yet, the central story is powerful. And the characters have a human frailty that makes them believable. Smrithi (Maya Tideman) chances upon illegal activities at Minjikapuram when she travels there with a street play. She wants to fight it, even though her boyfriend discourages her. We learn the story through flashbacks, as Smrithi’s father, Jak (Adil Hussain), pieces things together. In the end, the truth provides a sense of closure, if not a solution.

This is a film made for festivals. If it makes money at the box office, even the producers will be surprised. For that, you need masala, and a Salman Khan-like hero who will beat up the baddies, save the day and come away looking smug.

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see)

Review: Mere Dad Ki Maruti

Direction: Ashima Chibber

Actors: Ram Kapoor, Saqib Saleem, Prabal Punjabi, Rhea Chakraborty

Rating: *½

A Honey Singh track claims something to the effect that Punjabis have their batteries charged 24x7. You understand when that becomes the next big party anthem in north India. But when it captures the essence and intent of a film, you know the bar’s set rather low.

Sameer (Saqib Saleem) and Gattu (Prabal Punjabi) are not the brightest kids on the block. So when they lose a car after a party, they go about trying to fix things with harebrained schemes. The similarity to the brilliantly absurd Ashton Kutcher-starrer, Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000), begins and ends there. There is no pot-induced memory loss or dim-wittedness here. Those qualities seem to be in-built features.

The saving grace, such as it is, is the dad, Mr Khullar, a ‘chipda’ (miserly), whisky-loving, politician-bashing, middle-class man, played rather convincingly by Ram Kapoor. He is easily the standout actor, completely in-character (the natural pot belly helps here) as he berates Sameer, his ‘nalayak’ son, calling him a ‘burger’.

Dad has just bought a new, “fully loaded” Maruti that he plans to give to his future son-in-law as a wedding gift. Trouble, then, is to be expected when Sameer sneaks the car out in the middle of his sister’s wedding, and proceeds to lose it. After the initial panic, he decides that his solution lies in keeping his dad in the dark, rather than in trying to find the missing automobile.

His attempts at covering up the truth set a comedy of errors in motion, involving, among other things, the police, a car-rental service and a don.

The predictable storyline could have done with more absurdity, and fewer of the Honey Singh-style one-liners, which included ‘Wax kiya to darna kya?’ and ‘Are you love me? I’m love you’.

In essence, the problem with …Maruti isn’t the parts. It’s the whole.

It is perhaps telling that we watched it in the company of a group of college kids who had bunked class on a Friday morning. They seemed to speak the film’s lingo, literally. They even sat through the closing credit roll. Though we suspect that may have had more to do with how much time they had to kill.

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see)

Review: Raaz 3

Direction: Vikram Bhatt
Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Bipasha Basu, Esha Gupta
Rating: **

What do film stars with waning mojos do when they fail to win awards? Swig whisky on the rocks and wallow in self pity? Raaz 3’s megalomaniac, mantra-reciting, tacky-costume-wearing heroine – Shanaya (Bipasha Basu) – plays out those clichés, in front of a giant photograph of herself no less, before she seeks out the devil. But instead of the sell-your-soul-for-wishes route, she walks the twisted path – spook out the new girl (Esha Gupta as Sanjana) who’s taking your place. Totally foolproof plan, if there were just two actresses left in the world. Then again, logic and character motivation aren’t really the cornerstones of a Vikram Bhatt directorial. So, the “aatma” called Tara Dutt (a too-much-kohl-wearing Manish Choudhary) agrees to help her for no apparent reason. Maybe he runs a dial-an-aatma service, who knows? After reciting some gibberish that sounds vaguely Arabic, he hands her a jar of evil water that will be Sanjana’s nemesis.

But the water must be given by a “bharose-wala aadmi”. Enter Bhatt boy Emraan Hashmi, who’s made a career out of kissing and effortlessly seducing on-screen babes. This time he is film director Aditya who seems to aid Shanaya in her evil plan in exchange for sex. In one of the most unintentionally funny moments in the film, Shanaya takes her shirt off, stands over him, and with the camera focused on her assets, asks him to look into her eyes. Right.

With the evil water administered, the horror finally begins: Sanjana has nightmares where voices and choking hands come out of the TV (The Ring, anyone?); she is chased by a clown in an empty studio; and a domestic help drives giant shards of glass into her own body. The theory of the water causing hallucinations would be perfectly credible. But logic is killed and hanged from a fan when Aditya also sees the paranormal forces.  

It all goes downhill from there, with love, revenge and blackmail mixed up with aatma-rescuing priests, phone-using zombies (yes, here they speak) and a Matrix-like world of spirits you can go in and out of. At one point, it feels like someone put the script for another Murder sequel in the blender with horror set pieces.

But you might forgive all of this in a horror film with impressive visual effects and scary make-up. Unfortunately, the grunting ghost covered in maggots belongs in a Ramsay Brothers franchise (they had less technical help in the ’80s) and the CGI appear dated. The 3D is up to the mark (it’s not the dark, upconverted variety), but just ends up taking the tackiness to another level, literally.

As usual, Bipasha gets to show more skin than acting prowess, but is startlingly better than Esha, who competes with cleavage but forgets to emote altogether. Add to that every available cliché in the book – Ganpati to the rescue, ganga jal as a weapon – and it’s more likely to scares you away than scare you.

-Sarit Ray

September 08, 2012 

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (Click here to see)