P.K. (2014)

Rajkumar Hirani takes his own time between his movies; Munnabhai MBBS(2003), Lage Rao Munnabhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009) and now P.K.(2014), the time gap creates immense anticipation among fans. P.K. was not an exception as well; the makers have kept the basic story and concept of the movie under wrap and the first poster of movie created controversy and curiosity alike.

As most of you may be aware by now that the movie is about an alien who lands on earth, looses the gadget required to travel back to his planes, and during his search for that gadget interacts and questions the very logic of religion and god man. The obvious comparison of the movie is with OMG (Oh My God) since both these movie were inspired by the same play ‘kanji virrudh kanji’.

A lot is being said about the movie in the social media sites, about the hypocrisy of the makers as they have tried to question Hindu faith more than other religions. Even a lot of my friends have felt offended by the movie, looking at such a strong reaction I for once thought about dropping the idea about writing this review, or to just concentrate on the entertainment value of the movie. However not expressing my opinion on the topic or tweaking it to suit the general opinion was not an option for me either. So let me stick my neck out and say that I didn’t felt offended by the movie, I am not saying this to sound like a pseudo secular man but because I genuinely believe so.

Hinduism has been an evolving religion or way of life; a lot of reforms have happened here and unworthy customs have been done away with on a massive scale. ‘Sati Pratha’, ‘Widow Remarriage’ and ‘Child Marriage’ these issues have been tackled to a large extent.  The next important milestone should be stopping people from aborting girl child.

Hinduism has its own set of problems and so do other religions, but that shouldn’t stop us from reforming ourselves, we can’t look at other religions and say why should be change if other religion refuses to do so. You think and take care of your religion and let other people think about their religion.  If PK is not that much critical about Islam and Christianity than let it be, our question should be whether it raises genuine points where ever it does so.

As you may have observed, even I have refrained from raising questions about other religions, so if I for one whose blog would be read by only a few people is conscious of the repercussions, than one may empathize with the makers of this movie which is being shown world wide.  

Coming back to the entertainment value of the movie, it is a nice film overall, however it is not Rajkumar Hirani’s best work but is worthy of your time. During the making of this movie OMG was released and makers of PK found the similarities between both the movies and decided to improvise, and change the storyline wherever possible, that may be the reason why this movie doesn’t have the kind of smooth flow which is otherwise generally associated with Hirani’s movies.  

The director always comes up with a new concept in his movies, like ‘Jadoo is Jhappi’, ‘Ghandigiri’ and ‘All is well’, however his concept of ‘wrong number’ in this movie is a far cry compared to above mentioned master strokes.

Having said that the movie still holds entertainment value for viewing, go for this one.

Rating ****.

The Fault in our Stars - 2014

This movie based on a novel of same name by John Green about two teenagers suffering from cancer was a surprise success, made on a budget of 12 million dollars the movie went on to collect more than 300 million dollars worldwide.

Movie although based on a grim premise, is not a grief ridden drama; else it is a love story with ample doses of humor. Hazel Grace is a teenage girl suffering from thyroid cancer; on persuasion of her parents she attends a support group of cancer patients, where she meets Augustus Waters, a teenage boy who has already lost a leg due to his disease. Augustus is a boy with high spirits and he immediately starts taking interest in Hazel. Although the girl is initially reluctant but with time both become friends and romance blossoms afterwards.

Although the protagonists are aware of their fate they seldom take pity of themselves, they try to live their lives without becoming corny or philosophical and it is preciously where the movie scores big time. The viewers expects them to behave in a certain way, which of course they don’t, breaking the stereotype is what this movie does.

There is another character in the movie, an author who has written a book with an abrupt climax, the heroin is so much fascinated with the book that she wants to know what actually happened in the book, things that the author chose not to tell the reader.  

As you may be aware that the movie is about to be remade in Hindi, however, whether Dipika Padukone and Varun Dhawan would be able to pull off a teenage act remains to be seen, but whatever happens to the remake one thing is for sure that the original is a beautiful movie worth watching with some superb dialogues and amazing performances.

Rating ***1/2

Mardaani (2014)

The first thing that flashed in my mind after I watched the trailer of Mardaani was that the movie looked like a rip-off of Nial Leeson’s ‘Taken’. The setting was similar, a loved one of protagonist was kidnapped, and incidentally the villain gets a choice over phone about either leaving the kidnapped girl of be ready for consequences. So does the movie actually is inspired from ‘Taken’, maybe, but it is not a mindless copy if you come to that.

The beauty of the movie lies in the way it has been presented, no emotional out lash, minimum preaching, pragmatic, still entertaining and enjoyable.

Sr. Inspector Shivani Sivaji Roy works with Mumbai Crime Branch, she lives with her husband and niece, and she also has emotional attachment to a street urchin ‘Pyaari’. Things change as soon as Shivani realizes one day that Pyaari has been kidnapped. Thus begins the chase to get her back.

The story unfolds at a decent pace, new characters come and do their part, no unnecessary melodrama, no ‘roona-dhoona’, no ‘one man against the system’ crap.

Although the movie has its share of profanities, and characters, especially Rani Mukherji’s has qualm about dropping the ‘C’ word regularly, but it doesn’t look forced ay any point of time, ditto to a couple of scenes where you see how women are disgraced, objectified and used, however even that part builds to the narration of the story.

On one hand where Nial Leeson takes the CIA backed cowboy style of dealing with the enemy, our heroine on the other hand tries to remain by the book most of the time, even in climax when everybody thinks she will take law in her own hand, she instead finds a loophole in law to take care of the villain.

Rani Mukhrjee has given a solid performance but kudos to the guy playing the antagonist as he gives a knockout punch, you will specially enjoy the conversation he has with Rani’s character over phone. It may also remind you of similar scenario that you witnessed in ‘Ab tak chappan’, however it will not look like repetition to you.  

On the whole the movie is not appropriate for children for its share of curse words and gritty portrayal of skin trade, but a must watch for anybody else. Recommended.

P.S. I won’t mind a sequel.    

Rating ****

Transcendence (2014)

I was left confused by the time this movie ended; not in the way of ‘Inception’ kind of confused, but the way where I ask myself why I bothered to watch this movie. An immediate answer popped into my head, because it starred Morgan Freeman and Jonny Depp, and Christopher Nolen is the executive producer of this movie.  But still it turned out to be a sad affair.

To be honest the basic premise of the movie is not bad; where a dying man’s consciousness is transferred into a machine with artificial intelligence capabilities. So what happens next? Well nothing amazing in my opinion.

The question about the danger of having an artificial intelligence machine which can subsequently take over the world is raised repeatedly during the movie, and throughout the movie the intention of artificial intelligence machine keeps you wondering all the time, but the climax is a big letdown. The movie lacks humor, snappy dialogues or any other kind of think that you can call entertainment. At times you feel like you are watching an art movie. I can understand about Jonny Depp but why Morgan Freeman agreed for this role is beyond my comprehension. His kind of talent is not fit for such unworthy roles. Maybe due to his constant collaborations with Christopher Nolen he agreed for this part.

I am not a science student and I may be certainly wrong, but the way the artificial intelligence machine starts doing some ‘nanotechnology’ stuff is simply idiotic. The code of the machine starts getting into water, soil, air and every ware and suddenly a low ranking FBI officer decides that they need to shut down the entire internet network of the world, and nobody bothers to even find an alternative. But the cheery on the top is the way a virus in injected into the machine, first a virus in injected into a human, and then the consciousness of that person is uploaded into the all mighty machine, so please tell me how you insect a computer code inside a human body; again I am not a science person and maybe I was too stupid to understand the logic behind it; so if you fell you are good at the subject feel free to try your luck and watch the movie, else there are better options available. Avoidable.

Rating * 1/2

Kick (2014)

Let’s start with a question, why one should watch ‘Kick’? And the answer is one doesn’t need a reason to watch a ‘Salman Khan’ movie; its guaranteed entertainment with ample doses of laughter and action. That brings us to the second question, does ‘Kick’ provides it? And the answer is ‘yes it does’, just at the cost of common sense, but who is complaining? Not even me.

You don’t expect to watch a thought provoking idea being pitched to you through a ‘masala’ entertainment movie, you go for style, songs, action, stunt, dialogues and item songs, and you get all of that in this movie. ‘Kick’ is an official remake of a Telugu movie by same name, initially this movie was supposed to be directed by ‘Shirish Kunder’ who is famous for being Farha Khan’s husband and being slapped by none other than our own ‘Shah Rukh Khan’. However for unspecified reasons he left the director’s chair and producer ‘Sajid Nadidwala’ debuted as director with this movie.
My interest in this movie was largely due to involvement of ‘Chetan Bhagat’ as a screenplay writer; however it saddens me to say that the screenplay and editing of the movie leaves a lot to be desired.
The movie revolves around Devi Lal Singh (Salman); a guy who searches for ‘Kick’ everywhere; how he meets and falls for the heroine (jackline); and how he becomes a cunning thief Devil. Now without going into specifics, the overall movie experience of the movie is good, Salman gives a natural performance, Randeep Huda supports well, Nawajuddin Siddhiqi catches you attention in a relatively small role, Jackline is likeabl, Mithon and Saurabh Shukla gives flawless performances. Story of the movie is also alright, but the gaps in screenplay are too wide to hide, take for instance the chase sequence in Poland, when Salman drops into the river with a bus, how he got out of there is never cared to be explained, ditto to why Randeep Huda doesn’t arrests Salman after learning his true identity, and God havens I may have to approach a psychic to know how Randeep Huda cracks the code given to him by Salman. The movie starts with a chase sequence, but picks up speed only when Sanjay Mishra and Mithun Charkrowary enters the scene, the graph of the movie dwindles throughout the time.  The debutant director may face the problem of keeping the audience glued to the screen if he doesn’t get Salman Khan to star in his next movie.
Music of the film has already caught up with the youngsters, I liked it too, but I would have loved to see a better choreography for the most rocking song of the movie ‘Yaar ni miley’. The energy of the song is not matched by the dancing on the screen.
However keeping in mind that we went for the movie to relax and wanted no exertion for our brain we can spare the movie of its shortcomings, so go to this movie with family and kids, they will enjoy it and so will you.
Rating ***.     

Ek Villian (2014)

A lot of curiosity has been building around ‘Ek Villain’; about its storyline and who actually is the villain in the movie and how? Well to start with, ‘Ek Villain’ is a remake of a South Korean Physiological Thriller movie ‘I Saw the Devil’. So what’s the problem, there is a good foreign movie, lest remake it, but wait let’s make the thriller movie into a romantic, drama, thriller instead, and thus begins the problem.

The characterization of both Hero and Heroine is cliché to the core is to say the least, a hardened criminal with a painful past and no desire to live, and an innocent girl with the heart of gold. Only Ritesh Deshmukh’s character has been worked upon else everything else in the movie is predictable.

Spoilers Alert: Please don’t read the below paragraph if you haven’t seen the movie but intend to see it.

At a certain point of time in the movie we may hope this is a suspense movie, but it is not, it is a straightforward revenge movie where hero tracks and takes revenge from the villain for killing his wife. But there are major loopholes in the movie, the way hero comes to know about the identity of the killer is surprisingly coincidently to the level of being idiotic. Killer’s son comes to a random church, where our hero is already grieving over his loss, the son is also carrying a hand made wind mill made by heroin, which had been taken away by the killer after murdering her. Somebody was needed to work on the script, but they were busy writing cheesy lines for the movie.  One thing that is going to drive the viewers insane is that, the hero catches the villain, beats the crap out of him and leaves him in front of the hospital, so that when he gets better he can beat him again, but why?? Because that is the same thing done in the original movie, but hero in the Korean movie places a transmitter inside villains body, so that he could be tracked anytime, and anywhere, but as our nation is technologically not at par with South Korea, our hero  forgets to do that and leaves the villain just like that, and of course it was just the interval time when the villain was found, so the director needed something to go on for the second half as well. Now look at the way our hero is saved from a murder charge, the witness doesn’t identifies the hero in the court believing our hero should and will get punishment from God instead from a sure shot judgment from the courthouse, come on give me a break. It’s just so easy to rely on luck rather than a strong storyline. And above all while the killer’s identity has been reveled and is being chased by the whole police of the city, suddenly realizes, he would like to see cabaret and visits a dance bar. Pathetic.

Spoilers End

I haven’t seen ‘Aashiqui 2’, but if Shraddha Kapoor’s performance in this movie is any indication, I have dodged a bullet, she can be called “Overacting is Dukaan” for this performance, and every time she starts cracking a joke, I had a strong desire to kick somebody. Mr Director the jokes you have used were in circulation when I was in kinder garden, you have managed to get story from a Korean Movie, jokes from Whattup, bad dialogues from an otherwise talented dialogue writer, and annoying performance from the lead heroine.

However on the up side, performances of both Siddhartha Malhotra and Ritesh Deshmukh are very good, Remo Fernandes has played a supporting role with a different ascent which I liked, KRK (Khan Rashid Khan) is in a small role and he is not as bad as Shraddha Kapoor. Music is certainly good, with ‘Galiyan’ having a hauntingly memorable tune. I would like to specially mention a fight sequence when our hero confronts his old mentor, a very long sequence has been shot in single cut, marvelous.
Overall the movie is not so bad, but just trying to justify the title has been the problem with this movie, just like it had been with ‘Beshram’, ‘Gunday’ and ‘Aurangjeb’ etc. Taking story from a foreign movie is ok, but trying to put Indian sentimentalities is like force feeding, we need to avoid it. People who are going to see the thriller would be disappointed with the love story angle, and people going to see the romance would not be able to digest the storyline.
Rating **.

Holiday (2014)

Here is an interesting fact, producers of this movie wanted the title ‘Holiday’ for this movie, but its rights were with Pooja Bhatt, as she had already made a movie by this name in 2006, you may not remember it as the movie had nothing worth remembering, so the producers approached her and requested for the title, which she denied, maybe she wants to do a sequel. Anyhow the producers instead of going for any other title added ‘A Soldier is Never off Duty’ to the tagline, while Pooja Bhatt kept cursing them in media.

So as you may have already seen in the trailer, the movie deals with a soldier Virat Bakshi (Akshay Kumar) who has come home on holidays, and how he gets entangled in a terrorist plot and how he stops the bad guys forms the rest of the story. So the next question that arise is, is the movie any good? Surely it is.

Without going into any specifics of the story line, the movie is about sleeper cells that are used by terrorists and our protagonist’s battle against them. The movie is fast paced with enough light moments built inside to keep the audience at ease in an otherwise tense subject; you keep on wondering about the next move of our hero as well as the villain. What really appreciable about the screenplay is the way both the protagonist and antagonist approach to outsmart each other, it is good to see some thought given to the planning and analysis part in the movie, where other movies generally doesn’t go into the details about how the villain or hero deduced certain information, this movie is all about that, so good work.

Having said that, the movie is not without its flaws, first and foremost, Akshay Kumar is shown as the member of an intelligence agency however during the entire events of the movie, he does not once bother to involve his agency or superiors into the problem at hand, he enlist the help of his friends at certain times but his agency remains nowhere in picture while he keeps on making dangerous decisions which is seriously odd. If his character was shown to be of a simple army officer without any backup than probably the movie would have made greater sense, secondly the entire Govind’s track looks forced on the screenplay, like they decided to include it at a later stage of filming, but still it’s nice to see him on screen after a long time, and last drawback of the movie is its music, no song make an impression barring the last some ‘naina’ which could actually bring tears to your eyes, amazing lyrics.

The high point of the movie is the internal portion when Akshay attempts to stop an immediate terrorist attack with the help of his friends.

All and all the movie is a worthy entrant into the 100 cr club, unlike some other garbage. Go for this one.

Rating ***1/2

Samay: When Time Strikes (2003)

The year was 2003; I went to watch this suspense thriller movie with one of my very dear friend, and I remember exactly what I told him when we left the theatre after the movie finished, I told him that this movie is instantaneously going to be a big flop, not because it is a bad movie, but because it is too good, as people are still interested in movies with romance and predictable culminations.  

Whether the movie performed well or not, I don’t know as I am not aware about the box office collections of the movie, but since the movie is seldom discussed within movie enthusiast I believe the movie has not gotten the credit it deserved.  So what’s so great about this movie?

To start with the movie has an airtight screenplay, every scene has some significance to the story; however one song could have been spared with. The movie is about one cop Malvika Chauhan (Sushmita Sen) who is trying to catch serial killer responsible for multiple murders, apparently there is no visible connection between those murders and other people in force are not even considering them to be connected, however Sushmita is not convinced and keeps pursuing the case. The cat and mouse chase that follows is superb.

In India not many movies have been made on serial killer genre, the other movie that comes into mind is ‘The Stone man Murders’ which in my opinion was a very week movie, but Hollywood has amply explored this genre, in fact this movie is a ‘remake’ of a Hollywood movie; Seven (1995) starring Bred Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey. Ironically I believe the Hindi remake is much better than the original, as the director has changed the story substantially and given it a much better prospective.

Now for any suspense movie not only Who (Who did the murder) and How (How did he/she did that) are important, but one more important question is Why (Why the crime was committed). Indian movie have always been very lame in this regard, generally money, or love are the predominant reasons behind crime in Bollywood movie, but this is where Samay scores heavily, in the climax the viewer not only gets to know the identity of the killer, but an extraordinary explanation behind the motive of the murders, and mark my words the explanation is extra ordinary and simply amazing, and the climax is a knockout.

Having said that, there may be people who may not like the ‘Why’ part, well it’s their prerogative and I respect that, but for me, this movies climax was as good as it can get, and I will rate this movie in line with other classics like ‘Jewel Thief’ and ‘A Wednesday’.  

An absolute must for any suspense movie fan.

Rating ****.

12 Angry Men (1957)

It been some time since I have watched any movie which requires its mention in my blog, although “Queen” (2014) qualifies in this regard but I believe everything worth mentioning about that movie has already been talked about in different mediums already.

So I thought about a classic movie which I had seen long before I started this blog; 12 Angry Men.

The opening scene of the movie is in a court room where the judge instructs a jury of 12 men to go inside a room and discuss all the evidence that has been presented during a murder trial and come out with the verdict of guilty or not guilty. Unlike Indian courts where judge decides about the conviction of a criminal in US courts this decision is taken by juries of randomly selected individuals from common population.

As soon as the jury enters the room, they decide to take a vote. 11 out of 12 men straight goes for a guilty verdict as evidence is overwhelmingly against the accused; just one jury member goes for a not guilty vote.  You may think it to be one of those thrillers where unknown evidence follow for the rescue of the innocent man, and you cannot be far from truth. Actually the movie does not go for twist in the story; rather it focuses on individual bias and motivations for why a man takes a particular stand on any matter. The other element of the movie deals with conflict and negotiations within a group.

Have I made the movie sound too boring to you; well friends believe me when I say this is one of the fines movies ever to come out of Hollywood, and there won’t be a single minute during the movie when you will want to leave the room. Incidentally the whole movie is shot within a room, baring 2-3 scenes.  

The writer and director have done a great job, the tension builds like anything, the drama unfolds beautifully and amazing dialogues keep on coming at regular intervals and performances are top notch. All in all a movie which was not made to be missed. The movie was even remade in Hindi by the name of “Ek Ruka Hua Faisla”. Please watch this movie for your own sake.

Rating: *****