Akira (2016)

The first question that arises after watching the movie is, “Who names her child Akira?" It looks more like a Japanese Ninja’s name than that of a baby girl.  

The story follows Akira, who is a school girl from Rajasthan; one day she witnesses an unstylish, paan chewing, illiterate looking, disheartened lover throw acid on a beautiful young lady, disfiguring her for life. Akira identifies the perpetrator in front of police, sending the dead weight on the earth to his obvious incarceration.

Disillusioned by the lack of safety for Indian girls her father enrolls Akira for self-defense classes, which results in a miniature version of female Jackie Chan. Once again confronted by street goons, this time Akira performs makeup of the guy with a dash of acid, now resulting in her visit to Juvenile detention for a couple of years.

Story takes a time leap and many years have passed, Akira is now a college going student, she moves to Mumbai with her family and enrolls into a college. There due to a twist of fate she becomes entangled into a situation where some corrupt cops want her dead. But of course whom they considered to be an easy target to eliminate, refuses to die.

Story move at fast pace and screenplay is good most of time, but the story falters in the second half, the pace dulls and screenplay takes a backseat. Altogether a decent movie has a climax that is unsatisfying. We wanted more revenge from Akira, better punishment for the criminals (oops, cops I mean) but the writers and directors fail at this crucial juncture.

Performance wise Sonakshi does well, she obviously has worked hard for this role including the stunt scenes, Anurag Kashyap the famous director plays villain, and he is turning out to be a competent actor as well. It was nice to see Konkona Sen after a long time. Her role as an honest and simultaneously pregnant police inspector made me fear for her safety throughout the movie, normally such characters have a clichéd ill-fated end, which pleasantly was not the case here.

Music wise one song stands out “Baadal”. Action sequences are nicely done. At least they don’t look like parody scenes.

In all a one-time watch.

Rating **1/2

Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017)

A movie or a story needs conflict; good v/s bad; right v/s wrong; fight v/s flight; so on and so forth, but the most prominent movie conflict, we as a viewer of 1980’s and 1990’s cinema had to endure was love v/s family. And believe me when I say that, it was unbearable.

What we saw every time was a nice meaning boy meeting a nice looking innocent girl, their initial bonding, hero inevitably rescuing heroine from a purse snatcher/ robber/ potential sexual offender (just take your pick) to be followed up by a romantic song.

Then begins the conflict of the story, Parents. The objections ranging from, rich girl poor boy; rich boy poor girl; different religion/cast/sect; family history (some uncle killed some other uncle/ someone ran away from pre arrange marriage) or any other factor standing in the way of perpetual love. Alas, same story every time, guess where Ekta Kapoor took inspiration from.

But things changed and now we have movies with different themes and stories with new kind of conflicts, like ‘Kattappa ne Bahubali ko kyon mara’, or ‘Uski keh ke loonga’ or ‘Risk to Spider man ko bhi lena padta hai, main to salesman hoon’ etc etc

But once in a while filmmakers get nostalgic and come up with old formula movies with new packaging like “Badrinath ki Dulhaniya”. So the question remains, do this movie gets public’s love? And the answer is, ‘yes, it does’. Now this gives birth to a new question, why?

Although the movie follows old tradition of love v/s family, but the makes were smart enough to incorporate contemporary issue of woman liberalization and their place in current society and particular in our homes. To convey a strong social message without getting preachy is a tricky thing and nobody does it better than Rajkumar Hirani, but in this case the director Shashank Khaitan performs a decent job.

First half of the movie is funny, with ample light moments; especially the scene on the bus is the cherry on the top. However the problem lies with the second half of the movie where suddenly the story changes its tempo and converts into a serious drama, the length of this part is the hindrance in the natural progression of the movie. The director takes its sweet time to establish the story which he could have easily done by reducing the time of the movie by let’s say 10 minutes. However in the later part the momentum returns and climax is entertaining.

Acting wise Varun and Alia have given competent performances, I would specially like to mention the role of elder brother of Varun Dhavan, he looks like the modern incarnation of Mohnish Bahl from a Suraj Barjatya movie. He and his wife are immensely likeable. Script and dialogues are good, music is soulful. In all, a nice movie to spend a holiday with family. Watchable.

Rating ***1/2