Shor in the City : Movie Review

SITC is fresh and original 

Directors : Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K.

Cast : Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathy, Radhika Apte, Preeti Desai, Girija Oak, Sundeep Kishan, Amit Mistry and Zakir Hussain.

Balaji's latest production Shor in the City is a tale of Mumbai city and the noise that exists yet invisible in the society. Fresh and original in its treatment SITC is a compilation of three parallel tracks. The first one is of Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), an NRI who comes back to India to revisit his business talents and becomes an easy target of extortion by the local gangs men. The second track is of Saawan(Sundeep Kishan) an aspiring cricketer who needs to finance the selectors to push his name in the Under 22 cricket team. The third and perhaps the most interesting track is of Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), a pirated book publisher and his two creepy friends Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) and Mandook (Pitobash Tripathy), who always in a hunt of making money land up in illegitimate activities. The trouble starts when the three stories clash at a single point.

The actors put up a decent show, however as it progresses SITC shapes up as more of a directors' movie. The first half is interesting, well paced along with some quirky funny moments. The second half keeps you involved in the story in the same way as the pre-interval part did. By the time the film reaches the pre-climax there's already a kind of curiosity in the viewer's mind and thats where comes the only shaky link of the film, which is nothing but the sluggish climax. The ending in fact eclipses the entire positives of the film and negate it's impact.

As already stated its a team effort with decent performances by all the actors. Pitobash Tripathy as Mandook is the find of the film and shines in all the scenes he appear with his mindless one liners and good comic timing. Zakir Hussain is impressive in his part of a local extortionist. Tusshar Kapoor has grown as an actor. Sendhil Ramamurthy makes an impact despite his unparallel hindi accent. The girls hardly get any space to showcase their acting talents. 'Karma is a bitch...' is a catchy number. I would go for 2.5/5 for SITC. The directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. have made a decent attempt, however the sloppy climax just spoils the fun.



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7 Khoon Maaf : Movie Review

7 Khoon Maaf is monotonous

Director : Vishal Bhardwaj

Cast : Priyanka Chopra, Naseeruddin Shah, John Abraham, Irrfan Khan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Annu Kapoor, Aleksander Dyachenko, Vivaan Shah, Usha Uthup & Konkana Sen Sharma.

All that shines is not gold. Promising to have enough potential Vishal Bhardwaj's latest dark drama 7 Khoon Maaf does not meet up to its expectations. Now the fact that 7KM does not click has some serious reasons, since it has some of the most noted people of contemporary cinema associated with itself. It's not like a very bad film but the kind of expectation one has from a Vishal Bhardwaj flick makes 7KM look a pretty ordinary stuff in the end. In fact I am a big fan of Bhardwaj's work including Maqbool, The Blue Umbrella, The cult classic Omkara and even Blood Brothers, his short film on HIV AIDS. But ever since giving these much applauded films the graph has started tumbling the other way round for Bhardwaj. It started from Kaminey and continues in 7KM. The audiences expected a lot more from a Vishal Bhardwaj movie than what they were served in Kaminey, however the goodwill of Omkara perhaps helped the box office collections of Kaminey  and made it a hit before people could make out that the latter in no way appeared to be a work of a director who gave us Langda Tyagi. But fate is what one would say, that movies like Omkara are refrained from attaining a 'hit' title, but the Kaminey kind does a better job at the box office. Sad to say even the luck does not work for 7KM.

Based on Ruskin Bond's short story 'Susanna's Seven Husbands', 7KM is a story of Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes (Priyanka Chopra) and her quest to find true love. She marries six men during her lifetime, however does not find anyone as 'the one' she's been looking for. Her first husband Major Edwin Rodriguez (Neil Nitin Mukesh) has an imperfection of being over possessive and is unable to bear the fact that such a beautiful wife would ever be faithful to him. The second one is Jimmy Stetson (John Abraham), a professional singer whose flaw is pride and changes after having a taste of fame and ultimately moves to drugs. Wasiullah Khan (Irrfan Khan), a subtle poet by vocation happens to be her third husband who pertains a nasty beating habit while expressing his love towards Susanna ending up with some real painful bruises to the lovely lady. The fourth husband is a Russian Spy Nicolai Vronsky (Aleksandr Dyachenko) leading a double life. He has a wife and 2 kids before marrying Susanna and has not unveiled this hidden aspect of his life to Susanna. Her fifth husband is a lusty Police Inspector Keemat Lal (Annu Kapoor) who marries her for physical appetite. Her last husband is Dr.Modhusudhon Tarafdar (Naseeruddin Shah), a bankrupt Bengali doctor who convinces Susanna to marry him with a motive to acquire all her property after her death. The seventh man in Susanna's life is Arun Kumar (Vivaan Shah) who noticed Susanna since his childhood and has nurtured a crush on her. 

7KM explains 'anger' as an emotion like love and also the fact that both are complimentary to each other. A lot of love or even a desire of the same may come up with extreme anger. And in a flash all is gone. Its only after a deadly showdown of Russian roulette, Susanna realises that she did something out of anger to someone she loved the most. After 5 seconds of the shot, the blood spilled on the wall makes her realise that she just shot her husband dead. Love kills and has no scope of mercy. This is how a loving lady kills her husband whom she loved the most. And when she does it with 6 men...Its called 7 Khoon Maaf. Wondering what her 7th crime was. Anyhow it is an Interesting plot indeed but how can you see the same thing happening repeatedly one after another. The same story works as a book since one has an option of not completing a book at one go, however when being shown in a 3 hour film makes it monotonous to watch. After 2-3 kills the story starts becoming a lot predictable which is another drawback of 7KM. A couple of uninteresting stories should rather have been excluded from the film.

Performance wise also 7KM fails to leave any strong impact. This is certainly not the best performance by Priyanka Chopra and it could have been a lot better. Her on screen presence in most parts of the film also does not help her to make it look anything beyond an average attempt. Also, great talents like Naseeruddin Shah and Irrfan Khan are wasted. The only exception we have here is of Annu Kapoor who makes the character of Keemat Lal look so very special by his lewd instincts. Special mention for Neil Nitin Mukesh who gives his best performance till date in the role of a cold hearted Army officer.

Bekaraan... and Daaarling... are the best songs we have in 7KM. Apart from this, anything which needs a special mention in 7KF is Gulzar's lyrics and Ranjan Palit's cinematography. I give 2/5 to 7KM. Please stop disappointing your fans Vishal including me. Hopefully next time we have something that suits your caliber.





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Yeh Saali Zindagi : Movie Review

Yeh Saali Zindagi is a definite entertainer

Director : Sudhir Mishra

Cast : Irrfan Khan, Chitrangda Singh, Arunoday Singh, Aditi Rao Hydari, Saurabh Shukla, Sushant Singh, Yashpal Sharma, Prashant Narayanan & Vipul Gupta.

                Yeh Saali Zindagi happens to be a good entertaining movie made in a long time. A musical romantic thriller in its genre, YSZ surmounts in almost every single department. The credit has to be given to the 2 time National award winning director Sudhir Mishra who gives another master stroke in the form of YSZ continuing his legacy of offbeat films including the likes of Dharavi, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, Chameli & Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi, but unlike his most of previous work, YSZ is a definite entertainer.

The film stars Irrfan Khan as Arun who works in a finance company of Mehta (Saurabh Shukla), a double dealing deceitful finance goon. The duo are in a black money flip-flop white money business where Arun neatens the unlawful money of gangsters, politicians and high profile businessmen. In an episode of imparting legal imputation on a pub owner with a motive to rack up his property, Arun unintentionally meets a beautiful singer named Priti (Chitrangda Singh), sister and partner of the pub owner and falls for her alluring looks. After having learnt that Priti has nothing else apart from the pub property Arun decides to help Priti come out of this nuisance. However Arun in return obtains nothing but a mere friendship from the stingy Priti, who becomes occupied with her boyfriend Shyam (Vipul Gupta); son of a business tycoon and soon starts avoiding Arun. Mehta warns the infatuated Arun and pushes him to forget Priti and his one sided love story. On the other side Shyam is leading a double life and has a fiance who is a daughter of a politician and this is where the trouble begins.

Kuldeep (Arunoday Singh), an outlaw living in the outskirts of old Delhi is married to Shanti (Aditi Rao Hydari) and has a 5 year old son, however his wife wants to make their ways apart due to the anti social behaviours of Kuldeep. However, he assures her that he will discontinue his crime life forever, but secretly agrees to perform one last job before he retires from the crime world to ensure the financial security of his family. And this last job is nothing but a task of kidnapping the politician's daughter along with her fiance Shyam. A local brigade of outlaws leaded by Kuldeep go for the kill but unwittingly abducts Shyam with Priti instead of the politician's daughter. This is where Arun finds himself in a pickle of either to risk his own life for a girl who does not love him or to leave the city where already people are after his life.

The film has portions of narratives by Arun and Kuldeep, both justifying their enslavement to their respective love interests by doing things which have no personal incentives , unleashing their Unconditional love. Unusual to find such feelings in today's age of flings, we are pushed to believe the Platonic love of Arun by his subtle behaviour towards Priti. And in the midst of all these kidnappings and gunshots the one thing that keeps the entertainment moolah always on the top is the dark humour which the director manages to create quite effectively and 'consistently'. Be it the bad-mouthing one liners of the bizarre gangsters or the conversation of the underworld siblings Bade (Yashpal Sharma) and Chhote (Prashant Narayanan), all comes as a laughter bonus in every scene one after another making the viewer wait for another one to come and believe me the viewers are not disappointed at all. One of my favourite comes from a mad gangster who says "Side Income hai Bhai" after a fellow crook asks the reason why Priti is trying hard to save Shyam. Even the greedy cop Satbeer (Sushant Singh) joins the party and smashes a sixer off the last ball.

Of the cast, Irrfan Khan deserves a standing ovation for enacting such a difficult role effortlessly. He is simply superb and is one of the biggest strength's of the film. Arunoday Singh with the 'Hulk' looks was last seen in Mirch and Aisha earlier, looks like a prominent talent to watch out for. Chitrangda Singh as the mysterious Priti is good. Aditi Rao Hydari was last seen in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Delhi6 in a small role but she makes a good debut in a lead role of the beautiful wife of Kuldeep. Also all the supporting actors have given their best in their respective parts, be it Saurabh Shukla, Yashpal Sharma, Prashant Narayanan or the Delhi bad boys. The music of the film excellently supports the story with some real nice tracks. Kaise kahein Alvida..., Dil dar ba dar... and Sararara... make the best of songs.

Many of the recent films have had the dialogues which have gone across the line, including the likes of Kaminey, Ishqiya, Peepli Live and No One Killed Jessica. The raw language trend continues with YSZ, infact the film faced some censor issues prior the release on the usage of the word "Saali" in the title of the film. Ironically the script makes YSZ as the most suitable title for this film. Written by Mishra himself YSZ comes up as a winner in the end. Not a movie for family audiences, but this one is a treat to watch for those who like cinema to its core. For a brave move by an ace director and excellent performances, i would go for a 3.5/5 for YSZ. Thank you Sudhir Mishra for the real entertainment!!!

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Khakee : Movie Review

Bachchan Vs Devgan.
Khakee is not to be missed.

Director : Rajkumar Santoshi

Cast : Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai, Tusshar, Atul Kulkarni, Tanuja, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Ashwani Kalsekar & Prakash Raj.

       Rajkumar Santoshi is a genius of a director. Khakee is just another addition to his great filmography which has been a collection of most memorable movies of all time. Like most of Santoshi's earlier films, this one again is a social-issues surrounding 'hard-hitting' film. But make no mistake by challenging the entertainment this film provides, as it is a fast paced thriller which will surprise you every other moment with the vacillating situations and dynamic characters.

DCP.Anant Shrivastav (Amitabh Bachchan) is assigned a task of escorting terrorist Dr.Iqbal Ansari (Atul Kulkarni) from Chandangarh to Mumbai. Ansari is accused of having connections with a terrorist group and is charged for riots occured in Chandangarh. Shrivastav readily accepts the mission which would give him a taste of glory, appreciation and honor, he's been waiting for all his life. He along with his team members including Senior Inspector Shekhar Verma (Akshay Kumar), Sub Inspector Ashwin Gupte (Tusshar) and a couple of constables land up in Chandangarh realising that some force none other than Yashwant Angre (Ajay Devgan) is determined to make their mission impossible. Mahalakshmi (Aishwarya Rai) the only witness to have seen Angre joins the police team. The men in uniform now battle up against Angre when the latter attacks them at various points of the journey to ensure Ansari does not show up in Court. The enitre journey exposes the actual faces of those who do not want the police team to make it to Mumbai and the survival of Shrivastav and team against brutal killer Angre and those involved.

Khakee is full of surprises. Continuous twists and turns never allow you to loose attention on the film. Thanks to the writing team of Shridhar Raghavan & Rajkumar Santoshi. There are various layers of all most all the characters and to make the situation more intense these layers not surprisingly, are conflicting to each other. This feature allows Santoshi to add a great depth in the drama of the film through agile conversations between the characters. The dialogues, again by Raghavan and Santoshi brings the best of characters alive on the screen even in a variety of situations. Take for example the scene where Shrivastav reminds the meaning of 'duty' to a fellow officer, or a scene where he addresses an angry mob after the entire police team has been declared betrayers by the media or the scenes where Shekhar flirts with Mahalakshmi; providing the audience with some laughable moments.

Khakee undoubtedly has some real good actors, and Santoshi quite successfully extracts the best out of everyone. The entire cast deserves an applause. To begin with the two protagonists; Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgan both give their best performances. Bachchan marks another legendary performance as DCP.Anant Shrivastav. On the contrary Devgan as Angre, the conniving hunter shines in a negative role.  Bachchan Vs Devgan can easily be the caption of Khakee as the audiences witness multiple clashes between the two through out the film. Akshay Kumar as Shekhar continues his good run in comedy. Also the actor proves his metal in the serious and action scenes of the film. Tusshar has grown multiple folds as an actor from his initial films. Aishwarya Rai as Mahalakshmi is the surprise package of the lot. Atul Kulkarni proves again that he is a great talent. Of the supporting cast Ashwani Kalsekar and Sabyasachi Chakraborty are good. Lara Dutta sizzles in a cameo appearance in 'aisa jadoo' number.

  

Santoshi offers a great action packed thriller with some fantastic action sequences including the opener scene of a police team battling up against terrorists, the village fair sequence where Shrivastav is chasing Angre, the Shekhar-Angre fight at the post office and the pre-climax clash between Shrivastav and Angre. The action scenes are supported by equally good background score. The only thing which should have been avoided in this film are the irrelavant songs, which pop up with bad timing and helps the screenplay loosen a bit of grip. Infact Khakee without songs would have been a much tighter script and ofcors cropped in terms of its actual length of 172 minutes. Still the effort by Rajkumar Santoshi to ensemble such a huge cast and doing justice to all the actors makes it a must watch. For a great showdown by the cast and crew of Rajkumar Santoshi's Khakee, I would go for a 4/5 rating. Khakee is not to be missed!!!

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Inglourious Basterds : Movie Review

IB is no exception to Tarantino's exquisite work

Director : Quentin Tarantino

Cast : Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Til Schweiger, Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent & August Diehl.

Brad Pitt

   Quentin Tarantino is acclaimed for bringing the stories on paper, alive at the silver screen. Inglourious Basterds is simply no exception to his exquisite work. This period drama mentions the story of a bunch of Jewish-American soldiers, referred to as 'Basterds' who intend to kill as many Adolf Hitler's Nazi enlisted men as possible. The Bastards under the command of Lt. Aldo Raine enacted by Brad Pitt are dropped in France with a motive to finish the German soldiers during the Second World War, making sure they leave behind the dismantled and disfigured dead bodies of the Nazis so as to spread the word of fear within the Germans, and they quite make it possible by smashing the brains of German soldiers with baseball bat and leaving their dead bodies scalp-less. Incidents like these are presented to the audience in a very raw manner, appearing extremely violent and painful. But then this can be easily expected out of a Tarantino's picture.



Christoph Waltz

       Tarantino displays great talent by showing two plots running simultaneously in the story, and excels in blending them together. The film begins with the introduction of Col.Hans Landa played by Christoph Waltz who is nicknamed as 'the Jew-Hunter' due to his specialty of killing Jews in Nazi occupied France. He assassinates the Drefuses, a Jewish family, however a girl named Shoshanna  played by Melanie Laurent manages to escape.

     The Bastards indulge in killing Nazi soldiers with cruelty, bringing fear within the German Army. Meanwhile Shoshanna changes her identity to Emanuele, a cinema owner who works with a negro employee named Marcel. One night she meets Frederick Zoller played by Daniel Bruhl, a German sniper, who fells for Emanuele and in order to develop a sense of friendship with her, convinces Dr.Goebbels, a German director played by Sylvester Groth,  to change the venue of the premiere of a German film based on the exploits of Zoller during war time, to Emanuele's cinema. Emanuele realises this as an opportunity to avenge hereslf of her family's massacre by the Nazi soldiers, as she plans to burn all the German soldiers at the premiere.



Melanie Laurent

      On the other side the Bastards, unaware of Emanuele and her revenge, devise  Operation Kino, which involves killing of German soldiers during the same film screening with the help of a German actress Bridget Von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger who has a secret identity of a British spy and this action being her Brain child. The development of the plan requires a secret rendezvous between Von Hammersmark and Lt. Archie Hicox played by Michael Fassbender along with two German born Bastards. However things go wrong when Major Dieter Hellstorm played by August Diehl notices the odd accent of Hicox, resulting into a fire fight, leaving everyone dead except Von Hammersmark.

           However after learning from Von Hammersmark about the presence of Hitler at the premiere Raine formulates a plan to explode the theatre. Meanwhile Landa obtains an evidence against Von Hammersmark and kills her at the premiere night and takes Raine into custody. On the other side Emanuele gears up for her ultimate revenge but before she could do anything, Zoller comes to see her in projection room where they both exchange fire and die. Landa while interrogating Raine proposes a deal wherein he would let the Operation Kino a success and let Hitler and all Nazi soldiers die only if the American High-command gives him a sign off on his unusual terms including American citizenship for himself post the war. Landa is given the word of agreement by the American General. 

Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender & August Diehl

       In the meantime Marcel, Emanuele's lover burns the theatre which is followed by an explosion by the Bastards killing the Germans attending the premiere including Hitler. Landa takes Raine to American borders as per the deal. To his surprise Raine with his knife engraves a Swastika on Landa's forehead so that he cannot conceal being a Nazi even after attaining American citizenship.



Til Schweiger & Eli Roth

      Brad Pitt delivers another stunning performance as Raine, but the actor who steals the show is unquestionably Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa. In better words the movie belongs to Waltz as he makes almost his every scene memorable. Be it his introduction scene where he persuades a French Nationale in the most cunning way, or be it a scene where he starts talking in Italian after the Bastards are introduced to him as Italians. His witty lines and spontaneous body language are just flawless. Melaine Laurent plays her part of Shoshanna/ Emanuele brilliantly. Watch her dissolve in tears after she meets Landa the officer who brutally killed her family. August Diehl as Major Dieter Hellstorm is impressive. Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz aka "The Bear Jew" and Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz shines.



Inglourios Basterds



    The visuals displaying the no mercy characters surprise you to a great extent. What adds to the flavour is the riveting sound design which supports the story extremely. The variety in the background score ranging from a smooth mouth organ music to a bugle sound to a rock number, gives enough strength to the story. The movie also involves a lot of cameo appearances by several American and German actors. The scenes of the film are relatively less in number but involve lengthy conversations, mostly in foreign languages displaying subtitles almost all the time and this tests viewer's patience. IB is a combination of historical and fictional characters, since Hitler was not killed in a cinema tragedy. The Original Screenplay by Tarantino himself is another strength of the movie. Full marks to the writers for the clever one liners used in the film. My rating for IB is a handsome 4/5. For cinema lovers its a delight and for Tarantino fans its a must watch.



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