Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Chakk de phatte!!!

I watched "Jo Bole So Nihaal" on the previous weekend. Some gyaan for all readers...

  1. The FBI has a new dress code for long leggy female agents! It includes long boots, a pink tank top and a micro-skirt. The tank top has "FBI" embroidered on it.
  2. Making a remote controlled explosive is remarkably simple. Just stick in an IC and a LED into some modelling clay, and press ur TV remote. Kabooooom.....
  3. U can land a FBI chopper right into indian villages!
  4. FBI stands for "Fully Bewakoof Insaan"

I am not quite sure how the director intended to position this movie. Was it a comedy or a dhishum-dhishum kind of a movie? After seeing the movie I am still confused. Sunny Deol appears headed in the same direction as Mithunda and Jackie... the B and C category movies. These kind of movies might not do well in the urban metros but will bring in the crowd in the cowbelt regions. The kind of comedy in this movie reminded me of the movies his dad Dharmendra had to resort to during the last stages of his own career. I cannot understand why Sunny, who had given excellent performances in Gadar, Border is trying his hand at this kind of comedy so late in his career.

Let me take you thru the movie...

Sunny Deol is Nihaal Singh, a police constable in some part of Punjab. He is a very down to earth chap and lets go a mercenary Romeo(Kamaal Khan) who feeds him some tale abt his cancer ridden daughter. Romeo is an international terrorist who has executed assassinations in Israel, China, Russia ... etc,etc basically a chap whom no one has been able to see/apprehend. His favourite mechanism of killing people is sticking an IC and a LED into some modelling clay and then clicking his remote. OK.. OK.. plastic explosive does indeed look like modelling clay, but I and u know that, not the rural folk in Punjab and Haryana. I am pretty sure some studs there will already be attempting this.

After Nihaal Singh lets go of Romeo he is stripped of his uniform by the Punjab Police and his family ostracised. Nihaal takes a vow to bring back Romeo to Punjab and prove his innocence.

Cut to next scene, FBI officials are seen discussing plans to apprehend Romeo who is supposed to have taken the contract to eliminate the US president. But since nobody has seen him till date they have to revert to Nihaal Singh to obtain his help. So they fly their chopper to Punjab and arrive at the local police station with their laptops. Nihaal Singh accompanies them back to USA and sets to his task.

All mercenaries have a signature and Romeo has a very subtle one. After his job is done he always visits a church and confesses to his crime in front of the father. After the confession he kills the father as well, Cool. The next weekend he confesses to the Father's murder in yet another church and so on and so forth. So Nihaal Singh uses this habit of Romeo to nab him. What follows in the movie is a very low level of comedy at times. Sample.. Sunny is roaming the streets of New York and notices a transvestite. He goes and grabs the guy/gal right where he/she is missing the vital organ. And laughs at that....!!!! This might not make you laugh but I can just imagine the scene at the theatre in Patiala.

Then there is a shady millionaire in the movie. He is a Vijay Mallya lookalike with proclivities for babes, booze and beaches. He hires Romeo to kill somebody but Nihaal Singh foils his plans. NihalEnemies++. How Nihaal manages to catch Romeo and brings him back to India is what forms the extremely avoidable second half of the movie. Oh before I forget, amidst the confusion in the second half it turns out that the FBI itself is trying to eliminate the president. I had completely given up any hope of locating some sense in the movie by that time.

A lot of puns are made on Sardars and I greatly admired the Sardars in the theatre who took the jokes pretty well. There are 3 songs in the movie and barring one which is the title track the rest are forgettable. Kamaal Khan as Romeo debuts in the movie and I wonder why he was not allowed a song in the movie. I mean when u can allow every other kind of nonsense why not this?

I just hope Sunny does not continue to do these kind of movies any longer. He might get the audiences initially but in the long run he would lose it all.

Sat Sri Akaal.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Yucky Lucky

Last Saturday I watched a wonderful movie called "Jo Bole So Nihaal", the weekend before that I saw an even better movie called "Lucky-No Time For Love". The first one sounds like a religious movie and the second sounds like a doggie tale. Neither are actually what they sound like and both of them are so bad that they are good. Binu, I must say "Aankhein" has serious competetion.

First lets take "Lucky". Salman Khan is the main "attraction" here. A rare positive review about the movie says that even die hard Shahrukh fans would become converts after watching Salman's excellent performance here. My opinion on his acting is that he has reached the rock bottom of his career and has started digging. I also heard that when initially Salman was approached with the script of the movie, he became extremely emotional on hearing the story. Salman I share ur emotions dude, the movie definitely causes tears to well up especially if u have seen it at an multiplex with ur wife at the cost of tickets+popcorn+cola+petrol+parking charges. No doubt about that, this movie will bring tears in your eyes. Anyway lets dissect the movie itself.

One of the highlights of this movie has been the fully clad Salman. Guess the directors did not have too much of an opportunity to ask him to take off his shirt in the extremely cold weather of Russia. There was a scene wherein the heroine(more on her later) is suffering from hypothermia, and there was a tiny possibility that Salman might take off his stuff, but thankfully the moment passed. Salman is a cool dude in the movie with the handle "Aadi". No not AadiManav, it is short for Adithya. What he does for a living nobody knows, but is the son of India's ambassador to Russia and when he makes an appearance in the movie, has just driven a car from France to Russia. I guess that pales all ur Mumbai-Pune, Bangy-Mysore road trips. He is the heart throb of desi girls studying in Russian schools and is an extremely kind guy at heart, and takes pity on a schoolgirl who hides in his car and helps her to reach her parents while the Chechen rebels are blasting away.

Next, the Bengali heartthrob, Mithunda. I think it is after 20 years that Mithun has made an appearance in a A-grade movie after two decades of his Z-Grade Ooty productions. But that does not mean that he has lost his touch. His Z-Grade touch that is. His character seems to suffer from a distinct hangover of one of his last "Z" category movie. In the movie he plays a retired Special Services agent. ("Special Services"?? Indian equivalent of SAS,MI6? ) An agent who has seen Murder, Rape, War, Kidnapping and Espionage during his term of service. In short a know-all guy who can solve any crisis. He turns up when he is most unexpected and helps out Salman and co. And also the directors, for they do not have to give any explanations for certain scenes of the movie which are absolutely inexplicable. His is a character that all directors would love to have!! He is approached by the Indian ambassador to help trace Salman and Sneha when the city is in the clutches of Chechen rebels. Mithunda then uses all his "contacts" to track the duo. At no point of the movie do you actually feel any compassion for the lead-pair since you always know that Mithunda is hanging around somewhere on the sets. Soon after the rebels take over the city the communication lines are down, meaning the cellphones do not work! But our Mithunda manages to bring up the network for just a single minute by speaking to a soldier sitting in a truck. Mobile telephony has a new meaning! My funniest dialogue in the movie was when he sees Salman for the first time, sizes him up like a gay would and says "Kitna bada ho gaya re tu?" At 42 Salman Khan does indeed look grown up!!

Next the heroine, Sneha. An Aishwarya lookalike, she has handled her first movie pretty much on expected lines. Her character is that of "Lucky", a schoolgirl who is hardworking, sincere and good at her studies. She studies in a Russian school that has a uniform that looks almost like a ceremonial dress. Her primary task in the movie is to appear lost,scared,innocent and a lot like Aishwarya. The first three she manages by virtue of this being her first movie and the last is taken care of by makeup. Btw she is also going to be playing female lead in the next Sohail Khan venture named "Aryan", the storyline for which seemed based on the Stallone starrer Rocky.

But the movie does have some spectacular scenes shot in snowbound Russia. That is the only strong point of an otherwise hopeless movie. The storyline is also extremely weak. The fact that Sneha is yet a schoolgirl could have been explored further by the directors by giving the interaction between her and Salman some awkwardness rather than making it a full blown romance. She is 18 and Salman is 42. Old enough to be her dad!

On the day we landed up at the multiplex most of the better movies were sold out, and hence wifey was able to con me into watching this movie. But I got her to agree to the fact that next time the movie would be of my choice. The choice later was to be "Jo Bole So Nihaal", which I sold to her as a romantic movie. Sunny's "Gadar" had been a romantic one and I cannot blame her for falling for that :) More on that later...