Rajeev Masand – movies that matter : from bollywood, hollywood and everywhere else

March 30, 2012

Cast: Kunal Khemu, Amrita Puri, Manish Choudhary, Mia Uyeda, Sandeep Sikand

Director: Vishal Mahadkar

Blood Money stars Kunal Khemu as an MBA graduate who arrives in Cape Town with his wife (played by Amrita Puri of Aisha), where he’s accepted a job at a major diamond-trading firm. Even before he can change out of the clothes he flew in wearing, he’s handed over the keys to a plush home, a swanky car, and some ‘settling-in’ cash.

Like the character played by Tom Cruise in the 1993 thriller The Firm, from which Blood Money is so clearly inspired, our hero is seduced by the lure of the new lifestyle that his job affords him. But when he stumbles upon the truth that his bosses are engaged in sinister businesses involving illegal trading, mafia funding, and murder, he must ask himself if he’s comfortable living off such ill-gotten gains.

Filmed indifferently, and without infusing the urgency that this kind of plot demands, first-time director Vishal Mahadkar delivers a bore-a-thon of a movie, complete with archaic dialogues and stereotypes for characters. From the creepy boss who finishes every conversation by declaring “Superb!”; to the office hottie who seduces our hero; to the whining wife who’s tired of waiting for her husband to show up for meals…every character in Blood Money is a cardboard caricature.

Predictable from start to finish, the movie unfolds at an excruciatingly slow pace, and throws up no surprises – not even the ‘twist’ in the end, which you will more than likely guess. Even the film’s key plot-point – the crisis of conscience that our hero goes through – is treated so matter-of-factly that you can’t help wondering if the director was as tuned-off as you are.

Kunal Khemu and Amrita Puri are likeable actors, but they’re saddled with dull roles that allow no room for maneuvering. The film has some hummable music, but that’s faint praise for this mess of a movie.

I’m going with one-and-a-half out of five for Blood Money. Watch it if you’re having trouble sleeping lately.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

March 23, 2012

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Ram Kapoor, Adil Hussain, Shahbaaz Khan, Prem Chopra, Gulshan Grover, Dhritiman Chatterjee

Director: Sriram Raghavan

The most gobsmacking brilliant portion of Agent Vinod is a roughly 3-minute shootout scene set in a seedy East European motel. Even as bullets fly in the lobby between RAW-agent Vinod (Saif Ali Khan) and deadly assassins hot on his trail, a love ballad drowns out the gunshots. The action is captured almost poetically, as Vinod and his accomplice run in and out of corridors and motel rooms, dodging the firing. Now imagine all this in a single tracking shot!

The rest of Agent Vinod, unfortunately, is missing the deft hand that writer-director Sriram Raghavan brings to this spectacular sequence. And it’s not for want of imagination or ambition.

Our super-spy hero is in pursuit of an ISI Colonel (Adil Hussain) who’s threatening to set off a nuclear bomb in New Delhi. The film kicks off with a series of convoluted events that you later realize are connected by the two sides trying to lay their hands on the nuclear bomb detonator.

In the midst of it all, Agent Vinod meets undercover Pakistani spy Iram (Kareena Kapoor), who realizes she’s a pawn in a terror plot, and quickly joins him in his efforts to seize the detonator. As the story hops across the globe – Afghanistan, Moscow, Morocco, Latvia, Somalia, Karachi, India, and London – Vinod discovers more clues that point to a deeper international conspiracy.

Frankly you must appreciate the clarity and smoothness with which our hero goes about this mission, given that as an audience you often find yourself playing a complicated game of cat-and-mouse with director Sriram Raghavan. The film’s plot is suffused with undercover agents and double agents, as well as characters that are introduced and bumped off before you can blink. It’s as if the phrase “deliberately obtuse” was invented to describe this film, especially as you try to navigate through the fog of the first half.

In the style of those 70s spy thrillers that are evidently a big influence on Raghavan, Agent Vinod offers a bunch of farcical baddies – the one-eyed Pakistani general (Shahbaaz Khan), a grey haired Russian drug-baron (Ram Kapoor), and a ponytailed Moroccan crime-lord (Prem Chopra). Even good ol’ Gulshan Grover pops up as a most-wanted Dawood-like don based in Karachi. He’s so blasé that when the masterminds require him to be a cog in yet another terrorism plot, he replies dryly: “I’m so bored!”

To be honest, by this point, so are you.

For a large portion of Agent Vinod, you don’t know where things are going…and then it all stretches on so needlessly that you stop caring. Given that this is a film that sees itself as a desi-style Bond, it has glaring loopholes that are embarrassing. Like a tacky scene in which Vinod spots a familiar scorpion tattoo on a doctor’s wrist that helps him deduce that he’s actually an assassin. Or the ridiculous pre-climax portion in which a grievously injured character is gasping out a password to our hero, as he frantically tries to disarm a bomb while flying a helicopter.

The action in the film is choreographed slickly, but you can’t help feeling a tad let down. In these days of visceral fight scenes and breathless chases that you’re accustomed to seeing in the Bourne, Bond, and Mission Impossible movies, the rapid editing of the action sequences here never allows you to take in the repercussions of the violence. What cripples the film even further is its uneven pacing.

Although littered with quirky supporting characters, none of the actors in the film stand out, save for its two leads. Kareena Kapoor performs adequately in a role that mainly requires her to look wan and sad; then performs a mujra with much-needed gusto. Saif, meanwhile, was born to play the suave super-spy. He has the body language, the swagger, the physical chops, and even that hint of humor – you’re most entertained when he’s on screen.

Speaking of humor, the film benefits considerably from its stray tongue-in-cheek dialogue and occasional script zingers. While wolfing down spaghetti, even as Iram stares on blankly, Vinod tells her “Kuch paane ke liye, kuch khaana padta hai”. At another point when the local police in Latvia arrives to question him, he says “Aap katar mein hain”, referring to the fact that more than one country’s authorities are looking to get their hands on him.

It’s moments like these – sadly too few and far between – that bring a smile to your face during the two hours and forty-odd minutes of this disappointing film. Director Sriram Raghavan ,who gave us such taut thrillers as Ek Hasina Thi and Johnny Gadaar previously, injects Agent Vinod with so many varied influences that it never finds its own distinct identity.

I’m going with two out of five for Agent Vinod. He’s a spy who knows how to save the day; he just needs a better plan.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

March 16, 2012

Cast: Soha Ali Khan, Ankur Khanna, Rupa Ganguly, Victor Banerjee, Kiera Chaplin, Karthik Kumar, Arundhati Nag, Nedumudi Venu, Zeenat Aman, Shayan Munshi

Director: Rajshree Ojha

A housewife in Kolkata suffers in silence as her husband starts an affair with a much younger woman. A young man visits his parents’ home in Kochi after his brother is killed at war. And a well-to-do Parsi boy in Mumbai must bury the ghosts of his past in order to face the future. Chaurahen, directed by Rajshree Ojha, is intended as a poignant drama about people struggling with important decisions that will enable them to move on with their lives. But weighed down by pretentious dialogue and wooden performances, the film leaves you cold, and indifferent towards its troubled characters.

Easily the most tiresome of the multiple tracks in the film involves a pair of young lovers (Ankur Khanna and Soha Ali Khan), who speak in clichés about some indecipherable conflict involving the young fellow’s attachment to his empty home and dead parents. The couple babbles on incoherently about everything from listening to Mozart under the moonlight, to a symbolic pair of dentures lying on a dressing table.

Only a little less baffling is the track in which a surgeon-cum-writer (Victor Banerjee) has a fling with a young bookstore employee (Kiera Chaplin), while his morose wife (Rupa Ganguly) grapples with grief over a missing daughter we never learn enough about. It’s hard not to chuckle at the film’s clunky lines, including this gem that the doctor delivers to his young girlfriend when he accidentally knocks over her lunch box: “For a skilful surgeon, I’ve done your sandwiches irreparable damage”.

However, there is some depth in that track involving a young writer (Tamil actor Karthik Kumar) who struggles with his father’s expectations of him after the unfortunate death of his brother. Sincerely performed by acting veterans Nedumudi Venu and Arundhati Nag, as well as Kumar, this episode is genuinely moving, aside from a bizarre flashback involving the deceased sibling (Shayan Munshi) and a mysterious older woman he meets in a bar (Zeenat Aman).

Director Rajshree Ojha assembles an impressive ensemble of actors, but sadly fails to play to their strengths. While the abundantly talented Rupa Ganguly is wasted in a thankless, mostly wordless role, the relatively raw Soha Ali Khan is entrusted with long passages of banal dialogue. The film ultimately doesn’t work because it’s amateurishly written, and because it doesn’t have the emotional heft to leave you stirred.

I’m going with one-and-a-half out of five for Chaurahen. For a film about characters at the crossroads of their lives, this one leaves you lost for direction.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

March 09, 2012

Cast: Vidya Balan, Parambrata Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Saswata Chatterjee

Director: Sujoy Ghosh

Clutching her stroller-bag in one hand, the other tightly gripping her passport and a bottle of Evian, a very pregnant Vidya Bagchi steps out of Kolkata international airport, and almost immediately appears lost, even as half a dozen cabbies heckle her for business.

Kahaani, written and directed by Sujoy Ghosh, hits the ground running with Vidya Balan playing the helpless Mrs Bagchi, who has arrived from London in search of her missing husband Arnab. With a sympathetic cop helping her on this mission, Vidya combs every corner of Kolkata. But all leads go cold – the guesthouse he was staying at, the National Data Center where he’d been assigned, even the Indian immigration authorities have no records of Arnab Bagchi. When it seems like her husband’s disappearance might be inexplicably linked to a most-wanted terrorist, Vidya pokes her nose around in dangerous places, angering the Intelligence Bureau that is trying desperately to keep some secrets hidden.

Taut and refreshingly original, the script of Kahaani keeps you on your toes with its tendency to throw surprises and twists at every turn. The emphasis here is on the story – who is Arnab Bagchi? Does he exist outside of Vidya’s head?

As is integral to all good stories, Ghosh creates solid characters. There’s the do-gooder rookie cop Rana, played by Parambrata Chatterjee, who’s constantly by Vidya’s side. Their antagonist comes as the surly Intelligence Bureau officer Khan, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who wants the search abandoned. In Kahaani, there is attention to detail served to even bit characters like an impish errand boy in the guesthouse who becomes friends with Vidya, and a sinister contract killer who bumps off his victims after greeting them cordially.

To reveal more details is to let out spoilers in this mystery, but there are some contentious script twists that you will roll your eyes at. Ghosh does, however, cover most of his tracks, so when you work your way backwards, there is logic (flimsy sometimes) applied to those twists.

Because this is a film shot on real locations, there are times you notice bystanders staring straight at the actors, a minor pitfall that nevertheless jars. It’s hard to imagine this film set in any other city, because Kolkata is everywhere, almost like an actual character in Kahaani. Set during the Durga Puja festival, the city is in turns warm and menacing, and the camera captures Kolkata with so much love that you’re instantly drawn to it. Watch how it reflects the mood as Rana softens before Vidya; or the frenetic energy that a city in the grip of Puja lends to its dramatic climax.

Expectedly, Kahaani unspools as a one-woman narrative, so Vidya Balan reveals once again that she can carry a film, even with no other recognizable star. She is alternatively firm, fierce, vulnerable, playful and charming that you’re sometimes unsettled by these shifting emotions. What she does do is lend undeniable credence to her role and to this thriller, making you walk with her every step of this journey. Bengali actor Parambrata Chatterjee gets every sensitive nuance of his role spot-on, as the cop who assists her along the way and endears himself completely to the viewer. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, meanwhile, has an angry presence that commands the camera with every pithy dialogue he spouts.

In the end, Kahaani feels longer than its 115 minutes running time, partly because there is no escape from its gritty tone. Yet the suspense remains consistently tight, and the story well-executed. A word also for the haunting background score that only adds to the mood of the film. I’m going with three-and-a-half out of five for director Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani. The film delivers on its promise, and keeps you guessing until the end. It’s a delicious thriller – don’t miss it.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)