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

January 23, 2018

Cast: Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor, Jim Sarbh, Aditi Rao Hydari, Raza Murad, Anupriya Goenka

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Padmaavat, or the film formerly known as Padmavati, fits nicely within the impressive canon of filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali. After all, the legend of Sultan Alauddin Khilji’s obsession for the unattainable Queen of Chittor, the wife of Maharawal Ratan Singh, Rani Padmavati, and her preference for death over dishonor, has all the sweep, melodrama, and tragedy that have become Bhansali’s mainstay.

Expectedly he delivers a film that is richly cinematic, but whose story – as it turns out – has little of the emotional complexity that powered his last film Bajirao Mastani. Based on a 16^th century poem of the same name by Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, Padmaavat is a pretty straightforward tale of a ruthless man’s single-minded pursuit of possibly the most beautiful woman that exists – a woman he is told he cannot have. Except that early on in the film, we’re already aware of his misplaced sense of entitlement. “Allah ki banayi hui har nayaab cheez par Alauddin ka haq hai,” he says.

Ranveer Singh breathes life into the character of the barbaric, power-drunk Alauddin, giving us a villain for the ages. Shrewd, oversexed, unrelenting, and eccentric, his Alauddin is a portrait of menace, and the most compelling character in the film. He plays the part with the sort of grotesque flamboyance that makes it hard to look at anyone or anything else when he’s on the screen. Sporting unkempt waist-length hair, kohl in those piercing eyes, facial scars, and the sex-appeal and swagger of a badboy rockstar, he’s both fascinating and repulsive at once. Alaudddin finds a loyal ally in Malik Gafoor (Jim Sarbh in good form), who indulges his perversities and reveals an equally cruel heart himself. Some of their moments together are pure gold.

In comparison, the romance between Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor) and Padmavati (Deepika Padukone), whom he takes as his bride shortly after he falls prey to her beauty and her arrow, is vanilla at best. The couple spends too much time besotted by each other, staring moonily into each other’s eyes, making you almost grateful for Alauddin’s rude interjection when he wages war on Chittor and Ratan Singh in a bid to claim the beauteous queen.

Bhansali stages spectacular war scenes, striking just the right balance between grand scale and intimacy. In one sequence, a cloud of dust fills up the screen when rival armies charge into each other, making it impossible to see what’s going on on the battleground. The image that follows, of a character emerging from the cloud of dust, is all you need to know about the severity of the battle, and it quickly establishes the brutality that the character is capable of.

There is opulence and poetry in virtually every frame of the film, and Bhansali applies the same ‘lavish’ approach to staging the controversial jauhar scene in the climax. It’s a tricky choice, treating that sequence as ‘beautifully’ as he does, given how these customs ought to be viewed today. Particularly ironic, given all the pre-release protests against Bhansali and the film for diminishing Rajput pride. If anything, he’s guilty of ‘prettying up’ a horrific, regressive practice.

Elsewhere too, the film becomes an ode to Rajput honor and valor, with multiple instances of characters bandying on about their values. As Ratan Singh, the virtuous Rajput king, Shahid Kapoor does a lot of posturing in the name of acting – some of it while baring his torso. Deepika Padukone gets a little more to work with, and she’s especially good in the film’s second half when her character slides into the driver’s seat, taking charge and showing the way.

But the film belongs to Ranveer Singh whose delicious performance is its biggest strength. The actor keeps you invested in the film even when it plods on for over two-and-a-half hours. I’m going with three out of five for the film and another half for his extraordinary performance, making it three-and-a-half out of five for Padmaavat.

(This review first aired on CNN News18)

January 19, 2018

Cast: Sanjay Suri, Nora Fatehi, Zenia Starr, Pitobash Tripathi, Ayaz Khan

Director: Samir Soni

You might think of the film My Birthday Song as every unfaithful husband’s worst nightmare. It’s an intriguing tale of temptation and the price one might pay for succumbing to it. So it’s as much a cautionary tale as it is a thriller that messes with your head.

When the film opens, we’re at the 40^th birthday party of advertising hotshot Rajiv Kaul (Sanjay Suri). A beautiful, mysterious woman (Nora Fatehi) stands out in the room full of revelers, and with his wife away Rajiv doesn’t hold back when the opportunity presents itself. Things, however, take a turn for the tragic soon after they move to the bedroom.

But the next morning, everything appears to be in order. There are no signs of what transpired earlier, and Rajiv is puzzled. Could it have just been a bad dream? Perhaps. Except that this cycle repeats itself. Another encounter with the same woman, another tragic accident.

Directed by actor Samir Soni, My Birthday Song delivers twist upon twist, keeping you invested for the entirety of its duration. The script (by Soni and Vrushali Telang) flirts with themes of infidelity, guilt, and the consequences of one’s actions, but just when you think you have it figured out, the rug is pulled from under your feet to reveal another layer.

Still it’s no watertight psychological thriller because the treatment betrays the rawness of a first film. Every move, every prophetic dialogue is delivered with the flourish of a big reveal, and the acting, sadly, is not up to the mark.

But to give credit where it’s due the script does take some bold leaps. There are echoes of David Fincher’s The Game, and the repetitive nature of the key incident harks to Groundhog Day. Yet this is nothing like those movies.

Wrapping up its business in a brisk 95 minutes, My Birthday Song kept me guessing until the end. It’s not a perfect film, but there’s enough to merit a single watch. I’m going with two-and-a-half out of five.

(This review first aired on CNN News18)

January 19, 2018

Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Mandira Bedi, Raima Sen, Sharib Hashmi

Director: Kushal Srivastava

The gorgeous snow laden landscape of Manali is the setting for Vodka Diaries, which starts out as a whodunit, quickly turns into a psychological thriller, before it finally reveals itself to be a waste of time.

Kay Kay Menon stars as local cop ACP Ashwini Dixit, who’s investigating multiple murders that have taken place over a single night and appear to be connected to a nightclub named Vodka Diaries. The deaths are gruesome, but the victims are barely-etched characters whom we meet fleetingly at best, never long enough to know or especially care for. Things get murkier when Dixit’s wife goes missing, and the line between reality and imagination begins to blur.

It’s a curious premise, but co-writer/director Kushal Srivastava struggles with tone and pacing from the start. Dixit’s relationship with his wife Shikha (Mandira Bedi) is established through ‘cutesy’ scenes in which they go over her frankly corny poetry and he manages to find crime references in them. The humor too is often badly timed and frequently misses its mark. Sharib Hashmi, who was so good in Filmistan, is cast as Dixit’s jocular deputy, but he’s saddled with cheesy one-liners that seldom land. Raima Sen plays a mysterious woman who pops up now and then, seemingly to help Dixit piece together the clues behind the strange turn of events.

As you may have guessed, not a lot works in this convoluted, far-fetched script. Before long Dixit, once the pursuer, is being chased across snowy expanses, and lurking in dark corners of the crowded city. Clues and red herrings are sprinkled along the way, yet the big reveal in the end is underwhelming because the film isn’t ultimately true to its own logic – it simply doesn’t add up.

Doesn’t help either that Kay Kay Menon delivers a performance that is pure ham and cheese. His outbursts are unintentional comedy of the highest order, and I found myself cringing as I watched this talented actor try desperately to make the material work.

If you do decide to watch the film, you’d do well to take a cue from the film’s title and go in comfortably inebriated to get through the brain scramble that it is. I’m going with one-and-a-half out of five for Vodka Diaries.

(This review first aired on CNN News18)

January 12, 2018

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Shobita Dhulipala, Akshay Oberoi, Kunal Roy Kapur, Deepak Dobriyal, Vijay Raaz, Shenaz Treasurywala, Neel Bhoopalam, Amyra Dastur, TriNyari Singh

Director: Akshat Verma

There are moments of such inspired lunacy in writer-director Akshat Verma’s Kaalakaandi that you’ll find yourself laughing till your sides hurt. One of those involves a wannabe cowboy accidentally shooting himself in the crotch while imitating Feroz Khan’s moves on screen. Another involves an awkward but hilarious moment of honesty when one of the film’s protagonists, tripping on a psychotropic drug, tells a transgender person that he’s curious to know what she’s packing below the waist. “I want to see your Australia, your southern hemisphere, your Cape of Good Hope,” he says.

A similar sort of outrageous humor powered Delhi Belly, which Verma scripted. But Kaalakaandi is especially thin on plot and purpose.

Unfolding over a course of a single night in Mumbai, the film follows three separate narrative threads. In one, Saif Ali Khan’s character is informed by his doctor that he’s dying, and only has a few months to live. Having stayed off alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs all his life, he decides to throw caution to the wind and drops acid in the midst of running errands for his younger brother’s wedding.

In the second track, a young woman (Shobita Dhulipala), all packed and ready to fly out to Boston in a few hours, heads out to a friend’s birthday party with her boyfriend (Kunal Roy Kapur), only to be trapped at the nightclub when the police orders a drug raid.

And in the third track, a pair of small-time crooks (Deepak Dobriyal and Vijay Raaz, both terrific) returning from a job with bags of cash for their gangster boss, hatch a dangerous plan that could make them rich overnight.

Things start out promisingly enough, but only the track starring Saif Ali Khan has real meat to it. It’s also the funniest of the three, and features a winning supporting character in Sheela, a transgender prostitute (Nyari Singh), whom Saif befriends. The pair outwits an overweight constable and set off an unlikely friendship that is as genuine as it is funny. This track also features Akshay Oberoi as Saif’s younger brother, whose visit to an ex for one last booty call doesn’t go according to plan.

Some of the other supporting characters include Shenaz Treasurywala’s ditzy party girl and Neel Bhoopalam’s legendary gangster-with-one-glass-testicle. Both are good in these roles, but their characters deserved more screen time. As you may have guessed, the three disconnected narratives do meet eventually, but the link feels tenuous and forced. Despite its relatively crisp running time of under two hours, the film runs out of ideas post intermission and seems to go around in circles. There’s a big sangeet celebration that sticks out like a sore thumb, and too much existential bak bak that nearly put me to sleep.

Of the cast, Saif Ali Khan gets the best-written role, and he’s in top form, unfettered and clearly having a good time. He embraces the madcap requirements of the role, throwing himself into it completely. It’s a shame the film can’t keep up with him.

I’m going with two out of five for Kaalakaandi. The humor is hysterical but never consistent. And sadly there’s not a lot more to it.

(This review first aired on CNN News18)

January 12, 2018

Cast: Vineet Kumar Singh, Jimmy Shergill, Zoya Hussain, Ravi Kishan, Rajesh Tailang

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Mukkabaaz, directed by Anurag Kashyap, is a film about many things at once. On the surface it’s a ‘boxing movie’, your classic underdog template. It’s also a heartfelt love story, a ruthless revenge saga, and pretty ballsy social and political commentary about our times. That’s a lot to stuff into a single film, and as a result it’s overlong and occasionally rambling. Yet, set in a world he knows inside out, and populated by characters that are authentic and rooted firmly in the landscape, the film sees Kashyap on solid ground.

Low-caste Bareilly boy Shravan Kumar (Vineet Kumar Singh) is the ‘mukkabaaz’ of the film’s title, an amateur boxer with ambitions to reach the national finals and become the Mike Tyson of Uttar Pradesh. Committed to making sure he doesn’t achieve his goal is the film’s villain, and the thorn in Shravan’s side, Bhagwandas Mishra (Jimmy Shergill), a gangster-politician and the head of the local boxing federation.

Mishra is the living embodiment of the cancer that plagues so much of India. An upper-caste Brahmin who exercises his superiority and power through violence and oppression. In Mishra’s book, belonging to a lower caste is a crime, and he revels in humiliating and exploiting those below him in the social order.

The far-reaching consequences of the caste system extend to the nature of the work handed down to Shravan when he lands a job in the railways department, and to possible opportunities in the sporting field. The film lifts the lid on the rampant corruption in Indian sports, the politicization of the selection process, and the pathetic training facilities and conditions that hamper the growth of many a promising athlete. Kashyap also seizes the opportunity to address the climate of religious intolerance, giving us scenes that depict the misdeeds of vigilante ‘gau-rakshaks’.

Meanwhile, love becomes a driving force when Shravan loses his heart to Mishra’s mute niece Sunaina (Zoya Hussain), and their relationship powers his struggle, and also the film from sinking into an abyss of darkness. Sunaina cannot speak but she doesn’t let her disability silence her. Theirs is a romance that is sweet, occasionally comical, and ultimately selfless; it’s one of the strongest tracks in the film.

Equally charming are the unexpected bursts of humor that serve as respite from the relentless intensity. A scene in which a desperate, hopeless Shravan flips out on his friend for talking in English is one of the funniest moments in Mukkabaaz. To the writers’ credit, these ‘light’ scenes feel organic to the narrative, and never bunged in just to ease the tension.

The film benefits also from some fine acting. Ravi Kishan is in very good form as the Dalit coach in Varanasi who trains Shravan for state championships, and the actor conveys volumes of backstory through a restrained performance. Jimmy Shergill’s one-note approach to the role of the despicable bully is a result of underdeveloped characterization, but the opposite is true for Zoya Hussain’s terrific portrayal of the brassy Sunaina, a part that has more to work with.

At the heart of the film is Vineet Kumar Singh who conveys both Shravan’s physical prowess and his emotional vulnerability with confidence and conviction. He captures Shravan’s urgency and hunger with incredible zeal as he punches, pounds, and clobbers his way on his journey from brawler to boxer.

At 2 hours and 35 minutes, Mukkabaaz overstays its welcome by at least 20 minutes, its narrative stretched by way too many background songs, and an inevitable sense of repetition and wallowing in the protagonist’s misery. Yet it might be Kashyap’s most accessible film since Gangs of Wasseypur, and his only crime here may be one of overreaching. I’m going with three-and-a-half out of five.

(This review first aired on CNN News18)