Film Review - Singh is Bliing

Not Again !

Film: Singh is Bliing

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Lara Dutta

Directed by: Prabhudeva

Duration: 2 hrs 20 mins

Rating: * *

Having endured Singh is Bliing, I strongly suspected that most Akshay Kumar comedies nowadays have only one line in the script – Akshay Kumar plays a ______ - fill in the blanks with an appropriate character. The rest of the scenes are worked out later. For instance Akki enters a toilet where a little boy is already urinating and AK doesn’t notice him. 

The boy angrily turns around sprays an unpleasant number of drops on him. The crowd loves it - nothing sells like pissing and farting in our country. The scene is improvised further –the director, Prabhudeva in the other urinal and he also gets a chance to micturate.

That’s Singh is Bliing for you, a film that doesn’t have a plot to begin with, so losing it is out of question.

The plot, if one can call it that, is mind numbingly dumb – Sardar Raftar Singh (Akshay) comes from Punjab to Goa to work in a casino. All roads lead to Goa as Sara (Amy Jackson) comes all the way from Romania in search of her mother. He can’t speak English and she can’t speak Hindi so a bumbling interpreter (Lara Dutta) is hired. The only silver lining in this black hole is Kay Kay Menon who plays a megalomaniac villain –“I am too good” he says in style. He actually is.  

The other factor is Prabhudeva’s approach which is not so misogynist since his last outing in Action Jackson. The heroine beats up men of all shapes and sizes to pulp. All that is fine, but where is the story?

To be fair to Akshay Kumar, he puts his best foot forward and pulls off some scenes admirably. But otherwise what can you say of a film that has songs with lyrics like “My heart says chu che chu che che.”  I’d rather hear the neighborhood dogs howl. 

Published in The Navhind Times on 4th Oct. 2015
www.twitter.com/sachinchatte   

Film Review - Brothers

Oh no, Bro !

Film: Brothers

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra, Jackie Shroff

Directed by: Karan Malhotra

Duration: 2 hr 42 mins

Rating:  * *

An official remake of the Hollywood film Warrior starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte,  Brothers is a highly Bollywoodi’sed version of the film, filled with all the standard tropes including a Kareena Kapoor item number, forced melodrama and a loud background score giving you cues from time to time. Partly being a martial art film, by the time all the arm twisting, skull smashing and bone twisting is over, you are brain dead.

The story of Brothers is divided in two parts – the first is a family drama which unfolds at one tenth of a snail’s pace and the second where the action unfolds in the arena. The problem with the first is the shoddy adapted screenplay and the second, though it brings in some excitement is shot in a very clichéd manner. 

It starts off so slowly that you wonder if the film is running at 24 or 12 frames per second. A silver haired Gary (Jackie Shroff) walks out of the prison and meets his younger son Monty (Sidharth Malhotra).  They are a family of street fighters, the father used to be one till he hit the bottle, the younger still fights and the elder David (Akshay Kumar) has given it up to teach Physics in school. Occasionally, he is tempted by primarily because doesn’t enough to sustain his wife (Jacqueline Fernandez) and kid who has kidney ailment.

We are told that the brothers are now estranged because of an incident that involved their mom (Shefali Shah) and it seems like eternity to watch all that unfold.  

Kiran Kumar, dressed in colorful suits plays a magnate who wants to bring in Right to Fight, or RTF, a kind of a martial art sport to India where two men fight to the finish in a cage. It is an international competition involving fighters from all countries but no prizes for guessing that the two brothers compete in the finals.

After landing a few punches, when the two get into emotional mode, you want their and your ordeal to end quickly. The film is way off tangent when it comes to mixing emotion with action and drama. If it was a baby being operated in Mary Kom during the climax, the maa and bhai factor comes into play here while the fight is in progress.

A glitzy arena, slickly edited fight scenes and hyper active commentators maybe something new in Hindi films but we’ve seen that in more than a dozen Hollywood films. Plus the way it is shot is so formulaic – two punches, cut to the father’s reaction, one more punch then cut to the school children, a hard punch, cut to the reaction of the wife, bit more action, cut to the crowd and then repeat the same but not necessarily in that order. 

It is amply clear to the audience that the two brothers are going to fight in the finals yet when the father learns of it, he reacts as if he has seen a snake do a break dance. And after the commentators announce that the two finalists are actually brothers a character says “arre woh dono bhai hain!” There is no question of subtlety flying out of the windows because it never existed here in the first place. It is about time that our film makers stopped treating the audience with such disdain.

The actors are sincere, Akshay Kumar gives a restrained performance and as the younger sibling, Sidharth Malhotra is apt. Jackie Shroff is impressive making the best of what he has on hand.

All said and seen, you are better off sourcing a copy of the original rather than get punched by the brothers.  

Published in The Navhind Times on 16th Aug 2015

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte

Film Review - Gabbar Is Back

 

Brand Of Brothers

Film: Gabbar Is Back

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Shruti Hassan

Directed by: Krish

Duration: 2 hrs 20 mins

Rating: * 1 / 2

A remake of the Tamil hit Ramana (2002), Gabbar is Back is a travesty of a film. Why they bothered to do a remake remains a mystery because there is very little going for it. How many flops will it take till producers realize that the South Indian action films don’t quite work in Bollywood? 

Directed by Radhakrishna Jagarlamudi aka Krish, you don’t know if you should laugh or bang your head against the ground while watching the inane proceedings. Sample this – a young lady stops a car so that she help a pregnant lady get to the hospital. The water breaks on the way and a very healthy baby is instantly delivered in the car itself. On reaching the hospital, the young lady (we learn that she is a lawyer, not a doctor) tells the nurse “Maine umbilical cord Swiss army knife se cut kar diya…” (I cut the umbilical cord using a Swiss army knife). 

This was of course mildly better than the heart surgery performed by Vijaykanth using the light from mobile phones, in the original.

But the story is here about Gabbar (Akshay Kumar) who is hell bent on making corrupt officials pay for their sins. To the world, he is just a lecturer but behind the scenes, he runs a different show altogether with the help up some enthusiastic men and women. They kidnap corrupt officials, release most of them but the odd one is hanged. Reminded me of Amitabh Bachchan’s Shahenshah when he drags the culprit and says “Shahenshah jahan khade ho jaate hai ... wahin darbar lag jaate hai” and decides the fate criminal. 

That film also had a similar story of a police officer who turns into a vigilante – and it was so much more fun with some memorable lines. 

But no such luck with Gabbar. Shruti Hassan fills the mandatory glamour quotient and Kareena Kapoor is seen in a cameo that is best forgotten. Meanwhile the police are trying to hunt for Gabbar, a police driver (Sunil Grover) cracks the mystery like a Sherlock Holmes but is chided by his seniors.   

And then there is the main villain, Digvijay Patil (Suman Talwar) who constantly keeps on harping that is he is a bigger ‘Brand’  Gabbar eventually gets to prove that he is a bigger brand than the guy who claims to be the bigger brand.

There is no subtlety whatsoever in conveying the message everything is hammered and hammered hard. The background music is ear drum shattering and the dialogues are cringe worthy.

Not quite sure which was more embarrassing - Shurti Hassan’s character or her acting. Akshay Kumar tries his best to provide a silver lining but the cloud is as dark as a black hole. 

Published in The Navhind Times on 3rd May 2015

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte

Film Review - Baby

Spy Games

Film: Baby

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Danny Denzongpa, Kay Kay Menon

Directed by: Neeraj Pandey

Duration: 2 hrs 40 mins

Rating: * * 1 / 2

Neeraj Pandey’s Baby belongs to that rare genre of espionage thrillers although now-a-days there isn’t much of differentiation between those films and ones that tackle the issue of terrorism. Baby offers a mixed bag, by and large it remains predictable for most parts but the redeeming factor is the finale that is reminiscent of Argo, but keeps you engrossed all the same. That may not be the only film that Baby reminds you of, there is also a bit of Nikhil Advani’s D-Day in the storyline.

Akshay Kumar plays Ajay, an elite member of an intelligence unit called Baby which is formed to foil and counter terror attacks in the country. It opens with an action sequence in the heart of Istanbul which is nicely shot but has little meaning in the context of the film. The scene then shifts to India where a dreaded terrorist Bilaal (Kay Kay Menon) manages to escape from the police in broad day light. Meanwhile the intelligence unit learns that some attacks are being planned by the Lashkar group with a Mullah (Rasheed Naz) being the mastermind. 

The trail leads first to Nepal and from there to the climax in the middle-east where Ajay and his team (Rana Dagubatti, Anupam Kher) manage to catch the big fish. 

The problem with the screenplay is that it takes too long, almost the whole of first half to establish itself. The politics of the films and the portrayal of Muslims is also way too simplistic. Instead of seriously addressing the issue, Pandey brushes it with very broad strokes – he was better off leaving them alone rather than delving on them in this fashion.

The action is quite well choreographed, whether in Nepal, Turkey, India or the climax it ranks right up there. Particularly enjoyable is a fight scene between a lady agent (Tapsee Pannu) and the rogue dealer (Sushant Singh) in a hotel room.  Since our hero is so invincible, we know exactly how it is going to end but to Pandey’s credit, the climax though predictable, is riveting.

Of the cast, the ever reliable Danny Denzongpa adds a lot of credibility to his character as Intelligence chief. The supporting actors, Anupam Kher, Rana Dagubatti and Kay Kay Menon are aptly cast. It is so refreshing to see Akshay Kumar play a role that he pulls off so well rather than those mundane comedy films that he does so often. 

Published in The Navhind Times on 25th January 2015

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte

Film Review - The Shaukeens

Tiresome Threesome

Film: The Shaukeens
Cast: Anupam Kher, Piyush Mishra, Annu Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Lisa Haydon

Directed by: Abhishek Sharma

Duration: 2 hrs 5 mins

Rating: * * 

Director Abhishek Sharma gave is the entertaining Tere Bin Laden, but sadly The Shaukeens is nowhere close to it. Inspired by Basu Chatterjee’s Shaukeen (1982) this film loses steam very quickly. The rehashed plot where Akshay Kumar plays himself is funny in parts but eventually ends up going nowhere.

Three dirty old men Pinky (Piyush Mishra), KD (Annu Kapoor) and Laali (Anupam Kher) are looking out for some carnal pleasures. When their plan to go to Bangkok fails, they decide to travel to Mauritius and they get to stay in the house Ahana (Lisa Haydon) a single woman. Instantly, all eyes are on her as she becomes an object of their affection.

She happens to be a fan of Akshay Kumar and since he is shooting in town, the men try their best impress her by arranging a meeting with him. The funniest scenes are where Akshay Kumar sportingly makes fun of himself and the films he has done. But unfortunately, the fun bits are few and far between, most of the film focuses on the old men and their efforts to win over the girl. 

Mercifully, even with the songs and dances included, the film is just over 2 hours but even that looks like a long at times.

Published in The Navhind Times on 9th Nov 2014

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte