Aug 30, 2009 01:23 PM
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Guys, hey, guess what? Having read all the rave reviews on MS & other media, I decided to go and have a look-see at India’s answer to Quentin Tarantino & Guy Ritchie. After all the hype n hoopla, I must confess, sadly, (yeah you guessed it), I came away disappointed.
I expected better stuff from Vishal Bharadwaj. Was this the same guy who gave us Maqbool & Omkara? It seems to me that Vishal Bharadwaj has joined the bandwagon of crass commercialisation. This movie will probably make more money at the box office than Maqbool & Omkara. Yes, it is technically well made, certainly more stylish, fast paced but stylised editing, use of dim lighting, shadowy backgrounds and jump cuts do not a movie make.
The storyline seems to be drawn from a hundred Hollywood gangster flicks & Indianised. Twin brothers, a crime caper gone wrong, crooked cops etc. So what’s new? And the climax? A stylised shootout where everyone, except the lead characters, die? A kitsch of Reservoir Dogs, Last Man Standing, Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels, anyone?
Amol Gupte as Bhope is over the top & Priyanka Chopra can’t get into the skin of a Marathi mulgi (try Smita Patil in Aakrosh!) For a character who hogs major screen space, she utters exactly 4 sentences in Marathi. (mee majha navra jhavalach bastey... ha, ha.)There are more dialogues uttered in Bengali by the 3 Bong brothers, who do a Maggi (a 3 minute role), than Marathi.
She comes across as a conniving street smart who has hooked her man (by using the oldest trick in the book) & won’t let go. And the guy is a total wimp. No, scratch that, not a total wimp. He does show some spine halfway down the movie (witness the Mumbai/Bombay dialogue) & get this, Marathi mulgis can go berserk with a Heckler & Koch machine pistol, when thwarted in their designs on her man? Gimme a break! Shahid Kapur gets a six pack (or is it an eight pack?) and joins the Khan Club of Body over Mind.
So where’s the soul? Why does Charlie hate Guddu (manhoof) so? When & why did they grow apart, take divergent paths? (Ages ago, Deewaar nuanced this very well.)The father’s bonding with his kids is left unexplored & his death (the turning point in the siblings’ relationship) is glossed over. The angst is missing. Where are the finely etched characters that we saw in Maqbool (Abbaji) or Omkara (Langda Tyagi)? Sorry, VB, your slip is showing! Yes, there are some good cameos – Mikhail & Tashi, Lobo or is it Lele? Some inspired quirks – Charlie’s speech disability (faala, aife, aife, kaife ho gaya!) & Guddu’s stutter. Cute but forgettable.
All in all, good “time pass”, as they say.
