Jul 17, 2005 05:51 PM
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(Updated Jul 17, 2005 06:04 PM)
Of fat bloated faces, drooping bloodshot eyes, thick lips and angry stares. The clichéd faces of the Bombay underworld kept me company for roughly 2.5 hours. What I witnessed was anything but original and nothing to write home about. What I saw was a directors long standing love affair with the city’s underbelly. A love affair, which has lost its tangy taste and spice. The chef has forgotten his culinary skills and repeatedly fails in romancing the taste buds. Perhaps we’ve had too much of the same dish.
If the idea was to pay a tribute to the greatest Mafioso movie ever made, then RGV should have stuck to it. He perhaps could have attempted a frame-by-frame “indianised” Godfather. At least then his intent would be clear and we as viewers wouldn’t have been subjected to a clichéd story line, with clichéd set up’s and characters. There were too many instances in the film wherein predictions were bang on. The eventual scenes could be predicted in the beats themselves. What’s the point in writing a screenplay that can’t grab the viewer attention? Good screenplays are all about creating that extra bit of magic aren’t they, whether it’s the characterization, the plots and sub plots, the dialogues, the empathy generated? Walking down pathways the viewer hasn’t imagined or traversed. “Win the crowds, and you’ve won the duel” – a dialogue from gladiator. Holds true for any kind of entertainment. To me this factory product failed in all of them.
The Bachchan’s managed to hold fort and both were intense in their portrayal. Abhishek is fast maturing into a fine actor. The early days of Refugee are long forgotten. Amitabh projected his second self – the angry young man; now a measured angry old man – too many films have showcased this face in various degrees of intensity. But it felt nice watching both of them play father and son. The swami was the joker of the lot, a complete cartoon & a nitwit, a modern day Shakuni who kept inciting, instigating the rival camp and plotted ways and means to overthrow Subhas Nagre. Rasheed, the villain was a man of few words. He hardly spoke, only glared. Initially his glares struck home, but later even I was prompted to shout out “Aye, dekhta kya hain reh? Thok daalu kya” Tanishaa tried her best in the few instances she was given. And when she tried to propose, I grimaced in my seat and cursed the writer. How could he fit this scene in the midst of the family tension? In typical Bollywood style everything had to be fitted in 2 hours! The ending was one of the worst I have seen, all boiling down to the political underbelly nexus.
The film vacillated between its high’s and lows and inspite of the writer’s desperate attempts to build a film tempo, it never achieved a vice like grip. The director’s vision and the shoddy screenplay are to blame for it. It wasn’t any subject that was being interpreted and treated. It was Godfather. And that by itself called for a greater immersion of the soul and the senses. But then it’s a factory product. And all factories have assembly lines that produce products similar in look, tone and feel.
Having said all this, I wouldn’t want to take anything away from the director’s unyielding passion for his craft. Satya will always be a favourite ‘coz it was the first of his trilogy and it broke new grounds then.
