All in a day's work... Review on Taxi No 9211

Life is funny. You spend a major part of ur life educating urself and someday u realise that u learned nothing...Most people continue with their life just like that, cause they are not fortunate enough to be taught by the greatest teacher of all - life itself.

And when life teaches, she chooses the most unlikely of places and people. But she teaches well - cause u never forget her lessons, nor will u ever be the same person again. Thats life.

Its something of that kind in this movie too. Two guys who are never comfortable with their lives - one due to the lack of comforts and the other due to the excess of it. One concerned with getting thirty thousand rupees and the other with losing three hundred crores. Well...one fine morning life decides to teach them a lesson or two. Their paths cross and things start happening.

Nana Patekar is a bumbling, quarrelsome, meddling but family-loving guy who lies at home that he works as an LIC agent, while he is actually a taxi driver. The driver of nau do gyarah to be exact. He is frustrated with life, but finds no means to get out of the mess that he is in.

John is a millionaire who spends his entire time making merry. But his father died recently and left all his inheritance to his friend and not to his son. John is trying to battle it out in the court to get back what is rightfully his.

On the way to the court for the final hearing, John hires Nana's cab. What happens after that changes their life forever. Not materialistically. And thats something I liked. In the end of the movie, Nana is still what he was - never gets to become a rich guy or anything. And John remains what he used to be - he doesnt have to lose his inheritance.

What changes is the way they see life and the people around them. Its often happens that when we are really down and in need of help, we get it from least expected quarters, while those who we really expected to help us never turn up.

The movie has a pretty decent pace, though there are many areas which could have been better executed. Nana as usual has done a great job. He never smiles in the entire movie, but he gets us laughing with his sarcastic oneliners and his attitude.

John is slowly (and I mean very slowly:) starting to mature a bit more as an actor. Now every actor's mettle can only be judged if you compare him with himself. If you take John's performance in this movie and compare with better actors then u might be disappointed. But if u compare this John with what he was some movies before, then hes improving. And thats a good sign - cause everything said and done - we gotta accept hes one hell of a physical specimen. If he can also add some substance to it, then u got a killer combination there.

About the movie...the story line had a continuity problem here and there..i mean its a story about the happenings of a night and a day in the life of these two people...but too many things were done and said in that time - a bit too many. But that can be forgiven, given the mood of the movie.

One let down for me though was the genuinity of the incidents, bollywood still gets away with showing plots that are very hard to believe - like the one in which Nana gets into John's locker.

Now, before I write this let me warn u - the plot gets revealed a bit here. Im saying this cause its a new movie and many folks might not have seen it yet, so if u are planning to - then feel free to skip some of the parts below.

To get back to what I was telling - Now it so happens in the movie that the key to John's locker in which he has some important documents necessary for establishing his inheritance falls in Nana's hands. John is running around mad trying to find him and get the key back and Nana is not interested in handing it back. Not because he wants the money for himself or anything, just that he doesnt like John and his super upper class airs.

So the plot goes like this - Nana gets into John's locker and gets the documents. He returns it to John in the end.

Now what I wasnt impressed with was the way in which Nana gets the document out of the locker. Too impractical. It was too fast and easy and a bit stupid.

Frankly I dont know how it could have been done better, but im sure that if they racked their brains harder, they might have come up with a better idea. Or even just drop the part where they need to have Nana hand back the docs. Would have been equally effective if they showed Nana in the end handing over the keys to the locker to John.

In this movie they show John have a small car accident the night before he takes Nana's cab. The scene was there most probably to give a logical reason why inspite of being so rich, he gets into Nana's taxi. So that was good thinking i'd say. Its just that at times our script writers relax a bit and that brings up rough patches on an otherwise smooth creative canvas - like the locker plot.

hmmm...maybe im dwelling too much on this, but all I mean to convey is that bollywood still needs to clear off such 'angles' that most probably is still influences of the past eras of our film industry. guess old habits die hard.

Thats all about the movie - it went pretty ok for me. Not a fantastic effort - but a pretty decent one.

I cant say whether u will like or hate the movie. Would most probably depend on your mindset when you go for it. You might like it if its tuesday or friday, but not on wednesday probably :D...

heh! just kidding. You might like it if u go in the right mood for such a movie...so I would recommend u to go and watch it. Maybe u will learn some lessons yourself and Madam life might spare giving u one of her nasty practical lessons about life!