annavetticadgoes2themovies

Release date:	February 3, 2017
Director:	Stanley Tong
Cast: Language:	Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood, Disha Patani, Aarif Rahman, Amyra Dastur English (also dubbed in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu)

Martial arts superstar Jackie Chan and India’s very own Sonu Sood headline a film about a lost treasure of the ancient Magadh empire. Chan plays Jack, an archaeologist and kung fu expert in China who teams up with a young Indian professor (Disha Patani) and her assistant (Amyra Dastur) to locate the missing hoard in Kung Fu Yoga (KFY). Their quest is interrupted by the mercenary Randall (Sood), a descendant of the original owners of the treasure.

It takes immense talent to pull off this kind of action adventure where you want to stir myth, martial arts, humour and pop philosophy into the mix without looking stupid. Director-writer Stanley Tong – who has had great success with Chan in two Policy Story films and Rumble in the Bronx (1995) – does not manage to even lift KFY off the ground.

To be fair I must point out that I watched the Hindi version of this English film, and the dubbing was just passable. While this may have partly affected the viewing experience, the messy storyline, ludicrous clichés and middling action can hardly be blamed on sub-par dubbing.

Why is it called Kung Fu Yoga? Not because there is lots of kung fu and lots of yoga in the film. No ma’am! KFY has plenty of kung fu but almost no yoga, which suggests that the name was chosen because in the filmmaker’s view, kung fu epitomises China and yoga epitomises India. Maybe he can christen his next one Panda Maharaja or CurryNoodle to indicate once again that it brings together Indian and Chinese characters? The lazy titling is irritating.

If Hollywood had stereotyped Asians in this fashion in 2017, critics would have – justifiably – told them off. What do you say to one of your own though (Tong is from Hong Kong) doing much worse than any high-profile Hollywood director has done in years?

The level of stereotyping in Kung Fu Yoga is bizarre. Since Randall is Indian, he just happens to have lions wandering around his home. Jack just happens to find a lion in an SUV he steals from in front of a modern hotel in Dubai. The introduction to the Dubai visit must of course be through a prince showing his foreign guests a camel race. (For the record, the poor beasts foaming at the mouth in that scene are a disturbing sight) A regular Indian bazaar – not a tourist resort, but a regular market – just happens to be filled with snake charmers, a rope-trick performer, a levitating mystic, fire eaters and sword eaters, which makes you wonder if this is the kind of exotica Tong actually expects to find on Janpath or in Sarojini Nagar. All this is apparently routine stuff for Asians, in the filmmaker’s book.

It is not easy to write and direct rubbish, and get an intelligent audience to laugh. As someone who refuses to brush aside David Dhawan and Rohit Shetty’s work, I can vouch for the fact Kung Fu Yoga is a pile of nothing.

It is a measure of Chan’s innate charm that he comes across as his usual warm likeable self despite being surrounded by zero content. His kung fu moves though, needed better choreography than this film offers. They are sadly unimpressive.

As for Sood, the Hindi film audience knows that he’s equally good at handling gravitas and nonsense since we have seen him in films ranging from Jodhaa Akbar to Dabangg. Try as he might though, he fails to look convinced in this silly action adventure.

Patani (who drew attention in her debut Hindi film, M.S.Dhoni: The Untold Story, last year) and Dastur are wasted on the sidelines, though we do get a glimpse of their ability to throw punches well on screen. Maybe Indian cinema should seek them out for better quality action films.

Apart from the couple of laughs Chan manages to elicit and a somewhat interesting episode in which the younger cast try to escape a pack of hungry hyenas in Randall’s abode, there is truly nothing to recommend Kung Fu Yoga.

This is the kind of film that sometimes gets funny simply because it is so poorly thought out. The mashed-up cherry on top of the half-baked cake is Tong’s shot at doing a Bollywood-style song and dance number right at the end of the film. He is clearly not in tune with the changes in Hindi cinema, or he would have known that our better directors these days – unlike in the 1990 to 2005 period – try to ease their film into the song, if they choose to end with one. No such effort here. The characters are talking and fighting before a statue of Lord Shiva that Jack is trying to save from Randall, and then… boom! … they all start dancing.

If you want to see a foreign production doing an excellent job of adapting Hindi cinema’s fondness for concluding a film with a group song and dance, watch the thoroughly enjoyable finale of Tarsem Singh’s Julia Roberts-starrer Mirror Mirror. That film’s smoothly executed climax was an intelligent homage to a tradition from another industry. Kung Fu Yoga’s effort at a bow to Bollywood is diluted by the trite notion of India that precedes it, in addition to the unmemorable tune and unimaginative moves. It does not help that Sood is terribly awkward in that number.

Still, the closing is not a complete washout. It is energetic, the cinematography is lavish, Patani is easy on the eye, and Chan truly seems to be having fun. For viewers who are nostalgic about him (I am one of them), perhaps that is something to hold on to in this otherwise clumsy, dated, impactless film.

Now excuse me while I go off to do some yoga in the company of my pet tiger, while my pet cobra watches over me in my palace courtyard. Nummusste!

Rating (out of five stars): 0.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	103 minutes

A version of this review has been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/kung-fu-yoga-movie-review-jackie-chan-sonu-sood-are-squandered-in-this-dated-tosh-3264128.html

Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Yoga

Release date:	February 3, 2017
Director:	Zaigham Imam
Cast: Language:	Neelima Azeem, Danish Hussain, Mohammad Saud, Ishaan Kaurav, Bhavna Pani, Pawan Tiwari, Aditya Om, Voice: Jaya Bachchan Hindi

Alif is the story of a Muslim boy torn between tradition and evolution, the cliquishness of his own people and prejudice from the majority community.

The film kicks off in Varanasi where we discover that little Ali’s dad had, decades earlier, forced his sister to go to Pakistan, fearing for her safety during the post-Partition riots. Zehra discovers on going there that the evil her family sought to save her from is no less in the new country. Much later when she returns to India as an older woman, she persuades her brother to pull Ali out of a madrasa and send him to a modern school where he will get a modern education.

What follows is an exploration of the brutal politics that kept her away from her motherland all these decades, and Ali’s simultaneous struggles against a hate-filled teacher in his new school while his father is reviled by the local Muslim leadership who fear a loss of their hold over the community if others too are inspired to quit madrasas.

The basic storyline has the potential to be turned into a heart-wrenching film. Zehra’s anguish, Ali’s innocence and trauma, his father’s pain – how can a viewer not be moved seeing it all? The story at the heart of the film certainly has emotional heft. It is ruined, however, by inept direction, inadequate writing, jerky editing, amateurish cinematography and pathetic quality all around.

Alif draws its title from the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. The name is an indicator of the film’s goal to promote education among Muslims and to build awareness about Muslims among the larger populace. Sadly, Alif does a disservice to its own aims with its low standards. At one point, for instance, it fails to explain the meaning of a religious pennant that gets confused with a flag of Pakistan at a crucial juncture in the narrative.

The redeeming factors in the film are the guileless conversations between Ali and his close friend played by Mohammad Saud and Ishaan Kaurav who seem to have acting potential that is worthy of being explored. Their sweetness and the poignancy that pervade their child-like chatter elicit smiles and the occasional tear. Neelima Azeem as Ali’s aunt is wasted in the film – she tries, but her natural ease before the camera is overshadowed by the unsatisfactory writing. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag that includes some seriously lousy actors.

Alif is proof, if any were needed, that good intentions need good writing, good direction and good production values to be translated into a good film. This is an important story. It just needs to be told in a better film.

Rating (out of five stars): 0.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	120 minutes

This article was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/alif-movie-review-a-well-meaning-film-on-an-indian-muslim-tragedy-ruined-by-poor-quality-3264332.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alif_(2016_film)

Release date:	February 3, 2017
Director:	Siddique
Cast: Language:	Jayasurya, Siddique, Lal, Anu Sithara, Prayaga Martin, John Kaippallil, Bhagath Manuel, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Joju George, Krishna Praba Malayalam

“Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!”

If centuries did not separate Walter Scott from present-day Mollywood, it would be easy to believe that this quote was a commentary specifically aimed at the life of Fukri’s hero Lucky. The character played by Jayasurya in this Malayalam film sets off a chain of events that soon go out of control when he agrees to participate in a charade for a small payment.

Fukri combines that theme with the idea of an outsider stepping into a trying family/community situation and helping heal long-festering wounds, which has been explored by Indian cinema across languages in various ways. The kind-hearted new daughter-in-law, the bawarchi (cook) who becomes a buddy, the criminal intruder who falls in love with the people s/he intended to cheat... we have met them all down the decades.

In this family drama from writer-director Siddique, we get Lucky, an orphan who is constantly on the lookout for the next available get-rich-quick fraudulent scheme along with a bunch of disreputable friends. When a plan to surreptitiously lift a precious metal from a local temple goes haywire, they get involved with a college student called Nafsi (Prayaga Martin). Lucky is subsequently drawn into the affairs of her family, which includes the wealthy old patriarch Sulaiman Fukri (played by actor Siddique) and his estranged son Ali Fukri (Lal) who was thrown out of the house years ago when he married a Hindu girl. Ali’s wife too was disowned by her family, including her mother (K.P.A.C. Lalitha) who Lucky soon encounters.

As is the case with such situations in real life if you do not stem the tide of your falsehoods early on, in this film too, one deception leads to another and then another, with far-reaching consequences for Lucky, the relatives of the aforementioned hapless couple and everyone else involved. Since this is a Siddique comedy, of course they all live happily ever after, but not before we are unobtrusively served a lesson on how lies will always be caught out and prejudice can ruin people.

Fukri’s first hour is lots of fun. Unlike too many Indian commercial films these days, the laughs in this one are not dependent on the audience possessing a sexist vein. In fact, barring a passing mildly ageist joke at one point, Fukristeers clear of most lazy isms. Instead, Siddique relies on the chemistry between Jayasurya and the actors playing his friends – Bhagath Manuel, Nirmal Palazhi, Kalabhavan Niyas, Joju George – and their timing in comic situations of their making.

Unfortunately for the film, once the story settles down with the Fukri family, Lucky’s friends suddenly become marginal players. He then takes centre-stage with the assumed name Lukman Ali Fukri, along with Sulaiman Fukri and later, Ali. The film continues to be funny after that, but the relegation of the man-child gang to the background vastly dilutes its humour.

Meanwhile, although the tensions within the Fukri parivar lead to amusing situations, Siddique is unable to give the film the level of emotional intensity it should have had, considering the vast potential in the heartbreak of a couple who were torn from their families for no fault of theirs.

In the age of the deplorable ‘love jihad’ campaign, the communal angle in the story is highly relevant. It is also a clever experiment to take this tragic Indian reality into the comedy genre to reach out to a larger audience. Not that there is no sorrow in Fukri. There is. In plenty. But this might have been a more compelling film if, for instance, the Fukri family members had been written with greater depth. Ali, for one, remains nothing beyond an angry old man, and his late wife is nothing more than a flashback in songs.

Fukri also falters by involving Lucky in a romance with Nafsi, but giving her little substance or agency. Siddique is best known outside Kerala for his Bodyguardstarring Dileep and Nayantara which he remade in two other Indian languages – as Kaavalan in Tamil starring Vijay and Asin, and as Bodyguard in Hindi with Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor – with all three going on to become blockbusters, while other directors made Telugu and Kannada versions. Though I am no great admirer of Bodyguard, it has to be said that that film’s leading lady was a pivotal player in her own life saga. Fukri operates strictly within a patriarchal framework, with the three male protagonists leading the action while women for the most part allow themselves to be led.

Apparently gender equality does not have a place among the lofty ideals of integrity and communal amity that the film espouses.

Still, Jayasurya is a versatile actor who is particularly a joy to watch in the comic space, Fukri does conjure up a string of episodes and conversations to tickle the funny bone, the first half is certainly an enjoyable ride, and in these trying times Siddique does need to be commended for delving into Hindu-Muslim relations despite his film’s limitations. Fukrioverstays its welcome in the final half hour, loses its pace towards the end and the denouement is not entirely satisfactory. In the overall analysis though, this is inoffensive, well-intentioned, mildly entertaining fare.

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	155 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/fukri-movie-review-siddique-jayasurya-counter-love-jihad-campaigners-with-comedy-3266442.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukri

Release date:	February 3, 2017
Director:	Hemant Dhome
Cast: Language:	Jitendra Joshi, Aniket Vishwasrao, Akshay Tanksale, Hemant Dhome, Ashwini Kalsekar, Vikram Gokhale, Guest appearance: Shreyas Talpade Marathi

It is risky to say a word against devotees of Shivaji. Making a film slamming hypocritical bhakts of the Maratha king, that too in the Marathi language, is nothing less than an act of bravery. This is the tragedy of the times we live in: that all criticism requires courage, because abuse and assault have become the routine Indian response to contrarian views.

In this scenario, it is important to doff a hat to Hemant Dhome for his debut directorial venture Baghtos Kay... Mujra Kar!before launching a critique of the film. BKMK is about phony Shivaji followers who use the iconic monarch’s name for political gain without any true commitment to him or his legacy. It is a flawed film, yet one that must be lauded for its brave stand on a controversial issue. The story is fictional, but is obviously aimed at the real-life politicians who have sanctioned a sinfully expensive Shivaji memorial in the Arabian Sea.

The hero of Dhome’s tale is Nanasaheb Deshmukh (Jitendra Joshi), the meek sarpanch of Kharbujewadi, a village in Maharashtra’s Satara district. Nanasaheb’s little hamlet adjoins a magnificent – but now neglected – fort from Shivaji’s time.

The state of the structure causes great pain to Nanasaheb who is a disciple of Shivaji. He hopes to restore the fort as part of a development project that includes planting 6,000 trees in the area and using solar panels to generate electricity for the local population. The scheme he envisions will require only Rs 6 crore.

Towards this end, he and his friends/chamchas Pandurang Shinde a.k.a. Panda Sheth (Aniket Vishwasrao) and Shivraj Vahadne a.k.a. Shiva (Akshay Tanksale) decide that Nanasaheb should become an MLA. While he struggles to acquire the clout to get a party ticket in the coming elections, the high command comes up with a plan to build a Shivaji Memorial at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore. Nanasaheb is disillusioned because he believes this money should have been used instead to save the existing archaeological reminders of Shivaji in the state and for the welfare of the poor.

The film is about the politics surrounding the memorial and Nanasaheb’s attempt to achieve his goals.

The film starts off nicely enough. It is interesting in the way it reminds us of the grandeur of the Maratha empire with its aerial shots of Nanasaheb’s beloved fort and scenes of sloganeering that are designed to sound like the echoes of words from a distant past. Nanasaheb also has an interesting recurring nightly dream in which he sees himself as an ancient Maratha warrior, a dream that creates an air of expectation around what is to come. We also get lots of pretty visuals of scenic Satara. Even a brief visit to Mumbai later on has been imaginatively shot.

The narrative stumbles early on though for multiple reasons.

The tone of the storytelling and the portrayal of the three protagonists are both very confusing. In a bid to project them as innocent, the film often ends up making them look foolish. There are too many purposeless asides that distract from the main focus of the plot. The portrayal of Panda Sheth’s relationship with his bride, for example, is no doubt meant to be humorous, but unless you find patriarchy funny, there is nothing amusing about his behaviour towards her. Besides, his attitude and the time spent on his interactions with her have no relevance whatsoever to his role in the rest of the film, and appear to have been stuffed into the proceedings in a formulaic fashion for comic relief.

A scheme hatched by the central trio involving Shivaji’s sword is so hare-brained and unconvincing that it robs the film of the gravitas it needed. It is all very well for them to be naïve, but it is hard to tell whether the director expects us to be moved by their determination or to laugh at their stupidity? There is a difference between lack of cunning and lack of intelligence, but BKMK fails to recognise that.

The portion of the film set outside India seems to have been made on a tighter budget than was required. The scenes in London leave much to be desired on the technical front. Many of the frames are ill-chosen and again, the threesome’s antics in the city are a needless comical diversion from a serious subject.

Over and above all this though, the film’s endorsement of Shivaji worship is troubling. I am not taking a position here on Shivaji’s greatness. The point is that while it is necessary to expose those who build extravagant mammoth monuments in his name but neglect dying farmers, it is just as necessary to critique the Maratha king himself. Nanasaheb’s deification of Shivaji is projected as a positive attribute. Dhome needs to be reminded that idol worship has turned us into a nation where a balanced discourse on revered historical figures is becoming almost impossible.

So yes, BKMK must be praised for giving a well-deserved tongue-lashing to those who exploit the legacy of Shivaji for narrow personal gain, but it must also be called out for its own uncritical view of the legendary ruler.

BKMK revolves around an extremely important theme. It is worth repeating that Dhome deserves a salaam for sticking his neck out in this fashion over such a contentious matter. His stance on the Shivaji Memorial in Maharashtra is unflinching and admirable. Sadly, valour alone does not add up to a good film.

Footnote: The Marathi films I have watched in Delhi so far have been reasonably well subtitled as far as I can remember, which is why the quality of the subs for this one are particularly surprising. “All they want is to fill each other’s coiffeurs,” were the words on screen at one point while characters discussed politicians pretending to care about Shivaji. It goes without saying that these netas did not intend to pack their hairdressers or their hairdos with money. Someone please tell the subtitling team that. The number of spelling and grammatical errors were too many to be excused. “Smasher” stood in for a character named “Shamsher”, for instance. It is also a pity that none of the songs were subtitled.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	144 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/baghtos-kay-mujra-kar-review-phony-shivaji-bhakts-get-a-tongue-lashing-they-deserve-3267640.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghtos_Kay_Mujra_Kar

Release date:	February 10, 2017
Director:	Subhash Kapoor
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Annu Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Kumud Mishra, Sayani Gupta, Manav Kaul, Rajiv Gupta, Inaamulhaq, Sunil Kumar Palwal, Ram Gopal Bajaj, V.M. Badola, Vinod Nagpal, Huma Qureshi Hindi

Director Subhash Kapoor’s Jolly LLB was one of the best Hindi films of 2013. It was that rare Bollywood venture that journeyed into an Indian courtroom with realistic storytelling rather than manufactured high-decibel dialoguebaazi, drawing humour and melodrama from true-to-life situations, through the medium of some of the industry’s finest actors led by the inimitable Arshad Warsi.

It goes without saying then that Kapoor has put his neck on the line with Jolly LLB 2, resurrecting a successful title and upping the stakes by casting a superstar as his protagonist. Three questions are crying out to be answered here: Is Part 2 as good as Part 1? Is Akshay Kumar as good as Warsi? Even when seen in isolation without the context of its predecessor, is this a good film? Patience, dear readers, patience!

Kapoor – who is credited with the story, screenplay, dialogues and direction of Jolly LLB 2– sets the film in Lucknow where Jagdishwar Mishra a.k.a. Jolly (Akshay Kumar) works as an assistant to the veteran lawyer Rizvi (Ram Gopal Bajaj). A tragic incident prompts Jolly to set aside his casual dishonesty and metamorphose into a formidable legal activist.

The case that has this transformative effect on him involves a pregnant widow seeking justice for her murdered husband, police corruption, judicial indifference, Kashmir politics and more. Individually, these are explosive ingredients. And significant portions of the film are credible as a result. It fails to come together in its entirety though because of the inconsistent writing.

Keep in mind that the hero of the first Jolly LLB was initially ignorant, often unprepared, lazy and consequently amusing, but he was not a fool. The Jolly of this new tale is well-intentioned, but the weakness of his arguments, the glaring lacunae in the evidence he presents in court throughout (even after he has seemingly matured as a lawyer) and the loopholes in the demands made by the opposing counsel seem invisible not just to him but to the writer too.

Are polygraph tests admissible in a court of law? If a lawyer facilitates a prisoner’s escape, would it not strike him that presenting the escapee as a witness in a case could be problematic? These are just a couple of the questionable situations the film presents. There are more, which are dealt with in such a way that it is hard to figure out whether what guides Jolly’s actions and what prevents him from effectively citing the law in court is inexperience, ignorance or stupidity.

Making matters worse is Jolly LLB 2’s seeming indecision about the tone it wishes to strike: realistic or revved up. The many little touches that made Jolly LLB so enchanting, especially the detailing in the courtroom procedures and production design, are also not so evident here. It does not help that the first film’s one blaring shortcoming is carried forward into this one: songs are needlessly injected into the proceedings, the worst of them being a tuneless Holi number – Manj Musik’s Go pagal– that completely disrupts the mood of the narrative.

The gender equations in Jolly LLB 2 are worth a discussion. Without raising a clamour about it, the film gives us a hero whose wife (Huma Qureshi) has not taken his surname – she is Pushpa Pandey, not Pushpa Mishra. Without appearing overly self-conscious or comedifying the situation to soften the blow for viewers who may be disconcerted, it also shows him cooking for her and their child. And when her husband is assaulted, she – in a reminder of Rani from Queen– gives the attacker a fight to remember. (A bow here to action director Parvez Shaikh for the execution of that brief scene.)

Coming from a deeply patriarchal industry serving a largely patriarchal audience, these flashes amount to a noteworthy statement from Kapoor.

That statement would have meant a lot more though, if the film as a whole did not sideline women so completely. Pushpa Pandey herself is a marginal player in the central drama. The only female character of any importance to the plot is Hina Siddiqui (Sayani Gupta, wow!), whose personal calamity changes Jolly. A witness’ mother makes an impactless appearance. I wonder if it has struck the team of Jolly LLB 2 that everyone else with a name in their script – lawyers, relatives of lawyers, judges, witnesses – is a man.

Akshay Kumar deserves some praise here for not allowing his starry swagger to rear its head except in the song ‘n’ dance routines. His Jolly is not quite as charismatic as Warsi’s lawyer was in the first film, but he is interesting enough. This performance is not quite as good as what he achieved in last year’s Airlift, but it is engaging enough. Kapoor too must be commended for not allowing the storyline to be overwhelmed by such a major star’s presence.

The supporting cast is a parade of theatre stalwarts and seasoned character artistes from films. What a pleasure for stage enthusiasts to see Bajaj (a former head of the National School of Drama), V.M. Badola and Vinod Nagpal in the same big-screen production. What a pleasure too to see an actor from Jammu & Kashmir playing a cop from the J&K force, rather than an outsider to the state attempting an accent: Sunil Kumar Palwal has a striking presence and will hopefully be seen in more Hindi films in the coming years. (While on the subject of accents, watch Inaamulhaq playing a Kashmiri pronounce “card” differently within a span of a few seconds.)

My pick of the cast, as with Jolly LLB, is Saurabh Shukla playing the eccentric judge, Sunder Lal Tripathi, whose veneer of idiocy camouflages his don’t-mess-with-me attitude. That said, Shukla is not as memorable here as he was playing the same character in the previous film. The difference between him in 2013 and 2017 is a reminder that actors do not function in a vacuum in films: great performances are born of great acting extracted by great screenplays and great direction.

Jolly LLB 2, as it turns out, is a mixed bag. The references to the Kashmir conflict and Hindu-Muslim tensions are impressive because the film raises these crucial issues without being in your face about them. It also bravely takes a swipe at self-righteous deshbhakts in the ongoing nationalist-versus-anti-national debate. The basic elements in the story are teeming with potential. When it’s good, Jolly LLB 2 is alternately amusing and moving. Sadly, the patchy treatment leaves it sagging too often.

So yes, it pulls off humour and emotional resonance in several places, but those passages are also a reminder of what might have been if more time and thought had been invested in the writing of this film as a whole. Jolly LLB 2 has its moments, poignant, political and profound, but it ain’t no Jolly LLB.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	138 minutes 31 minutes

This article was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jolly-llb-2-review-akshay-kumar-subhash-kapoor-pull-off-emotional-resonance-in-a-patchy-film-3276406.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_LLB_2

IGNORING THE JANA IN JANA GANA MANA

The government has displayed both ignorance and insensitivity with its guidelines on how persons with disabilities can show respect when the national anthem is played in movie halls

By Anna MM Vetticad

Mohanlal plays a blind man in the 2016 film Oppam, that rare Indian film
in which a character's physical disability is not romanticised or
caricatured and does not define the person

If you are an Indian film buff with a disability, you are perhaps used to suffering insensitivity from both sides of the screen. Our cinema rarely gives representation to those with physical or mental challenges, except in occasional films centred around such characters as an ‘issue’ — usually poorly researched — or, more commonly, for comic relief. Mohanlal as a blind man in last year’s Malayalam hit Oppam is an unusual instance of a hero, a major commercial star at that, playing a person whose disability is neither romanticised nor caricatured, and does not define him.

Such films are infrequent. What we are used to is exclusion. Or Salman Khan as the lead of the 2011 Hindi film Bodyguard mocking a man with a height disability by calling him a “handbag” to be contrasted with a “suitcase”. Or worse, Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Black (2005) legitimising violence as a teaching method for a child who cannot see or hear.

Anger or hurt at such scenes can arise only once you consume them. As persons with disabilities (PwDs) and caregivers in India will tell you though, most movies and movie theatres — like most public places here — are not disabled-friendly. If you are not struggling to find a subtitled film to get around your hearing impairment, you are swallowing the humiliation of being a public spectacle as your wheelchair is carried to your seat in a hall without (enough) ramps and wheelchair lifts.

With its recently issued guidelines for PwDs while the national anthem plays in movie halls, the government has rubbed salt into the wounds of a community already marginalised in multiple ways by India’s film industries.According to Hindustan Times: The Union home ministryhas issued guidelines on how people with disabilities can show respect when the national anthem is being played in movie halls or public functions, saying they should not move and position themselves “maintaining the maximum possible alertness physically”. The report adds: The rules give relaxation to people with severe intellectual disabilities but say that those with mild intellectual disability without associated conditions “can be trained to understand and respect the national anthem”. Clearly the author of these regulations knows nothing about autism, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease and other conditions that cause restlessness, slow responses or involuntary movements.

The Ministry’s directions follow a November 2016 Supreme Court (SC) interim order in an ongoing PIL, decreeing that all cinema halls in India must play the national anthem before every screening and the audience must stand to show respect. The SC later exempted PwDs from this stricture, instructing the government to issue dos and don’ts for them. Instead of objecting, the government complied.

I am reproducing here an extract from a Facebook conversation with my ex-student, Nandita Venkatesan, who is hearing impaired. She writes: “I remember when I had gone to watch Sairat with my mom, I didn’t even realise the national anthem was being played, because my head was bent down as I was msging my brother. (I really love our anthem too.) It was only when my mom nudged that I understood and stood up. Today I wonder what would happen if this incident gets repeated? Will someone at the theatre scold/beat up because I didn’t stand on time?”

Venkatesan lives in Maharashtra, where the anthem was being played in halls even before the SC ruling. Her fears are not unfounded. Last October, disability campaigner Salil Chaturvedi— who is wheelchair-bound — was beaten in a Panaji hall for not standing up while the anthem was played. The SC directive has further enthused vigilantes. In December, movie-goers in Chennai were reportedly assaulted and abused when they refused to stand up for the anthem.

Since the May 2014 general election, the new government has worked hard to foster a sense of hyper-nationalism across the country, a ploy often used by conservative politicians worldwide to mobilise the masses and to divert attention from real issues. This has led to a herd mentality, with several organisations and individuals competing to prove their love for India. It is disheartening that the SC has played along. The government’s guidelines illustrate a mindset that Indian nationals matter less than symbols of nationhood, that chest-thumping patriotism matters more than the welfare of citizens with disabilities. Here is proof.

Section 29 of The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, requires “the appropriate Government and the local authorities” to “(make) art accessible to persons with disabilities” and “(ensure) that persons with hearing impairment can have access to television programmes with sign language interpretation or subtitles”. Look around you: these goals are a long way away.

Likewise, the Central government launched the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) in December 2015 to achieve “universal accessibility for PwDs”. In November 2016, as reported in The Economic Times, the SC pulled up the government for doing “nothing” to reach its target of making 50 per cent of government buildings disabled-friendly in the national and state capitals.

Nothing, in 11 months. Yet it has taken just days for the same government to whip up an ignorant, insensitive code of conduct of sorts for PwDs in movie halls. So what if even reaching those halls is a distant dream for most. Why bother with inclusion and building infrastructure, sarkar, when whipping up a nationalist frenzy is so much easier?

(This article was first published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on January 28, 2017.)

Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/ignoring-the-jana-in-jana-gana-mana/article9503111.ece

Photograph courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppam

Release date:	February 17, 2017
Director:	Aparnaa Singh
Cast: Language:	Arshad Warsi, Naseeruddin Shah, Divya Dutta, Sharad Kelkar, Rajesh Sharma, Sagarika Ghatge Hindi

It is called the “Cancer Train”, christened thus by locals because it transports scores of cancer patients from Bathinda in Punjab to the city of Bikaner, Rajasthan, for treatment. Available media reports suggest that the surge in cancer cases in Bathinda is a result of the uncontrolled use of pesticides by the region’s farmers. This week’s Hindi film release Irada points us in another direction: groundwater pollution caused by local industry.

For red-flagging an unnerving issue alone, Irada deserves kudos. Director Aparnaa Singh’s film is about an explosion in a plant owned by an influential businessman called Paddy Sharma (Sharad Kelkar) who derives his power from the funds he supplies to the state’s ruling party. Chief Minister Ramandeep Braitch (Divya Dutta) is in his pocket and agrees to hush up the motive behind the blast, since it might have something to do with the waste disposal methods practised at the factory. She calls in NIA officer Arjun Mishra (Arshad Warsi) to do the job for her. Also in the picture are the writer Parbjeet Walia (Naseeruddin Shah) and journalist Maya Singh (Sagarika Ghatge of Chak De fame) whose activist boyfriend disappears under mysterious circumstances.

The basic theme is laudable no doubt, but Irada fails to expand the premise into a relatable flesh-and-blood story peopled by flesh-and-blood sufferers. If we view it purely for its worth as a documentary, the information it provides is sketchy. As a fiction feature, it has limited value because it deals in broad brush strokes and a macro view of the situation instead of drawing us into a micro view of individuals reeling under this calamity.

There is a woman in a hospital whose child looks on as she tells a cop about a sacrifice her husband made to pay for her treatment. Perhaps we could have been better acquainted with her? Or that mother who describes the train’s passengers to a stranger as matter-of-factly as if she were speaking of a regular tourist vehicle?

But no, the writers – Singh herself with Anushka Ranjan – give these characters mere seconds in Irada, dwelling instead on the authorities’ efforts to cover up their crimes. Fair enough. The story of evil is worth telling too. Sadly, here again the scanty screenplay reduces the persons involved to summaries rather than full-blown people.

Instead of being a human-interest saga, Irada tries to be a thriller. There were possibilities there too. Who engineered the blast? Why? More important, how did the culprit manage to execute the plan? On this front too, the film does not take off because its bare-bones account of the investigation is just so silly.

Mishra, for instance, stares at walls, wrings his hands and snatches deductions out of thin air. Walia recites poetry that is supposedly filled with clues – it is meant to sound clever but is not. Singh has almost nothing to do, thus ensuring that next time too we will be compelled to describe Ghatge as “Sagarika Ghatge of Chak De fame”. And the big reveal in the end is a damp squib not because it is not a surprise, but because I no longer gave a damn.

Imagine a film boasting of names like Warsi, Shah, Dutta and Rajesh Sharma in its credits, yet not extracting a single memorable moment from them in its 110 minutes. It is not that they are bad here, but that they are ordinary – which is what talented actors often are when confronted with uninspiring writing and lax direction.

It is heartbreaking for any film buff to see Warsi wander passionlessly through this project just seven days after the release of Jolly LLB 2, a brand that owes much of its recall value to his performance as the protagonist in its wonderful precursor, Jolly LLB. Is this marvellous actor doing something wrong or does Bollywood have skewed priorities, that he has been replaced in Part 2 by Akshay Kumar – a superstar no doubt, but not in the same league as an artiste – while Warsi himself is relegated to being the lead in a half-baked, low-profile venture like Irada?

That question is just a small part of the tragedy that is this new film. Punjab’s “Cancer Train” should be the subject of multiple Indian films and media reports. Little purpose is served though if you zero in on a crucial theme but do not breathe life into it. Irada (meaning: intent) is an opportunity lost to draw mass attention to a pressing concern. What a waste!

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	110 minutes 7 seconds

This article was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/irada-movie-review-arshad-warsi-naseeruddin-shah-and-a-cancer-train-are-lost-to-poor-treatment-3287726.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irada_(2017_film)

Release date:	February 17, 2017
Director:	Amit Roy
Cast: Language:	Amit Sadh, Taapsee Pannu, Arsh Bajwa, Brijendra Kala Hindi

Ironic perhaps, but laughter is a great tool to highlight human misery. For proof of this, as we count down to Oscars 2017, look no further than Roberto Benigni’s Best Picture-nominated, Best Foreign Language Film-winning La Vita E Bella (Life Is Beautiful) from Oscars 1999, a tragi-comedy about a Jewish Italian man and his little son in a Nazi concentration camp. La Vita E Bella was effective because it fully understood the heartbreak behind its humour and it did not at any point trivialise the pain of its characters. It takes a genius to walk that line.

Not that there is any comparison between the two, but I thought of Life Is Beautiful several times as I watched writer-director Amit Roy’s Hindi-Punjabi film Running Shaadi, the story of a young man who starts a matrimonial website/facilitating agency for couples whose families are opposed to their relationships. When it is not meandering, Running Shaadi is funny in places. Before we weigh its cinematic merits and demerits though, the film deserves to be lambasted unequivocally for seeming to be blissfully unaware of the catastrophic consequences that often accompany inter-community romances in India.

Roy cannot be accused of trivialising the issue. He simply seems not to understand it. It is hard to say which is more inexcusable.

For a moment though, let us discuss Running Shaadiin a vacuum, completely removed from this particular socio-political context in which it has been made. Amit Sadh plays the film’s Bharose, a Bihari working in a clothing store in Punjab. The owner of the establishment relies heavily on him for his business and often for his personal affairs too.

The old man’s daughter – Nimmi played by Taapsee Pannu – considers Bharose a good friend, though not the lover he clearly wants to be. At some point in the story, Bharose decides to start runningshaadi.com. Religious differences, caste boundaries, class divides – whatever be the objection your parents have to your union, Bharose and his partner Cyberjeet (Arsh Bajwa) will get you married and try, if possible, to even win over Dad, Mum and the extended parivaar.

Like these parents, the filmmaker too is not bereft of prejudice. One of the film’s jokes is that Cyberjeet considers a thickly bespectacled, ordinary-looking Bengali youth not good enough for his pretty Punjabi girlfriend. She snaps at Cyber for his doubts, telling him that her Shonkhu (Sandip Ghosh) is the most intelligent man she knows. Predictably, the actress cast in this part has a markedly light complexion while Ghosh is dark-skinned. Whaddyaknow! The stereotype of fair-is-beautiful-and-dark-is-ugly meeting the stereotype of the cerebral Bengali and the good-looking Punjabi in a film that is supposedly opposed to bias? C’mon Amit Roy! Seriously?

Once Bharose’s business takes off, you guess of course that he too will need its services some day. He does. The rest of the film is devoted to the hero solving his own problem, surmounting far greater hurdles than any of his clients faced.

Sadly for Running Shaadi, it features some commendable components. For one, it unobtrusively turns an important corner for the portrayal of women’s reproductive rights in Indian cinema by showing a major character opting for an abortion because she is not ready to have a baby. Yes, that dreaded A-word, a place that last year’s Sultan feared to tread.

This passing passage early in the film is handled with such subtlety that it raises expectations for what is to come. Also on point is the non-caricaturish portrayal of small-town conservatism (to be contrasted with big cities where more people use a veneer of liberalism to camouflage their narrow-mindedness).

The initial proceedings are sweetly believable. Too soon though, Running Shaadi begins to wander. Monotony sets in as Bharose and Cyberjeet run through dozens of couples with nary a variation in their personal story and nary a detail that might have made these characters worth investing in. Familial opposition is overcome or even quelled with such ease that you wonder if the filmmaker has ever read of murders sanctioned by khap panchayats, the gruesome crimes that have come to be known as ‘honour killings’, the ‘love jihad’ campaign of recent years, and other socially and politically sanctioned brutalities.

Until this point, Running Shaadi presents itself as social satire. Then suddenly, the film snaps its fingers and becomes an action adventure/thriller without easing us into the change of mood – a mood that it fails to sustain anyway. At this point, the story has shifted to Patna in Bihar and even briefly visits Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh. The couple at the centre of the post-interval proceedings do face a murderous family, but a sense of urgency is missing in the narrative. The casual treatment is exacerbated by the fact that the narrative has drifted around too long to get here. By now it is too late for the film.

This is a pity, because the characters big and small in Bihar are far more interesting than the ones in Punjab. The highlight of this portion is Brijendra Kala playing Bharose’s uncle, a struggling filmmaker. Kala infuses his Ujjala Mamaji with a warmth and substance that are absent in the rest of the story’s primary players. To be fair, he is also written better than the others in the screenplay by Navjot Gulati and Roy himself.

The film’s cinematography and production design are not distinctive, which is surprising since Roy was a noted cinematographer with Sarkarand Sarkar Raj among other films to his credit before he turned director with this one. A special mention must go though to Manoj Yadav, Shellee, Keegan Pinto, Tanveer Ghazi and Anas Ali Khan for the earthy colloquialisms and attractively informal tone of their engaging lyrics.

Amit Sadh has been excellent in all his films so far, and most of all in Kai Po Che (2013). Taapsee Pannu was utterly brilliant in last year’s Pink. Both need a better written, better edited, better directed drama to house their talents.

While on the subject of editing… The film’s name was changed late in the day from RunningShaadi.com to Running Shaadi following a legal dispute. I do wish the producers (among them Shoojit Sircar, who produced Pink) had further delayed the release to rework it instead of blurring people’s lips and muting the “dotcom” repeatedly. Postponement may have been expensive, but the repeated disruptions are even more so. They are irritating.

Plugging that problem would not have saved the film though from its loose writing, unforgivably limited social insights, feeble direction and screenplay. Running Shaadi is a whimper.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	115 minutes

This article was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/running-shaadi-movie-review-taapsee-pannu-and-amit-sadh-are-running-to-nowhere-3288002.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/RunningShaadiTheFilm/

Release date:	Kerala: February 10, 2017. All India: February 17.
Director:	Jay K
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Priya Anand, Sudev Nair, Sujith Shanker, Ann Sheetal, Vijayaraghavan, Tovino Thomas, Pratap K. Pothen, Babu Antony, Bharath Dabholkar, Alencier Ley Lopez, Thara Kalyan Malayalam

Dybbuk: from Jewish folklore, an evil spirit that possesses a living human with malicious intent

Hamsa: a hand-shaped amulet, traced variously to Jewish, Christian and Islamic origins; believed to ward off the evil eye

Ruchim: spirits in Judaic myth

If you wish to fully understand these terms, you could either turn to an encyclopedia or watch the new Malayalam film Ezra, a supernatural thriller starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Priya Anand. The pre-release chatter surrounding Ezra seemed to suggest that it would provide insights into Jewish culture in Kerala. Taken at its face value, the film does quite the opposite, seeming to exoticise rather than familiarise audiences with the community. Look closer though and you may see Ezra’s larger purpose: its subliminal messaging on forbidden love across the ages, how the more things change the more they remain the same and ultimately, love conquering all divides.

The blend of modern city life, mythology and under-stated politics rooted in the tragic tale of a young Jew from pre-Independence Kerala becomes absorbing in the hands of debutant director Jay K.

The events in the film kick off when the last living Jew in Kerala passes away and the state media is abuzz with talk of the end of an era. Meanwhile in Mumbai, Ranjan Mathew (Sukumaran) and his wife Priya Raghuram (Anand) prepare to shift to Kochi where he must take charge of a giant nuclear waste disposal plant run by a company he co-founded.

Once there, they move into a spacious villa which Priya packs with antiques. Her acquisitions include a box from the dead man’s house which – unknown to her – is already connected to a recent local murder. When the couple (expectedly) starts hearing strange sounds and seeing a scary figure in their house, they seek help from medics, the police and finally, religious folk.

Ezra is not the kind of horror flick that is replete with mammoth scares. The film’s USP is its low-key tone and all-pervading feeling of foreboding. Jay K is unflinching in his purpose, never once slackening the sense of impending doom that permeates every nook of the narrative. Editor Vivek Harshan and cinematographer Sujith Vaassudev are able partners in this mission.

When you shoot a geographical landscape as stunning as God’s Own Country, it must be tempting to capture it in all its explosively colourful beauty. Vaassudev’s achievement in Ezra is that he holds back, giving us instead a Kerala of grays and muted shades and at one point, sepia tones, still spectacular of course, but hauntingly atmospheric too in this avatar. He also keeps strategically switching vantage points, sometimes standing with the audience, sometimes with Priya or Ranjan, sometimes seeming to stand by the spectre in their house as it watches these two go about their business and sometimes watching them through the eyes of other characters.

The other leading light of Ezra is its production design, in particular in the flashback to an earlier Kerala and in the present, the intimidatingly grand interiors of Ranjan and Priya’s home.

It is all very eerie and filled with dread for what is to come. Though the film uses familiar motifs from the horror genre – a spook in a mirror, glazed eyes, the attic of an old house, a wild-haired child (who, by the way, remains unexplained) – it does so sparingly.

If you get down to thinking about it, much of the paranormal stuff is silly not just for atheists, agnostics and cynics – as is the case with most such films – but for other logical minds too. (Spoiler alert) How, for instance, did they so quickly find 10 Jewish tourists willing to expose themselves to an invisible monster late one night in Kochi? Why does a maid, who shows no signs of understanding English until then, watch a Hollywood hit? A couple of the red herrings strewn around (that maid’s aggressive behaviour, a rabbi’s initial weirdness) are grating in their obviousness. (Spoiler alert ends)

The film’s success lies in the fact that it leaves a viewer with little time to dwell on these and other loopholes while battling the unrelenting heebie-jeebies.

Ezra’s other USP is that its scares stand shoulder to shoulder with a solid story. The theme of inter-community romances runs right through the film, and has great resonance in this age of ‘love jihad’ campaigns and overtly, publicly expressed prejudice. Jay K’s storytelling style is non-preachy, but the commentary is unmistakable.

Hints of Ranjan and Priya’s liberalism are also unobtrusively scattered about. Theirs is a mixed marriage (he is Christian, she is Hindu) but neither has imposed their faith on the other. A passing reference reveals that she has not changed her surname. In such a film, it would have been nicer to see evidence of Priya’s career as an interior designer rather than a mere passing mention of it in the midst of her wifely activities. Perhaps next time, Jay K?

In terms of performances, Sukumaran stands out for his conviction in a genre that often has actors come off looking silly. He even manages to pull off an exorcism without going too over the top or being too cliched considering the scores of such scenes we have seen down the decades. Anand does not do quite as well in scenes in which we are supposed to believe she is possessed, and Sujith Shanker playing a rabbi falls prey to the deliberately confusing writing of his character – can’t blame either of the actors though.

The rest of the supporting cast is sturdy. Sudev Nair is especially memorable in the very poignant flashback.

While the detailing in the film’s sound design is impressive, the decibel levels needed to be brought down a couple of notches in several scenes, considering that as viewers we are now accustomed to standard efforts at manipulation with loud noises and background scores in supernatural films.

So yes, Ezra is not perfect. Overall though, it is an unusual and thankfully not superficial experience. Without straying too far from the conventions of its chosen genre, the film conjures up enough novelty value to remain interesting throughout. We are not a country that does horror very well. A hat tip then to Jay K for defying the norm.

Footnote about the subtitles: A hat tip to Vivek Ranjit too for remembering to subtitle the signage in Ezra. Too many writers of subs forget that if a viewer cannot understand a language in its spoken form, chances are they cannot read it either. One suggestion for Ranjit, since he seems to care enough: keeping in mind the needs of hearing-impaired viewers, next time please also subtitle English dialogues. Almost no one does that.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	147 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ezra-movie-review-an-interesting-blend-of-prithviraj-a-jewish-spook-and-forbidden-love-3289602.html#vuukle_div2

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_(2017_film)

Release date:	February 17, 2017
Director:	Sankalp Reddy
Cast: Language:	Rana Daggubati, Kay Kay Menon, Atul Kulkarni, Rahul Singh, Satyadev Kancharana, Taapsee Pannu, Om Puri, Nassar, Milind Gunaji. Released in two versions: Telugu and Hindi-cum-English. This is a review of the latter, which is narrated by Amitabh Bachchan. The Telugu version is narrated by Chiranjeevi. The film has also been dubbed in Tamil. Suriya Sivakumar provides the narration in that one.

Whoa!

And again, whoa!

Debutant writer-director Sankalp Reddy’s The Ghazi Attack is that rare special-effects-heavy Indian war film starring actors who get their body language right, do not look like little boys playing cops ‘n’ robbers, do not sing romantic songs in their heads in the midst of battle and features SFX that do not compel a critic to qualify “it is good” with the addendum usually used in these cases, “…by Indian standards”. The Ghazi Attack’s effects are good, full stop.

Released simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi-English versions, this is a highly fictionalised interpretation of the Indian take on events in the Bay of Bengal in 1971, leading to the sinking of the PNS Ghazi, a submarine of the Pakistan Navy.

In the real world, India’s official position is that Ghaziwas brought down by an Indian ship. Pakistan holds that the sub sank when it inadvertently entered a minefield it had itself laid just days earlier. As Vice Admiral G.M. Hiranandani (retd) says in his book Transition to Triumph, quoted in a detailed article by Vipin Vijayan on Rediff: “The truth about the Ghazi, which remains on what the submarine community calls the ‘eternal parole’, lies somewhere between the Indian and Pakistani versions of the sinking but no one knows exactly where.”

Reddy’s film zeroes in on the Indian side of the story. Kay Kay Menon plays Captain Rann Vijay Singh, the man in charge of the Indian submarine S21which is sent off on a top-secret mission to the Bay of Bengal in November 1971. Singh is both brilliant and brash, remarkably efficient yet a loose cannon prone to skirt around orders whenever he can. His reputation prompts his bosses (played by the late Om Puri and Nassar) to send Lt-Commander Arjun Varma (Rana Daggubati) to accompany him on this mission and keep his wild side in check.

When the film opens, the India-Pak war of 1971 has not yet begun. The two countries are on tenterhooks though, with refugees pouring into India from what was then East Pakistan. A single impetuous act could lead to full-scale aggression. Like Singh, Varma is brave and brilliant, but he prefers to wait for intelligence confirmation of what his instincts tell him is true. This is why his seniors consider him essential to their scheme.

Populism might have demanded that the film should cheer for Singh and diminish Varma. It is a measure of Reddy’s maturity that he does nothing of the sort.

Atul Kulkarni plays S21’s second-in-command, S. Devaraj, a soft-spoken yet firm man whose loyalty lies with Singh despite his brusque ways.

The bulk of The Ghazi Attack takes place underwater inside S21. Far from being constrained by the lack of visual variation, Reddy along with his editor A. Sreekar Prasad, director of photography Madhie and sound designer Tapas Nayak use it to their advantage, tapping the claustrophobic space to discreetly magnify every iota of tension between the characters. K’s background score is a perfect addition to the mix.

The production quality is first-rate all around. A special word here for production designer Shivam Rao, the tech teams at Eva Motion Studios in Hyderabad and B2H Studios in Chennai.

Hopefully there are defence experts and scientists out there who will watch The Ghazi Attack and tell us whether the naval protocol being followed here is authentic or the depiction of the vessel’s functioning is scientifically accurate. To a non-expert, the acting and writing (story and screenplay: Reddy, dialogues: Azad Alam) make it all seem credible. The verbal exchanges may be meaningless mumbo jumbo, for all I know, but none of it sounds like unconvincing gibberish or off-puttingly esoteric, deliberately dense showing off.

More to the point, The Ghazi Attack is designed to make us care less about the technicalities and more about the human instincts and reflexes that come into play in this challenging environment.

When the film is being straight-laced and matter of fact, it is bloody darned awesome. There is a special place in hell for those who celebrate war, but given that wars do take place, this film – for the most part – is a lesson in how they should be depicted on screen. While the going’s good, the no-frills narrative is so well-paced and business-like that it feels like the real deal.

Reddy largely sticks to his guns with this storytelling style, making so much of The Ghazi Attack entertaining, memorable and unique on the Indian cinemascape. He should have held his ground all the way, because the moments in which he departs from his to-the-point tone are the very moments when he loses his grip on the film.

While his hands are fixed firmly on the reins, The Ghazi Attack is a thrilling action adventure, the enjoyment of which is tempered by the awareness that it draws on a very grim reality.

It flounders though in its depiction of the Pakistani vessel. Ghazi’s commander Razzaq (Rahul Singh) is the only identifiable individual on the sub. While he does not snarl out lines of the sort Pakistanis might yell at Sunny Deol, he is certainly a charmless chap, unlike the Indians. The film makes no bones about its suggestion that the Indian lot are level-headed, cool customers driven purely by a selfless desire to keep us safe whereas the Paki dude is hot-headed despite his brightness, and thus easily manipulated by the enemy who understands that he is led primarily by his deep-seated hatred for India. Uff!

The Ghazi Attackflounders again when it enters maudlin territory with the commander’s personal story and an awkwardly handled round of deshbhaktiin the end, far removed from the tone of most of the film. An earlier scene in which Jana Gana Mana and Saare Jahaan Se Acchha are sung works because it is relevant to the plot, but Round 2 with the anthem is a contrivance. Those wailing religious chants when tragedy strikes are also terribly jarring.

Kulkarni is on the mark with his acting. Menon is intermittently pulled down by the soppy treatment of his character’s back story and the over-the-top writing of his attitude to authority.

The headline-grabber of the cast is Rana Daggubati, who is so handsome in a uniform that he made me want to weep. Be still my beating heart.

…But seriously, Daggubati’s looks and strapping physique are rivalled by his well-controlled turn as Arjun Varma. His restraint helps him effectively portray a man of calm temperament yet not shorn of feelings, compassion, stress or off-the-book actions in a charged atmosphere.

The stand-out artiste of the well-chosen supporting cast is Satyadev Kancharana playing Rajeev, a sonar operator on S21. Kancharana is an interesting combination of charismatic presence and natural talent. He made me care for Rajeev despite the man’s limited role on S21.

Taapsee Pannu, on the other hand, is wasted in an insignificant role. As an East Pakistani rescued from a shipwreck by the submarine, she does nothing but lurk in the background. Why was this character written into the script? Her inclusion certainly does not divert attention from the fact that India’s defence establishment is a boys’ club even today, that it was more so back then.

Pannu’s role is not only demeaning to her but also counter-productive to the cause of gender representation in cinema. Tokenism in the name of diversity is as offensive as exclusion itself.

This along with the uncomfortable handling of patriotism and some of the emotion subtracts from the overall impact of The Ghazi Attack, especially because most of the latter two are rolled out post-interval, thus dominating the parting impression of the film.

Still, there is much more to like than not. A toast please to the technical finesse attained by Reddy and his top-notch crew. No artificially pumped up patriotism is needed when a film makes viewers so damned proud of the work their fellow Bharatvaasis have done on it.

This then is what The Ghazi Attack adds up to: 70% cracking suspense (which is remarkable since we know the outcome from the start), 30% clumsy deshbhakti and mawkishness. War is not something any decent human being should celebrate. What this uncommon film achieves though for war films in India is worth a champagne glass or two.

Rating (out of five stars): **3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	125 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/TheGhaziAttack/

Release date:	February 24, 2017
Director:	Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Language:	Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Richard McCabe, Shriswara Dubey, Gajraj Rao, Saharsh Shukla, Kashmira Irani Hindi

Bloody hell!

She rides a horse across a stage near the India-Burma (Myanmar) border, blindfolds herself to throw knives at targets several feet away, bashes up bad guys, mud wrestles with a muscular soldier and runs swiftly atop a moving train.

The point is not that Kangana Ranaut merely manages to do all this in a film. The point is, she is convincing while executing challenging stunts, and looks good while doing them. So, allow me to borrow her character’s signature line in Rangoon: Bloody hell!

Ranaut is a queen. If there is one takeaway from Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon, it is this: that there is something terribly foolish about a film industry which fails to fully tap the vast reserves of female talent at its disposal, and does not centre more action films around this lovely actress… or Priyanka Chopra… or Deepika Padukone… or Anushka Sharma… or any of their other feisty, fleet-footed women colleagues.

When Rangoon has the heroine displaying her physical prowess, it is on solid ground. It falters in other areas, but for the pleasure of seeing a fiery woman skillfully performing feats that have for too long been available only to the men of Hindi cinema, it is worth a watch.

Bhardwaj’s latest takes us back to 1940s India, where an action star screen-named Miss Julia (Ranaut) rules Bombay cinema. Her professional mentor and producer, Rusi Billimoria (Saif Ali Khan), is a married man who treats her like he would his pet poodle, a pretty creature to be patronised, pampered and protected, loved in the way he thinks love is meant to be given to a woman, but not respected.

We meet these two against the backdrop of multiple wars. Within India, Mahatma Gandhi and like-minded freedom fighters are trying to rid the country of its British colonisers with the weapon of ahimsa. Elsewhere, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose is building his Azad Hind Fauj. A battle is on between these two ideologies to capture the imagination of the people.

Meanwhile, Billimoria becomes beholden to the British for business reasons. Circumstances force Miss Julia to travel to the Indo-Myanmar border where she must headline a series of shows designed to raise the spirits of the ‘British’ troops stationed there. This is where she meets Jamadar Nawab Malik (Shahid Kapoor), an Indian like so many others serving in the British army, and employed to keep his own people down.

These then are the two trianglesaround which Rangoon revolves: Julia, Rusi and Nawab; India, Gandhi and Bose.

On the face of it, this is a setting bubbling with possibilities, and considerable swathes of Rangoon (especially in its second half) do mine that potential. Ranaut delivers a seemingly effortless, chameleon-like performance as a woman who is by turns fragile and fierce, hurting yet invulnerable, a child who grows into a woman during the course of the film. The actress and the character she plays here, possess a body that is as intriguing as her mind: she appears delicate, yet explodes with energy and athleticism when life demands it of her.

Thankfully, Rusi is not the suave, likeable, easygoing flirt Khan has played in too many films now. He is an amoral yet charming creature, a man of grays and internal conflicts that appear to surprise him as he discovers them. Khan is as assured here as he has been in his best work so far (read: Hum Tum, Ek Hasina Thi and Omkara), making Rusi hard to like yet impossible to hate in a way that only he can. Rangoon is a sorely needed reminder that this Khan is one of the finest actors among all the heroes in Hindi cinema right now, the one whose versatility has been least explored.

However, for the film to be compelling all the way, it needed us to root for Julia and Nawab, not Julia and Rusi, but the chemistry between Ranaut and Kapoor is strangely lukewarm. And Kapoor deadpans his way through the role, which is inexplicable considering that he is emerging here from a career best performance in Haider(2014) helmed by the same director.

Chemistry is not a factor of good acting alone, it emerges from great writing. Therein lies the problem with Rangoon. Unlike the immersive writing of Haider, Rangoon seems detached from its proceedings, narrating them like an observer rather than a participant.

The story of Rangoon is credited to Matthew Robbins who earlier wrote 2011’s Saat Khoon Maaf,which Bhardwaj directed. The screenplay has been jointly written by Robbins, Sabrina Dhawan (who wrote Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding) and Bhardwaj himself. Perhaps Bhardwaj should have known better than to team up once again with Robbins, considering that despite all the atmospherics and intrigue he managed to summon up in Saat Khoon Maaf, that too ended up feeling like an outsider’s view of the world it sought to create.

This is one reason why Rangoon does not come alive on screen. The film also takes too long to lift off. The best of Rangoon is packed into its second half, but it is once again pulled down by an overly dramatised, ham-fisted ending that is trying too hard to be emotionally wrenching in its nationalist fervour and imposing, but ends up being amusingly trite instead.

That said, the positives of Rangoon call out. Pankaj Kumar’s cinematography is imaginative and grand, and despite the occasional weak spot in the special effects, the film looks rich. Dolly Ahluwalia’s costumes, the hairdos and styling are all exemplary. The combination of Ranaut’s verve, the retro choreography by Farah Khan and Sudesh Adhana, well-written songs blending perfectly into the narrative and lavish set pieces, make Rangoon’s many song-and-dance numbers memorable.

The music is by Bhardwaj, the lyrics by Gulzar. Now that’s a team worth repeating. They roll out an entire spectrum of moods for Rangoon, ranging from the ruminative romantic ballad Yeh ishq hai to the frothy mischief of Mere miya gaye England. When the same film gives you Arijit Singh singing “Sufi ke zulfe ki / Lau utthi Allah hu / Jalte hi rehna hai / Baaki na main na tu” and “Mere miya gaye England / Baja ke band / Na jaane kaha karenge land / Ki Hitler chauke na”, in Rekha Bhardwaj’s voice, you almost will it to extend that quality into every other department.

If only.

Early news about Rangoon indicated that it was based on the true story of Fearless Nadia, the Australia-born actress who lived from 1908-1996 and ruled the Hindi film industry as an action star in her time. As is often the case with such Bollywood ventures, the rumours (very likely initiated by the film’s own team to generate a buzz around the project) have given way to an officially stated position that Rangoon has nothing to do with Nadia.

The truth is, Julia is probably inspired by Nadia, but this is not a biopic. This is a love triangle set in a time when the people of India were grappling with the opposing ideologies of the Mahatma and Netaji. The Bhardwaj who made Maqbool, Omkara and Haider is a man perfectly suited to a film like Rangoon. Sadly, without the writing brilliance of the director’s Shakespeare trilogy, Rangoon gets many things right, but fails to come together as an involving, engaging whole.

Still, Ranaut is remarkable playing the sort of character no Hindi film leading lady has been given for decades now. A big bow to Bhardwaj for that, and to the actress for choosing a path advocated by Gandhi, being the change she clearly wants to see in Hindi cinema. This action queen deserved a more vibrant film though.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	167 minutes 25 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/rangoon-movie-review-kangana-ranaut-is-an-action-queen-in-search-of-a-vibrant-film-3300232.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/RangoonTheFilm/

Oscars 2017 Predictions: Will Moonlight beat La La Land? Stats, trends and my personal picks

By Anna MM Vetticad

The Oscars are always political, but this year the function and the selections will no doubt be more so than ever. Already, the directors of the five nominated films in the Best Foreign Language category have issued a joint statement about rising xenophobia worldwide. Mentions of Donald Trump are expected to dominate winners’ speeches. And last year’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign is likely to be a major factor in the choices this year, which already has an unprecedented number of non-white nominees.

With just a day to go for the announcement, here are my predictions for the four most high-profile gongs of Oscars 2017:

BEST PICTURE:

Nominees:

Arrival

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

With 14 nominations and universal critical acclaim, La La Land is the odds-on favourite to pick up the most prestigious trophy of the night. The film shares the record for most noms ever with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997). The big question on the big day will be whether it will equal or beat the record for maximum wins, held by Ben-Hur(1959), Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) each with 11 trophies to its credit.

Statistics by and large seem to favour La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s deliciously energetic yet contemplative musical has already scooped up Best Picture awards at the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes (in the musical or comedy category). It also won the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award, considered a strong indicator of who will bag the top Oscar. Since its inception in 1990, 19 out of 28 PGA winners have gone on to carry away the Best Picture Oscar.

If La La Land does not win, the film with the best chance of pulling off an upset is Moonlight, a poor black boy’s journey to adulthood under the crushing burden of a neglectful, drug-addicted mother, racial prejudice, homophobia and poverty. Already, Moonlight has taken home the Best Picture Golden Globe in the drama category.

Personally though, this is not my favourite of the nominated films. Moonlight was moving and thematically relevant but not, to my mind, as deeply satisfying as some of the other films in this category. Clearly, most critics across the world and in India disagree with me. So be it.

In a contest between La La Land and Moonlight, I would pick La La Land, a film of profound sadness despite its apparent liveliness. But my personal favourite from this shortlist is not even La La Land. My vote goes to the immensely inspiring and uplifting Hidden Figures. The true story of how black women overcame excruciating racial and gender discrimination to play a key role in America’s space programme is, to my mind, the most beautiful – and beautifully acted – film of the nine in contention. I am deriving hope from an award it won this season that, like PGA, is considered highly predictive

Hidden Figures walked off with the trophy for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the year’s Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. Since 2008, six winners of SAG’s best cast award have gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar. Could this year be the seventh?

Likely winner: La La Land

Possible spoiler, very close: Moonlight

My personal favourite:Hidden Figures

My second choice (and very close):La La Land

BEST DIRECTOR:

Nominees:

Barry Jenkins for Moonlight

Damien Chazelle for La La Land

Dennis Villeneuve for Arrival

Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea

Mel Gibson for Hacksaw Ridge

This one is as neck-and-neck as the Best Picture race. If La La Land wins the top honour this year, then it is possible that Academy members may choose tocompensate Moonlight by electing Barry Jenkins as Best Director.

Still, this season’s trends favour Chazelle. He dominated the Golden Globes where he won Best Director and Best Screenplay trophies, picked up a BAFTA for Best Director and won the highly prophetic Directors Guild of America Award. That last one is a statistical clincher, since the DGA winner has gone on to get the equivalent Oscar all but seven times since 1948.

For the record, Chazelle should have received a Best Director nomination at the 2015 Oscars for his cracking music-themed film Whiplash. As things stand, this is his first Best DirectorOscar nom.

Likely winner: Damien Chazelle

Likely spoiler (and very close): Barry Jenkins

My personal favourite: Damien Chazelle

Should have been nominated: Theodore Melfi for Hidden Figures

BEST ACTRESS:

Nominees:

Emma Stone for La La Land

Isabelle Huppert for Elle

Meryl Streep for Florence Foster Jenkins

Natalie Portman for Jackie

Ruth Negga for Loving

In a category filled with brilliant women all of whom delivered brilliant performances, Emma Stone is a frontrunner going by the season’s trends. Her turn as a young woman who defies socially prescribed choices to follow her dreams, took her out of her career comfort zone into a genre that required her to sing and dance in addition to act on screen. She did all three with equal aplomb.

She has already won the year’s Golden Globe (in the comedy or musical category), SAG and BAFTA Awards. Her performance in La La Land has earned her accolades across platforms, from the popular to the hard-core arty and serious, including 2016’s Best Actress trophy at Venice, the world’s oldest film festival. Although Natalie Portman beat her at the Critics Choice Awards and Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Golden Globe in the drama category, Stone is seen as a shoo-in for an Oscar. A loss for her will be a big surprise.

Most likely winner: Emma Stone

Closest competitors: Isabelle Huppert and Natalie Portman

My personal favourite (tough one): Emma Stone

Should have been nominated: Taraji P. Henson for Hidden Figures

BEST ACTOR:

Nominees:

Andrew Garfield for Hacksaw Ridge

Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Denzel Washington for Fences

Ryan Gosling for La La Land

Viggo Mortensen for Captain Fantastic

This category is harder to predict than the Best Actress this year because the awards season has not thrown up a clear frontrunner. Casey Affleck beat out Andrew Garfield, Denzel Washington and Viggo Mortensen to a Golden Globe in the drama category, while Ryan Gosling won a Globe in the musical or comedy category. Washington was not nominated for a BAFTA, the other four were; the prize went to Affleck. And all five gentlemen were in contention at the SAG Awards, where Washington emerged the winner.

Still, in a year when political correctness will be more at play than ever before, Academy voters may hesitate to vote for Affleck considering the cloud of sexual harassment charges he carries as baggage. Likewise, Washington may have an edge because of the manner in which the Academy has been shamed for its pro-white bias in recent years.

If Washington does win though, it would be a pity if the victory is attributed to anything but his stellar turn in Fences. As a householder who invites both sympathy and disgust (the latter is quite an achievement for a man with such a naturally likeable personality) he walked that fine line between being hard to love yet hard to hate on screen. Washington deserves to be named Best Actor at this year’s Oscars, not because of the colour of his skin, but because he did indeed deliver the year’s best performance by any male artiste in 2016.

Likely winner: Denzel Washington

Possible spoiler: Ryan Gosling

My personal favourite: Denzel Washington

My second choice: Ryan Gosling

A version of this article has been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/oscars-2017-predictions-will-moonlight-beat-la-la-land-stats-trends-and-our-picks-3302190.html

Photographs courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_La_Land_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(2016_film)

Release date:	March 3, 2017
Director:	Deven Bhojani
Cast: Language:	Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Esha Gupta, Freddy Daruwala, Adil Hussain, Satish Kaushik, Shefali Shah, Suhail Nayyar, Thakur Anoop Singh Hindi

It might be natural to assume that the tale of a government-appointed, trigger-happy action junkie on the trail of a murderous, black-money-laundering villain would be a fun ride, especially with His Royal Hotness, His Muscular Majesty Vidyut Jammwal in the driver’s seat.

Jammwal (yes, now with a double “M”) is as good-looking as a man can be. If you watched him on debut playing John Abraham’s bete noir in Force (2011), you probably know that already. As Captain Karanvir Singh Dogra in Commando 2: The Black Money Trail, the character he earlier played in the 2013 film Commando: A One Man Army, he does everything to please a lustful viewer. He executes sleek stunts, repeatedly jumping, spinning, flipping, whirling and twirling his beautiful body through the air. Above all, he wears a ganji in large parts of the film to serve us generous views of his bulky bare arms and shoulders. What more could a hormone-laden viewer ask for?

Finesse in storytelling, perhaps? Hmm, problem alert!

So it goes that India’s Central Government, anxious to show results after the demonetisation exercise, desperately wants to retrieve the crores of black money stashed away in foreign bank accounts and deposit it as largesse in the accounts of the general population at home. The crater-like pothole in its path is the Union Home Minister (Shefali Shah) whose son too has a cache of cash lying abroad. Pretending to work towards achieving the government’s goals, she assembles a crack team of mercenary officials who are at her beck and call. They must travel to Malaysia and arrest Vicky Chadha who is in the business of keeping safe the black money of a large number of corrupt Indians.

Knowing the Minister’s ill intentions, Karan – a trained army commando – sneaks his way into the group. The film is a battle of wits and fists between the honest, patriotic officer who doesn’t mind taking the law into his own hands (when it is for the country, how dare we complain!) and those who would betray the motherland for their personal gain.

Commando 2’s narrative delivers some unexpected twists and turns, but the colours that fill in the outline of the story are weak, amateurishly handled and in the end, amusing in a clumsy effort to play to the gallery. In a film of this sort, aimed at racing pulses rather than thinking minds, it is perhaps pointless to ask why the Home Minister alone is the moving force behind the government’s efforts at retrieving black money from abroad, with the Finance Minister nowhere in sight. But even as the racy action keeps us hooked, it is hard to get past Commando 2’s cliches and loopholes.

Karan & Co zip around Malaysia with such confidence and ease, it would seem that country is in India’s pocket and barely has a police force of its own. Adah Sharma plays Karan's teammate Bhavna Reddy, an irritating encounter specialist who harks back to the old Hindi film stereotype of a south Indian. Bhavna is a double whammy of sorts since she serves as a ditsy, frivolous female sidekick to Jammwal’s grim-as-hell Karan, a sort of female Chris Tucker to every serious white cop in Hollywood history. Besides, the romance between them feels terribly contrived and silly because of the complete lack of chemistry between the two.

Then there is their colleague Zafar, the most awkwardly written, stereotypical ‘good Muslim’ seen in recent years in Hindi cinema, the kind that – in my humble opinion – could only emerge from the pens of writers over-compensating for their deep-rooted suspicion of the community, a suspicion they may possibly not even be conscious of.

The film’s impressive action scenes and pretty hero cannot make up for its limited substance, which matters particularly because the action is not unrelenting. While Karan is bashing up baddies, it is hard to look away from the screen. When he is not, it becomes easy.

Sadly, there is more to Jammwal than that face, body and his fighting skills. Someone give this man a more substantial film, please.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	124 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/commando-2-movie-review-his-royal-hotness-vidyut-jammwal-in-a-super-silly-story-with-super-action-3313374.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_2:_The_Black_Money_Trail

Release date:	Kerala: February 23, 2017. All India: March 3.
Director:	Srikant Murali
Cast: Language:	Vineeth Sreenivasan, Mareena Michael, Sudheer Karamana, Vineetha Koshy, Aju Varghese, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Manish Choudhary Malayalam

If good intentions were all it took to make a good film, then cinephiles would be a much happier lot. Director Srikant Murali’s Aby, without question, has its heart in the right place. The problem with that heart? It struggles to beat.

Vineeth Sreenivasan plays Aby, a young man in rural Kerala who was born socially inept and seemingly mentally slow but turns out to be a scientifically inclined prodigy. From his early childhood, Aby has wanted to fly. Like Icarus and others before him, over the years he takes a string of uninformed risks to fulfill his dream. When he starts building a plane as an adult, he gets backing from unexpected quarters – but not from his father.

Aby’s mental challenge is compounded by his life-long troubles with that father (Sudheer Karamana), a violent alcoholic who is responsible for the premature death of the boy’s mother (Vineetha Koshy). The film is about Aby’s aspiration and the support he finds along the way from an array of people including kindly strangers, the woman he loves, Anumol (Mareena Michael), and a struggling, drunken businessman (Manish Choudhary) in Bengaluru.

In short, this is a story of a man-child who struggles to reach the sky and those who are able to look past his disability to spot the genius within.

A promising premise, no doubt, but one that – unlike the leading man – never lifts off. The early scenes featuring little Aby, his beleaguered mother and cruel father are the highlight of the film. A large part of the credit for this must go to the three actors involved, especially the impressive child artiste Vasudev. These introductory passages evoke empathy for the kid and establish an appropriately sombre mood, but wait as you might for this flight to take off, it does not.

Director Srikant Murali’s narrative is too languid to hold interest, and Sreenivasan is trying too hard to be cute, making this an unintentionally patronising take on a PwD (person with disability). The rest of the cast – especially Michael and Karamana – are strong, but when the lynchpin is wobbly, what can the best of performers do?

Santhosh Aechikkanam’s writing meanders as much as Murali’s directorial choices. Particularly odd is the conceptualisation of GK and the inexplicable casting of Bollywood actor Manish Choudhary rather than a Mollywood actor to play him. Apart from the hero’s father, GK is the only person with a commanding presence in Aby; in a film where every single primary character is Malayali, he is not one; he appears to be north Indian and speaks a mix of Malayalam, Hindi and English, attracting awed whispers from locals when he visits Aby’s village, an assumption on sight that he is a “veliya” (big) man, and by his mere presence disrupting the equanimity of the authorities who are, at that point, trying to stop Aby from flying.

In the unlikely scenario that Murali is using GK’s character to make a larger point about how Malayalis look up to north Indians, that point is lost here. Since the idea of an outsider from the big city automatically getting respect from a rural populace could as well have been conveyed with a Malayali character, it seems like Murali himself is unwittingly revealing his own reverence towards Hindi-bhaashis here.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps he just likes Choudhary and wanted to cast him in the film. I have no idea. Point is, the film’s problems are exemplified by this episode: it is inconsistent (the humane GK suddenly turns selfish and ferociously against Aby for no reason), it lacks detailing (the satellite characters are poorly fleshed out and consequently unappealing), it does not make the science interesting (try watching the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures currently in theatres, to understand how a filmmaker might build highly relatable scenes around mathematics that the average viewer would obviously be clueless about), it is ungainly, vague and all over the place.

So is the film.

Aby proves that the road to hell is not the only one paved with good intentions. So too is the road to ordinariness.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	133 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/aby-movie-review-vineeth-sreenivasan-plays-a-man-child-who-wants-to-fly-in-a-film-that-does-not-3314636.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aby_(film)

THERE ARE NO “HINDU ACTORS” & “MUSLIM ACTORS”, PLEASE!

The past three years have witnessed a blatant effort by communal forces to infiltrate viewer and reviewer responses to Hindi films

By Anna MM Vetticad

“Is not this same white missionary beach that gave 4 stars to raees, a movie on an anti-national Moslem terr0rist? Any Hindu actor’s movie, this hater tries to pull it down!” (sic)

This comment was one of many that appeared below my review of the Hindi film Jolly LLB 2, starring Akshay Kumar, published on Firstpost this month. If it weren’t so venomous, it would be funny. A friend with a vivid imagination says “missionary beach” conjures up visions of hanky panky in the sand — an experience I cannot claim to have had. Just as I did not give Raees a four-star review, I rated it 2.5 stars. Whatever. The truth, as you know, is irrelevant to propagandists. They prefer what Donald Trump’s aide Kellyanne Conway describes as “alternative facts”. 

So what’s new? After all, falsehoods and personal attacks against critics in the virtual world are as old as the day websites first opened their comments sections to the public. The preceding paragraphs signal a relatively recent trend in online animosity though, evidenced by the pigeon-holing of Kumar.

“Hindu actor” — what does that even mean? A man may simultaneously be Hindu and an actor, but to place the two words side by side is as reductive and demeaning to his craft as tags like “woman journalist”, “gay filmmaker”, “Dalit writer” and “black singer” when used outside discussions on discrimination.

If you have been around long enough, this labelling may remind you of Hrithik Roshan’s smashing debut in 2000, which led to some distasteful right-wing cheer at the arrival of a “Hindu superstar”. The dominance of the three Khans in the Hindi film industry had been a sore point with the Hindu Right for a while, but the political atmosphere was different back then, and the attempt to celebrate an actor’s religious identity remained on the margins of our collective existence.

That began to change with the BJP and Narendra Modi’s general election victory in 2014. The subsequent flow of the ruling party’s Internet battalions into the film criticism space turned into a flood in 2015, when Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan both publicly condemned religious intolerance. Since then, these trolls have unrelentingly exhorted viewers to boycott — and critics to slam — films starring “Muslim actors” Aamir and Shah Rukh, and to back “Hindu actors” Ajay Devgn, Hrithik Roshan and Kumar.

How can we know that these are BJP supporters, you ask? Because their vocabulary and behaviour patterns have consistently mirrored BJP trolls, and mimicked the party and government’s reaction to these stars. For instance, online workers goaded “nationalists” to boycott Snapdeal, since Aamir was its brand ambassador, and Dilwale, since it starred Shah Rukh, even as the sarkar engineered the termination of Aamir’s association with the Incredible India campaign and bullied Snapdeal into leaving him.

Meanwhile, these trolls have largely spared the other Khan, Salman. BJP insiders admit that this is one of Salman’s many rewards for his proximity to the PM and silence on the government’s shenanigans.

The repulsive communal profiling of Hindi film stars peaked this January  when the SRK-starrer Raees  clashed in theatres with Kaabilfeaturing Roshan. Online troops demanded that “nationalists” should skip Raeesand make Kaabila hit, while BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya batted for Kaabilwith  this obtuse tweet he claimed  was about demonetisation: “The #Raees who are not for the coun try are of no use. We should all  stand with a #Kaabil (worthy) patriot.”

As I write this column, I call up fellow critics to ask what they make of this ugly scenario. Raja Sen, whose reviews began appearing on Rediff in 2004, tells me, “The Hindu-Muslim divide among fan responses existed earlier too, but it was only one of many polarities including regionalism which one encountered as a journalist online. Now though, religion dominates responses to reviews. It is often clear that these people are not even paying attention to what you have written and that they are not necessarily film fans or mobs hired by some star’s PR, but may well be members of Chairman Modi’s orange army.”

Suparna Sharma, film critic for The Asian Age, offers this analysis: “Today’s online trolls attacking critics based entirely on the religion of certain stars are simply an extension of the ongoing campaign to communalise everything — the food we eat, the clothes we wear, how we vote, whether we stand for the national anthem or not... Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for us, box-office is secular. So while politicians and their Sanghi trolls can hound out, say, Pakistani actors from a film, they can’t really keep people out of theatres. I’d like to believe that critics, but more than them, audiences who queue up to buy tickets with their hard-earned money and commit two-three hours to a film, are above this sort of bunkum.”

Still, it is important to vocally condemn this well-strategised endeavour to infiltrate our reactions to cinema, because we cannot risk having well-meaning viewers and reviewers go the way of many political journalists, and subconsciously self-censor their public statements to avoid abuse. We live in a world where even shamshaan ghats (cremation grounds) and kabristaans (cemeteries) are being politicised. In this world, more than ever, it is important too to remind bigots that for a true cinephile, there are no “Hindu actors” and “Muslim actors”; there are only actors, characters, stories and films.

(This article was published in The Hindu Businessline’s BLink on February 25, 2017.)

Link to column published in The Hindu Businessline:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/there-are-no-hindu-actors-and-muslim-actors-please/article9557459.ece

Previous instalment of Film Fatale: Ignoring the jana in Jana Gana Mana

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/ignoring-the-jana-in-jana-gana-mana/article9503111.ece

Photographs courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raees_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangal_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_LLB_2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaabil

Release date:	March 10, 2017
Director:	Shashank Khaitan
Cast: Language:	Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Sahil Vaid, Sukmani Lamba, Swanand Kirkire, Yash Sinha, Shweta Basu, Rituraj Singh, Gauahar Khan, Aparshakti Khurana, Gaurav Pandey Hindi

The expression “breaking new ground” acquires new meaning in Badrinath Ki Dulhania (BKD). For one, in a film industry that has, over the years, reduced the number of female rape jokes it cracks, this one goes the other way and presents us with an extended joke on male rape.

I kid you not. Writer-director Shashank Khaitan appears to have bought into the widely prevalent notion that masculinity means the ability to ‘protect’ yourself, that no ‘real man’ would ever be the victim of sexual violence, and therefore, that the possibility of such violence is funny. And so, when a major male character in this film is almost raped, the incident is turned into the centerpiece of BKD’s humour.

Watching that passage made me sick to the stomach, especially because Khaitan’s insensitivity stems, in all likelihood, from actual ignorance, as I assume is the case with the audience in the hall where I watched this film, men and women who collapsed into a collective heap of laughter at the possibility of a man’s ‘lootthi izzat’.

Congratulations on scoring a goal, Mr Khaitan. In case you care enough though, do read up on male rape. It is a reality. It happens. It is not amusing.

This episode occurs in the second half of producer Karan Johar’s Badrinath Ki Dulhania starring Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan. It marks a low in a film replete with disturbing mixed messaging although it no doubt wants to be remembered as a feminist venture taking a strong stand against dowry and exhorting parents to free their daughters to follow their dreams.

On the face of it, BKD is indeed anti-patriarchal. Sadly though, it chooses to send out its message via a tricky tightrope walk. It is as if Khaitan made a note to himself as he wrote the script: make sure you please those darned feminists, but also make sure not to displease misogynists who dominate film audiences. The tragedy of this situation is that Khaitan, without question, does have a penchant for comedy, but chooses to use his talent irresponsibly.

Badrinath Ki Dulhania– a follow-up to the 2014 hit Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniawith the same director, producer and lead artistes – is about a resident of Jhansi called Badrinath Bansal (Varun Dhawan) who works as a recovery agent in his father’s loan business. Badri’s brother Alok (Yash Sinha) was forced to abandon his girlfriend and bring home a bride of his autocratic, dowry-hungry dad’s choice. Badri does not want such misfortune to strike him, so when he falls for Vaidehi Trivedi (Alia Bhatt) from Kota, he takes his destiny into his own hands.

He assumes that Vaidehi would be filled with gratitude at receiving a marriage proposal from the handsome son of a wealthy family. What he does not bargain for is that this feisty young woman has a mind and plans of her own. The story so far is refreshingly different.

In fact, large parts of BKD’s opening hour are genuinely hilarious. Bhatt is full of beans as always, Dhawan is on a roll, and the two play off each other well. Everyone and everything in the film are easy on the eye. Besides, even as the film begins to betray its illiberal core, the energy levels in the narrative are maintained by foot-tapping melodies and lively choreography in a string of lavish, Johar-style song-and-dance routines.

Since BKD asks to be taken seriously though, its desperate balancing act is even more glaring than it might otherwise have been. Badrinath is extremely violent towards Vaidehi. He is violent towards his closest buddy Somdev Mishra (Sahil Vaid). In both instances though, he makes it clear – as does the film – that he is not responsible for his behaviour. Poor helpless baby!

At every step of the way, care is taken to ensure – through dialogues and by means of Dhawan’s natural likeability – that Badri is never repulsive to us, however repugnant his actions ought to be. You see, he roughs up Vaidehi because he loves her, and he roughs up Som because that same love is turning him into a person even he does not like. He says so himself. What is a bechara mard to do when he is in love, especially when the woman he loves betrays him?

Ah yes, let us not forget that last point: the script cleverly assigns one highly inconsiderate, asshole-ish (pardon my language) deed to smart, independent, talented, ambitious Vaidehi, so that any viewer getting uncomfortable with the position BKD takes on women’s rights is handed enough material to be able to offer this defence of Badri, “Par ladki ne bhi toh galti ki (what the girl did was wrong too).” You know the kind of remark we like to pass when we hear that a husband hit his wife? Thatkind.

This single deed by Vaidehi is also ammunition in the filmmaker’s hands for any viewer who is disturbed by BKD’s rose-tinted view of Badri’s vileness. “He is cho cute, yaar. Aur ladki ne bhi toh galti ki.”

And whaddyaknow, Vaidehi herself never outrightly condemns Badri’s violence, explaining her continuing kindness towards him in these words to a friend: “Kyunki galti hamari hai (because the fault is mine) and he alone is bearing the consequences.” She claims the galtiis hers and seeks forgiveness again thereafter, and then again, that too in a setting where, in the real world, a young woman would very likely have lost her life.

It does not matter that the entire cast of Badrinath Ki Dulhania is charming, that the visuals are pretty, or that Aparshakti Khurana and Gauahar Khan once again make an impression in tiny roles. What matters is that BKD’s comical vein and presentation are carefully designed to lull us into not noticing its innate dishonesty and possible lack of awareness of harsh realities.

At the end of the day, that is what Badrinath Ki Dulhaniais: a dishonest film, neither fully committed to the causes it apparently espouses nor to its own closeted conservatism.

“Thhoda mard bano(Be a man). Either teach her a lesson or let us leave this place,” Som exhorts Badri in the midst of the hero’s revenge spree against Vaidehi. Sweet Som, who we have begun to like by then and continue to like because he is just such a nice guy and Sahil Vaid is such a gifted actor.“Par ladki ne bhi toh galti ki,” did you say?

Like Som, Badrinath Ki Dulhania is not what it appears to be. It is sad to see an acclaimed, seemingly thinking actress like Alia Bhatt lend herself to the games this film plays.

PS: The credits list Bhatt after Dhawan, although they have equally important and substantial roles in the film. Just saying.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	139 minutes 25 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/badrinath-ki-dulhania-movie-review-it-hurts-to-see-alia-bhatt-in-this-dishonest-film-3327570.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/BKDMovieOfficial/

Release date:	Kerala: March 3, 2017. All India: March 10.
Director:	Lijo Jose Pellissery
Cast: Language:	Antony Varghese, Reshma Rajan, Tito Wilson, Sarath Kumar, Kichu Tellus, Vineeth Vishwam, Binny Rinky Benjamin, Sruthy Jayan, Amrutha Anna Reji Malayalam

Black comedy and slice-of-life cinema meet in director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Angamaly Diaries, a delightful, unexpectedly hilarious take on the squalid underbelly of Kerala’s Angamaly town.

If ever there was an example of the committed cinephile’s dictum “it is not the story but the treatment that makes a film”, you have it here. Because if you think about it, Angamaly Diaries– funny and insightful in equal measure – does not have a story in the conventional sense, yet that, among so many other reasons, is what makes it brilliant.

In the film’s opening sequence, we witness a fight between two local gangs. We are soon introduced to the protagonist Pepe Joseph, who turns out to be the quintessential boy who never grew up. We learn that as a schoolkid, Pepe was captivated by a particular gang of ruffians – or “team” as he calls it – drawn from an Angamaly football team. His childhood goal was to have a “team” of his own.

Despite the distractions that accompany such an ambition, Pepe manages to pass school, make it through most of a B.A. (History) course and notch up some long-term relationships with women along the way. Aggression is a constant in his life, yet he treats nothing with a sense of urgency. At one point, events take what you and I might consider a dramatic turn, causing his plans for his future to go awry. He treats that episode too as just another occurrence – albeit a challenging one – rather than an earth-shattering, potentially ruinous affair.

When I was not keeling over with laughter at the accent, vocabulary, style of speaking and eccentricities of the characters in Angamaly Diaries, I was busy pushing my eyes back into their sockets since they kept popping out in reaction to the nonchalance with which these volcanic people draw blood, literally. The casualness of violence and the unending cycle that every action unleashes is the underlying theme of the film, despite its comedic overtone.

Pellissery has a reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker so it should come as no surprise that he has extracted so many acute observations from Angamaly’s everyday affairs. However, the notable new voice emerging from this film is actor Chemban Vinod Jose who makes a smashing debut as a writer with Angamaly Diaries.

It is a huge achievement for a film revolving around amorality, to not normalise or deify anyone’s attitudes or actions. Angamaly Diaries manages that. It remains largely inoffensive although it is filled with offensive characters constantly indulging in objectionable behaviour.

There are just two passages where I found myself feeling uncomfortable, when it seemed like the writer and director’s blasé tone might possibly be emerging from their own casualness towards Pepe and gang’s disturbing conduct: once, when the voiceover mentions that as children these chaps would peep into bathrooms to ogle bathing women; second, when a man they are roughing up gets a fit and collapses with a foaming mouth. Obviously this is just a hunch, but I am mentioning it because I felt no such confusion in the rest of the film.

Pellissery’s you’re-watching-life-as-it-happens narrative is greatly helped by some clever editing at the hands of Shameer Mohammed and Girish Gangadharan’s seamlesscinematography, especially in the execution of that gasp-inducing long-drawn-out finale in the middle of a noisy church festival. The director has also used Prashant Pillai’s music very effectively, never once allowing it to overshadow the people at the heart of his unusual film.

Angamaly Diaries’ exceptional cast reportedly features 86 debutants. This might explain why they all come across as ordinary folk who happened to stroll on to a film set rather than performers. They are all as easy before the camera as veterans might be. Their highly convincing performances are among the film’s many USPs.

Antony Varghese playing Pepe combines his natural talent with remarkable good looks that shine through despite the protagonist’s scruffy appearance. There is a potential matinee idol in Varghese, waiting to be tapped by Mollywood.

The other notable presences in the film are the pretty and charismatic Reshma Rajan playingPepe’s friend Lily Chechi a.k.a. Lichi, and Tito Wilson as rival gang member U-Clamp Rajan.

Humour combined with realism are the immediate attractions of this engaging, uncommon film. Foodies please note that there is also much pleasure to be derived from the many cooking shots and conversations about culinary experiments in Angamaly Diaries. You are not human if your mouth does not water at the description of Pepe’s mother’s signature recipe, or sundry pork and beef dishes, kappa (tapioca) with potato (how deliciously unhealthy that sounds!) and tapioca with egg.

Okay… that’s it… I can’t take this any more. Sorry for my abruptness, but I must wind up this review immediately. First, I must pick myself off the floor where I fell laughing after watching Angamaly Diaries. Then I must wipe the drool off my mouth, the embarrassing after-effect of writing that last paragraph. Most important though, I am now overcome by the urge to consume kappa in various sinful combinations, so excuse me for taking off in this fashion.

Angamaly Diaries is my favourite Malayalam film of the year so far. It is, to use a somewhat untranslatable Malayali expression, kumbleet adipoli.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	132 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/angamaly-diaries-movie-review-whattefun-this-is-black-comedy-at-its-best-3330750.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angamaly_Diaries

Release date:	Kerala: March 3, 2017. All India: March 10.
Director:	Tom Emmatty
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Roopesh Peethambaran, Neeraj Madhav, Gayathri Suresh, Sudheer Karamana, Kalabhavan Shajon, Megha Mathew Malayalam

Debutant director Tom Emmatty’s Oru Mexican Aparatha (translated in the subtitles as: A Mexican Enormity) is inspired by the bloody rivalry between Kerala’s student political outfits. Depending on which side of the divide you inhabit, it is possible you may either be irritated or emotionally drawn to this film that makes no bones about its Communist inclinations. It may be a good idea to set your party leanings aside though and watch with an open mind, because despite its openly propagandist portions and weaknesses, this is an interesting ride.

The film begins with a sepia-tinted flashback to 1970s Kerala where the Communist student leader Kochaniyan (Tovino Thomas) is martyred at Maharaja’s College. Kochaniyan is a key member of the fictional SFY – no prizes for guessing what that acronym alludes to.

Fast forward to this century, and Thomas now plays the happy-go-lucky, alcohol-swilling, girl-chasing, mischievous student Paul who belongs to SFY but has no particular career ambitions in politics. His friend Subhash (Neeraj Madhav) is far more earnest about his involvement with the party. Soon, Subhash is appointed by the parent organisation to revive SFY at their college. This is a massive mountain to climb, since SFY is now virtually dead at Maharaja’s and the rival KSQ – another barely disguised acronym – prevails with intimidation and physical assaults.

The film’s opening half eases viewers into the impending intensity with equal parts humour and grimness. We learn that, when left to themselves, Paul and most of his friends would prefer to down booze, indulge in loose talk about girls, acquire girlfriends and fool around rather than study or devise political strategies. They are rudely awakened from their immature indulgences by KSQ’s high-handedness, led by the violence-prone Roopesh (Roopesh Peethambaran).

The story then quickly descends into Machiavellian schemes and ultimately bloodshed, as both groups work towards winning the coming college elections.

The pre-interval portion of the film, more light-footed than the second half, is often entertaining but also – sadly – often unwittingly betrays the filmmaker’s prejudices. For instance, a believable view of college life in Kerala would perforce feature gender segregation and stalking. Oru Mexican Aparatha does that without suggesting that this is acceptable behaviour, by at first highlighting the silliness of the male students concerned. However, it soon goes down a path now predictable in Mollywood – mirroring notions widely prevalent in society – by assuming that a woman who is friendly but not attracted to the hero must of course be a cheat and a user.

In a film that clearly fancies itself to be progressive, such casual misogyny is disappointing.

Insightful though Oru Mexican Aparatha is on other fronts, its patriarchal worldview is unmistakable. When the population of female characters in your story is so small that their numbers do not exceed the fingers of one hand, you might introspect about why you do not automatically see women as full-fledged beings instead of mere adjuncts to the male existence, either potential lovers or traitors or mute supporters (yes literally, without dialogues). Sure this is Paul’s story and therefore every character’s identity is defined in relation to him, but even considering that circumstance, the tertiariness of women in Oru Mexican Aparathais off-putting.

Still, at a time when individuals across the country are chickening out of declaring their adherence to any party other than the one currently ruling at the Centre, it is unusual to see Emmatty’s unapologetic openness about his affection for the Communists in his film, and the lack of pretence regarding his references to real life. The plot also offers several unexpected twists, keeping even a cynical viewer like yours truly engaged.

Although Oru Mexican Aparatha takes a sanitised view of the Communist party leadership in the state, it does well to remind viewers that even when we are faced with a dangerous enemy, most often the greater enemy lies within.

The college and the students at Maharaja’s feel authentic, a factor of good acting combined with true-to-life production design (note those dingy hostel rooms) and Emmatty’s laidback narrative style in the first half of the film. Tovino Thomas has an impactful screen presence. His build and talent make him an obvious candidate for stardom. That said, though he is impressive and naturalas Paul, he is too self-conscious in his brief appearances as Kochaniyan.

Neeraj Madhav and Roopesh Peethambaran are excellent. The supporting cast is effective although they are constrained by the limited writing of their characters.

Therein lies the primary problem with Oru Mexican Aparatha. We are drawn into Paul, Subhash and Roopesh’s lives, passion and plans, but none of the other characters is as well-etched-out as the three leads. Therefore we never understand how all these games end up influencing their college mates. Who are those kids who passively watch the extreme violence unleashed in their presence? How do they pick one party over the other? What are their motivations? The writing makes no effort to breathe life into these satellite players in the story. The cursory treatment of the chameleonesque Ardra perfectly illustrates this point.

Oru Mexican Aparatha’s music is rousing, but used too much and too loud in the narrative. The college campus is credible, but cinematographer Prakash Velayudhan deliverstoo many cliched shots of groups of men turning corners and walking towards the camera in slow motion.

Oddly enough, despite its many follies, Oru Mexican Aparatha remains an immersive experience. Its take on campus politics is slightly simplistic. However, the director’s apparent commitment to his convictions combined with thematic relevance and the smooth transition from a languid first half to absorbing post-interval briskness makes this a watchable film.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	143 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/oru-mexican-aparatha-movie-review-interesting-political-saga-with-an-undisguised-communist-soul-3331874.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oru_Mexican_Aparatha

Release date:	March 17, 2017
Director:	Vikramaditya Motwane
Cast: Language:	Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa, Khushboo Upadhyay Hindi

At one point during Vikramaditya Motwane’s Trapped, much to my embarrassment, I started in my seat and shook an imagined rat off my foot, only to realise that what I mistook for a rodent was in fact my handbag which I had placed there when I sat down. Having recovered from a fright, I surreptitiously looked around shame-faced, to check that no one in the audience had noticed the disturbance I thought I had caused. Thankfully they had not.

This is the kind of reaction a film elicits only when it zeroes in on the audience’s own fears, especially those we are expected to – but do not – grow past when we enter adulthood. Everyone has ’em. Mine are rats, lizards and – even at this age – ghosts standing behind curtains in darkened rooms at night. Motwane picks the first item on that list and effectively whips up the eeriness quotient of his film as a result.

Trapped is the story of a young man in Mumbai who gets locked in a flat in an empty high-rise building. In the absence of food, water and electricity, 35 storeys above the ground, he struggles to remain alive through the several days that it takes him to figure out an escape route.

At first, it is hard not to be intrigued by the innovative ways in which Shaurya (played by Rajkummar Rao) manages to keep himself going. His claustrophobia and dread are palpable. That rat, for one – yikes!

Cinematographer Siddarth Diwan draws us into the protagonist’s struggles by hugging him so close that it often feels like we are walking with him rather than watching him. When the camera does draw away, it does so with a specific purpose, usually highlighting Rao’s, and therefore Shaurya’s, littleness. We are reminded then, that this is no Rana Daggubati or John Abraham or a conventional film hero by any yardstick; this is a small man facing a mammoth challenge lost in a tiny corner of a mammoth city.

Films such as this one, where a solo individual struggles against apparently insurmountable odds, work best when the audience is truly invested in the central figure rediscovering themselves through an ordeal. Like Chuck in Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, Pi in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi and – my favourite of the genre – Aron in Danny Boyle’s unbelievably enthralling 127 Hours. Shaurya does not enter their league because for the most part, all we get is a surface feel of the man behind his Everyman appearance. So yes, he is a non-descript chap who rises above his seeming ordinariness in extraordinary circumstances, and yes, he comes up with ingenious ways to beat the odds he is up against in that isolated flat, but Trapped fails to capture his heart and mind with depth.

What the film ends up being then is a series of oh-my-did-he-really-do-that and what-would-I-have-done-in-the-same-situation moments, which too lose their sheen in the last half hour. Shaurya’s survival tactics remain admirable throughout ifyou give them some thought, but the manner in which they are portrayed becomes too matter-of-fact after a while and ceases to inspire the awe it should as a reflex response. Trapped is in trouble as soon as the sense of urgency wanes.

Worse, the film does not quite manage to convey the inexorable passage of time (an element so crucial to the genre) in that cramped space, a couple of solutions fall into place rather too easily towards the end, and logic takes a walk beyond a point. For instance, with so little nutrition available to him despite his inventiveness, how does Shaurya not collapse from fatigue in that flat? No doubt a statement is being made about modern urban life and how unconnected denizens of a sprawling metropolis can be, but it still defies believability that not a soul in his life bothers to look for him.

Rao is a fine actor, we already know that. He underplays Shaurya well, but the sustained sense of possible doom and his unbreakable resolve, both essential to a film like this, can come only from compelling writing and direction, not from good acting alone.

Geetanjali Thapa is reasonably effective in her brief appearances in Trapped as Shaurya’s friend Noorie. Khushboo Upadhyay has barely a few seconds of screen time as a woman living near Shaurya’s multi-storey deathtrap, but those moments are enough to note that she is an artiste with a screen presence who is worth watching out for.

This is Motwane’s third film as a director and it is clear that minimalism is his natural style. His debut, Udaan, which won multiple awards in India and was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2010’s Un Certain Regard section, simmered with explosive rage rendered all the more forceful because of his no-frills storytelling. Lootera was gripping, with both Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh toning themselves down to fit the film. In Trapped though, Motwane takes the unfussy direction too far.

It is one thing to avoid high-pitched melodrama, but quite another to allow your film to lapse into lack of energy. Trapped is interesting to begin with. It also makes telling comments about the loneliness of individuals in a crowd and the downside of a city that never sleeps: if no one is ever silent long enough to listen, how can your cry for help – literal or metaphorical – ever be heard?

Sadly though, the film is unable to maintain those interest levels through its 102 minutes and 56 seconds running time. This promising premise combined with the formidable talents of Vikramaditya Motwane and Rajkummar Rao should have added up to much more.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	102 minutes 56 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/trapped-movie-review-a-promising-premise-and-rajkummar-rao-should-have-added-up-to-more-3338124.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_(2017_film)

Release date:	March 17, 2017
Director:	Nicholas Kharkongor
Cast: Language:	Rajat Kapoor, Kalki Koechlin, Lushin Dubey, Shiv Pandit, Rohan Joshi, Danish Hussain, Yuri Suri, Adil Hussain English with some Hindi

In an early scene from Mantra, a little girl at a shop counter asks for King Chips. All around her there lie only packets of the upstart brand Kipper, which the shopkeeper is hardselling. She is undeterred. King Chips is what she wants and King Chips is all she will have. The dukaandaar finally gives in, fetching a packet from a corner at the back of his establishment where he had stashed it away from the gaze of customers, not having bargained for this one insistent child.

Her loyalty is rare in a market where money buys visibility and where consumer choices could be driven as much by a lack of alternatives as by natural inclinations, Indian cinema itself being a case in point. What, for instance, might the girl have done, if she had been told that Kipper was the only brand in stock? Would she have had the time to scour the market? Would she have given up eating chips altogether?

Questions, questions… They come up at every juncture of director Nicholas Kharkongor’s crowd-funded film set in New Delhi in 2004, when the protagonist Kapil Kapoor’s home-grown business is on the verge of bankruptcy as his King Chips struggles against the greater resources of Kipper’s multinational owners.

Rajat Kapoor plays Kapil a.k.a. KK, whose losing battle with Kipper has destroyed his peace of mind. His wife Meenakshi (Lushin Dubey) is wilting under the weight of their loveless marriage. Meanwhile, KK is trying to be an attentive father to their children who he once neglected. Their 28-year-old son Viraj (Shiv Pandit) does not want anything to do with his Dad’s company, opting instead to start a restaurant chain, from the name of which the film derives its title. Daughter Pia (Kalki Koechlin) is a chef in Mantra Delhi. At 25, she wants a life of greater independence from her father who she resents. The family of five is rounded off by their much younger sibling Vir (Rohan Joshi) who, at 16, has discovered love and sex on the Internet.

The Kapoors’ public facade of normalcy hides great professional and personal turmoil.

KK is the point at which the old and new collide, in a world where “mantra” could indicate a cool hangout to a hip youngster or our vulnerable Bhartiya sanskriti to an aggressive nationalist. Manmohan Singh and P.V. Narasimha Rao’s liberalisation policies from the 1990s have altered India forever. Atal Bihari Vajyapee’s PM-ship is coming to an end, but Hindutvavaadi forces are still on the rise. In this cauldron of change, family is sometimes a source of solace, but very often not.

Mantra has several ingredients that work in its favour. Kharkongor’s script is often observant, and touches upon multiple issues without seeming self-conscious about its social conscience. The background score is pleasant, soothing and almost thoughtful. And though this is not a dominant factor, I enjoyed the artwork on the walls of the Kapoor home.

If the film does not come together as a whole, it is for clearly identifiable reasons: first, the cast is a mixed bag; second, the English dialogues do not sit well on several of them; third, the equation between the five Kapoors is not fully established, as a result of which I found myself rooting for some of them as individuals but not for the family as a whole (unlike, say, the equally unhappy Mehras who we met in Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Doin 2015).

Curiously enough, Mantra’s most memorable passages involve a brief encounter between a Kapoor and an absolute stranger: KK’s comfort level with a bemused truck driver, Pia trying to knock logic into the heads of misogynistic policemen, the humour in KK’s drunken night-time revelry with an unnamed drug user, and – above all – a poignant conversation between Pia and a restaurant delivery man who responds to her call for help in a life-threatening situation.

These episodes give us glimpses of Kharkongor’s potential in an otherwise inconsistent film.

Koechlin and Pandit are the pick of the primary cast. Dubey is awkward throughout. And Rajat Kapoor’s likeable screen presence cannot camouflage his discomfort with his English lines though he seems fine while occasionally speaking Hindi in the film.

He is still better off than Maya Rao and a couple of the other supporting artistes, who sound like they are spouting English dialogues written for Western characters in a Western play that has not been adapted to the Indian English idiom. We see too many such productions on the Delhi stage.

The blame for this unevenness rests mostly with the writing, though the actors must take some responsibility too, if you consider that Koechlin and Pandit slip in and out of English and Hindi without sounding mannered at all while speaking English, as some of their seniors in the film do.

Which brings me to an important question: why on earth do we not see more of Shiv Pandit as a hero in films? Or Adil Hussain? Pandit manages to draw something out of his role despite the limited exploration of his character in the script. And Hussain rules with an appearance that lasts barely a couple of minutes.

That scene in which Pia breaks down while confiding in his character, a migrant from Jharkhand, is the stand-out moment in Mantra. Give us more where that came from, Mr Kharkongor.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	96 minutes 03 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mantra-movie-review-adil-hussain-and-encounters-with-strangers-stand-out-in-an-uneven-film-3340020.html

Poster courtesy: imdb.com

REVIEW 459: KUNG FU YOGA

REVIEW 460: ALIF

REVIEW 461: FUKRI

REVIEW 462: BAGHTOS KAY… MUJRA KAR

REVIEW 463: JOLLY LLB 2 (a.k.a. THE STATE VS JOLLY LLB 2)

NATIONAL ANTHEM GUIDELINES FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

REVIEW 464: IRADA

REVIEW 465: RUNNING SHAADI

REVIEW 466: EZRA

REVIEW 467: THE GHAZI ATTACK

REVIEW 468: RANGOON

OSCARS 2017 PREDICTIONS

REVIEW 469: COMMANDO 2: THE BLACK MONEY TRAIL

REVIEW 470: ABY

CAMPAIGN TO COMMUNALISE DISCUSSIONS ON HINDI CINEMA / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

REVIEW 471: BADRINATH KI DULHANIA

REVIEW 472: ANGAMALY DIARIES

REVIEW 473: ORU MEXICAN APARATHA

REVIEW 474: TRAPPED

REVIEW 475: MANTRA