Showing posts with label Neil Mukesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neil Mukesh. Show all posts
Movie Review - 7 Khoon Maaf
Ray
Marry Go Round
A macabre opera that does not translate into captivating cinema
When I heard that Vishal Bharadwaj was going to adapt Ruskin Bond's short story Susanna's 7 husbands, I was intrigued as well as skeptical at the same time. I haven't read the original story but I suspect its  narrative technique would be episodic, as the protagonist (or antagonist?) moves on from one husband to another. So it made me unsure as to how such a somewhat sporadic skin would be turned into  continuous flesh. Enter, Vishal , whose works in the past speak for themselves and if anyone could transform Bond's story into cinema, then it would be him. However, I think, certain tales remain stories that are best kept in books and we rather let them unfold in our heads to assimilate its guilty pleasure as they do not possess that lineament which makes them fit for an adaptation on celluloid. 

Susanna(Priyanka Chopra) starts as the battered wife of a invalid army man(Neil Mukesh) who we are explained has all the qualities of the typical Indian husband - boring, distrustful and flatulent. After bumping him off, she moves to another man, a junkie rockstar(John Abraham), a soulful poet with a sado-masochist streak(Irrfan), a cheating Russian(Alexandr Dyachenko), a greedy doctor(Naseeruddin Shah), a timid sex starved cop(Annu Kapoor) and a mystery man. 

The brandishes of Bharadwaj are there though if you look hard like the shiver-inducing sequence of the army man caressing Susanna with his half limb, the transitioning from marriage to funeral in one shot, references to literature, Tarantino-esque sequences like blood splattered walls and a cool cameo by Ruskin Bond himself towards the end. 
However, you cannot mask your disappointment when you cannot get inside the head of the main character. As the narrator Arun(superbly portrayed by Vivaan Shah) tries to dive into his  godmother's head as to why she kills her men rather than leaving them, we ask ourselves the same question. In the form of an anecdote we are told that when she was a child she used to be harassed by a dog while on her way to school, but instead of taking a different path she blew the canine's brains off. That is like a shining light, the tremendous gist of this film. Susanna in our eyes is then is a feminist vigilante, a voice for women lib, making this world safer from adulterous and oppressive men. But then contrastingly, she is shown as love-starved, a person who sluggishly just moves on from one bad relationship to another . We would then rather deplore the lack of judgment the woman has rather than applaud her liberties. Hard to sympathize eh? 

I couldn't bear What's your Rashee? What's with Ms Chopra doing in these type of looping sequence films. The episodes for this film are : Find husband, discover the rot, so kill him and this repeats and repeats.
Priyanka's performance meanders between the good and the average and lacks the depth you would associate while playing such a character. As a character, she does not get to display enough histrionics although the make up work is excellent. The supporting cast is pretty good while from the husbands, it is difficult to say which one makes an impact because of the abrupt screen times. Just as you are settling on one,  he is done away with that too with mind-boggling ease. However, Annu Kapoor records a worthy performance. 

7 Khoon Maaf would perhaps be best played out in the form of musical theater, a macabre opera(once again Gulzar and Vishal are in awesome form) because of its tantalizing atmosphere. As a movie, it fails and at times bores. As a fan of Vishal, with a good track record , I guess there is always scope for one bad movie maaf.
  Rating : 2/5
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Movie Review - Lafangey Parindey / Badmaash Company
Ray

Flighless Bird

An entertaining love story with some engaging moments that doesn’t reach the heights it sets out to achieve.

There is a scene where two people are discussing one’s future in the car and the song playing on the radio is “Aagey bhi Jaane na tu” For that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. Lafangey Parindey directed by Pradeep Sarkar.

In the very first scene as you see a shot of blood slowly dripping from a bare-knuckle boxer’s nose, you get the feeling that the movie is serious about showcasing the rise of the protagonists from the squalor they live in. However the movie takes a different turn and takes the plot of the Rajesh Khanna hit Dushman and comes up with a romantic tale set amidst a middle class Mumbai chawl.

One shot Nandu(Neil Nitin Mukesh) as his name suggests is a boxer and in short is a vagabond. In the course of events, he wrongs a fellow chawl dweller Pinki(Padukone) who has aspirations to become India’s dance icon. How he performs penitence forms the gist of the movie.

The exchanges between Nandu, Pinki and friends are amusing. Music which is rarely used in a good way in Hindi films helps this movie in a big way and well done to the director and composer R.Anandh for providing the right sort of harmony that bumbles with nervous energy. The song Nain Parindey is superbly rendered by Shilpa Rao and nicely picturized. Those are the good elements.

The bad elements are a predictable storyline and a so-so art design. For people living in a relatively bad economic health, Nandu’s and Pinki’s wardrobe is immaculate. They just look too trendy to be involved with anything middle-class. But they do a fair job. The supporting cast is a lot more convincing than the leads. Everyone sports the Mumbaiyya lingo very well notwithstanding that their language looks way too polished.

As I said, for the way the movie starts, it is a tad disappointing that the film turns into a gentle flowing love story. Lafangey Parindey like Wake up Sid is a highly watchable film in the generic sense, however it is lightweight and how you wish, our filmmakers would abandon the gaiety and dig into the filth for a harder hitting film. This parindey doesn’t take flight.

Rating : 3/5

C-ON the money, not..

A comeuppance story that refreshingly stays away from the sermon but still gets tiresome.

There is strictly something very 90s about Badmaash Company and its ethos penned by first time director Parmeet Sethi. And the movie too, does start in the 90s when India was just out from the clutches of License Raj. And the man who wants to ride this new wave of freedom is Karan(Shahid Kapoor) who harangues his father (a superb Anupam Kher) for being a slave to his company for twenty five years. He represents the new India, an individualistic young man.

The first half has bouncy moments between the friends Chandu(Vir Das) Tenzing(Meiyang Chang) and Bulbul(Anushka Sharma) as they involve themselves in a number of con games in a get rich quick scheme in the name of a fraud company. Sethi however invests less in the characters and is more interested to show us the panache behind the hustle.

And then you always knew that the law was around the corner. The graph of the film goes downhill thereafter as the hero is punished for his greed and like the 90s movies and before that the company breaks apart, due to predictable reasons of coveting more money than needed. The movie moves on at such a pace that the director leaves no time to flesh out the other characters. Also, the transformation arc of Karan from simple youth to arrogant uncouth prick is not very convincing.

Songs are stylishly shot and show good verve. A Yashraj film is never short of that, it helps them disguise the shortcomings of the script. Shahid who rarely looks like a grown up, makes a good effort as the brain behind the con games. Anushka gives a good account of herself and both Vir Das and Meiyang Chang are lively.

But Badmaash Company is strictly average fare and times so silly that a bunch of kids in the local neighbourhood would be more deserving of the titular adjective.

Rating : 2/5
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