Heroes - Bollywood Movie Review

Film: “Heroes”
Director: Samir Karnik
Cast: Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Salman Khan, Preity Zinta, Mithun Chakraborty, Dino Morea, Sohail Khan, Vatsal Sheth
Rating: ****

Not since Rakeysh Mehra’s “Rang De Basanti” have we seen a film so inspiring. Portions of “Heroes” are pure genius, sparkling with the unshed tears of a mother whose child dies before she can hold it in her arms and nurture it.

Here’s a piece of cinema that we need to applaud for its idealism and absolute absence of cynicism in telling a story that invites the conscience to cry for a country and global society that can’t think beyond its own nose.

But wait. “Heroes” is not a flag-waving exercise propagating the join-the-army message.

Yes, to begin with, the film does put that message forward. But soon enough you journey across the toughest Indian terrain of intense warmth and acute cold in pursuit of a dream that transcends everyday existence. And you realise “Heroes” is about bereavement and how to cope with it without getting cynical about subjects like patriotism.

To a wife in Punjab who copes with a child and her dead soldier husband’s parents on her own, or a wheel-chaired soldier who has lost his kid brother to war, or to an ageing couple coping with the death of their only son to war, does it matter if the country needs to be protected from outside aggression?

The answer to the question is not provided in rhetoric and sermons but in the course of the vivid journey that takes our two narrators Sohail Khan and Vatsal Seth to the heart of the country.

“Heroes” is shot in the hearts of characters who are wounded by war without going to the battlefront.

This isn’t the first film about the war bereaved coping with their loss. At times “Heroes” is redolent of J.P. Dutta’s “Border” and “LOC Kargil” - homesick soldiers writing lovelorn letters, the battery of war vehicles winding their way through mountainous terrain and soldiers coming home in coffins.

We’ve seen it all before. But director Samir Karnik succeeds in taking the theme of patriotism and soldierly duties far beyond the clichés.

Some interludes woven into the multitude of grieving characters’ lives are heart rending. The look in Preity’s eyes when she holds her dead husband’s letter in her trembling hands, or much later when our two narrators travel in a vehicle loaded with coffins of war martyrs, or Mithun Chakraborty’s breakdown before his dead son’s picture.

“Heroes” connects with us in ways that are emotional and spiritual. Often while you watch the characters live through a devastating loss, you feel the screenwriter, dialogue writer and director breathe a vigorous life into the scenes.

All three segments of bereavement and reconciliation are designed with a great deal of emotional honesty and clamped intensity. If one has to pick a favourite, it would have to be where Vatsal-Sohail meet Preity, who plays the brave Punjabi war widow.

Disappearing into herself to emerge with a character who is dignified in her tragedy, Preity gives the film’s best performance.

Effortlessly and persuasively, Karnik goes from pure emotionalism to unstoppered populism. Watch Sunny Deol’s fight in the pub where he swings into full-fledged action from a wheelchair. It is truly a paisa-vasool sequence.

Besides Preity, Sunny, Mithun Chakbraborty, child actor Dwij Yadav and Sohail Khan leave the strongest impression. Vatsal’s rawness goes well with his spoilt-rich-coming-of-age character.

The two cinematogaphers - Binod Pradhan and Gopal Shah - create stirring echoes of spiritual and emotional majesty without letting the colour schemes become over-representational.

On the minus side, the songs and dances are largely over-stated and obtrusive. Sohail and Vatsal’s striptease with Riya Sen and Amrita Arora belongs to another film, another world.

A special word for Karnik and Aseem Arora’s dialogues. The conversations convey both the reality of life and the richness of a life that exists beyond the mundane everyday chit-chat.

After watching “Heroes”, one wonders whether it was really Samir Karnik who made the no-show “Kyun, Ho Gaya Na”.

EMI - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Saurabh Kabra
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Urmila Matondkar, Arjun Rampal, Malaika Arora, Ashish Chowdhary, Neha Oberoi
Rating: **

You have to salute the Sanjay Dutt-Urmila Matondkar dinner on the dock in the second-half of this socially relevant in parts, emotionally elevating morality tale where Sanjay’s gloriously goofy and endearing character proposes to the object of his adoration.

The sequence shows great emotional control, comic timing and dramatic subtlety. It builds up splendidly into a spiral of implosive romance. And Urmila skilfully weaves coquettishness into contrivance to show how a lady can manipulate a man without meaning any harm.

The above sequence shows debutant director Saurabh Kabra’s control of the medium. Alas, this control isn’t evident everywhere. This valid tale about loan recovery scampers all over the place, quite like those poor debtors being chased by the loan sharks.

At a time when the world faces severe economic recession, “EMI” sounds a topical alarm bell. Tragically the narration doesn’t follow the golden rule of survival. It stumbles at times in trying to over-reach, moving the body of the plot into positions that damages the narration.

Miraculously every time the four set of characters stumble, director Kabra catches them and puts them back into place. You only wish the characters, lived-in and feeling rather than faking the emotions, would have been located into a more virile and vibrant environment.

Quite clearly Sanjay’s role, personality and performance are a carry-over from the ‘Munnabhai’ films.

The postures assumed by the plot don’t quite match the sincerity of the actors, all of whom perform with gusto.

Arjun Rampal and, surprisingly, Ashish Chaudhary lend a contagious verve to their parts without converting their characters into clownish caricatures. And a word for the seasoned Kulbhushan Kharbanda. Does he ever disappoint?

While the guys take over the show, Urmila and Malaika Arora provide the glamour. But Malaika’s item songs seem forced into the plot.

The sense of segmented satirical momentum is kept afloat through the performances. The dialogues by Nitin Raikwar and T. Govind Rajan capture the desperate energy and the underlining humour of a generation that’s rapidly losing the plot.

Blessedly, the film manages to stay on the right track. Never overwhelming in its social message on middle-class extravagance, but managing to make the ends meet from the beginning to the end.

Karzzz - Bollywood Movie Review

Film: “Karzzz”
Cast: Himesh Reshammiya, Urmila Matondkar, Danny Denzongpa, Gulshan Grover, Shweta Kumar, Dino Morea
Director: Satish Kaushik
Rating: * ½

This is Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Dhoom. Creating dhoom in motions of staged frenzy is Himesh Reshammiya without his trademark cap but with so much hair you wonder if it’s there to tear after you go through two-and-a-half hours of drama and hysteria in “Karzzz”.

Our Indiana Jones is Urmila Matondkar reprising Simi Garewal’s villainous gold-digger’s act with a vengeance. She not only creates dhoom, she also crashes into a temple of doom (literally) before being declared dead by the script. RIP.

Yup, now we know what the blurbs meant by “Vengeance is back”.

Many of Urmila’s chic gowns capture her in backless splendour. Whether matching steps with the rock star or pulling out all stops to mow her reborn lover-boy (Dino Morea turns into Himesh after the first 15 minutes) down with her zooming airplane (it was just a car in the original for poor Simi). Urmila is mean and seductive, in kill-kill measures.

But we don’t see much chemistry off the dance floor between Himeshbhai and sexy Urmila.

Is anyone really bothered with the telling of the story? And honestly, was the original “Karz” anything but a kitschy compendium of montages motivated by the theme of reincarnation?

If Rishi Kapoor did Monty, Himesh does full Monty. Between the two Montys is a molehill masquerading as a big pot-boiler.

This reincarnation of the blockbuster on reincarnation is a bit of a contradiction in terms. On one hand it’s high on production values, generating what one would call a cinematic adrenaline that takes audiences into the an exotic embrace. Every stage performance by the rock star is accompanied by a bevy of international backup dancers(mostly female) who prop up Himesh’s set pieces and complement his energy level.

On the other hand, the drama is distilled by an absence of inner-drawn energy. As an actor Himesh has his limitations which come bubbling to the surface in the long monologues about “punar janam”, present tense and past mostly imperfect.

Rishi, where art thou?

To his credit, Himesh takes you beyond the performance. He has a disarming simplicity bordering on naivete to back up his claims to stardom. The actor is honest. But he connects with his audience. And the man playing the character is aware he isn’t trying to achieve an award-winning level in his performance.

Having got that in place, Himesh just has a ball. His enjoyment in the songs and dances is sometimes contagious, sometime amusing, never dull, never exasperating.

As for the narrative, it doesn’t seem to believe in an updated progress report. Like a recalling of a past life Satish Kaushik’s seems frozen in the 1970s. The contemporised props and locations hardly help wipe out the feeling of watching a film that belongs to another time zone, far beyond the theme of reincarnation.

The big confrontation sequence where Kamini (Urmila) breaks down and confesses to having killed Monty the rock star is staged in a sprawling set representing the outer flank of a mansion.

What lies beyond the exterior? Who cares?

If you treat “Karzzz” as an ongoing “Chitrahaar” of Himesh’s songs strung together by a bristling bead of sweaty players you just might end up enjoying this kitschy homage to a potboiler that boasted of great songs and a wonderful central performance.

Himesh Reshammiya aims for the same. No harm in being ambitious.

Fashion - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Kangana Ranaut, Mugdha Godse, Samir Soni, Arjan Bajwa
Rating: ****

Somewhere in the second-half of the heartrending evocation of the tragedy that underscores the glamour of the fashion world, all dialogues cease, as Madhur Bhandarkar, in his inimitable style, records Priyanka Chopra’s character’s descent into hell.

It’s as though the music and the zing have suddenly decided to go out of her life.

This is where we realise the truth about all works of art. The sum-total of Bhandarkar’s vision is far greater than the captivating components that characterise his protagonist’s journey to painful self-realisation.

If we look at the issue of morality in Bhandarkar’s cinema, then all his protagonists reach a stage in their life when they cannot look themselves in the eye.

That moment of reckoning in “Fashion” reflects itself effortlessly in Priyanka’s face.

It’s her character Meghna’s journey from the innocent aridity of Chandigarh to the corruption of Mumbai’s modeling world.

This remarkably resonant film is arguably Bhandarkar’s most accomplished work to date, though “Page 3″ comes close in terms of etching out even the smallest of characters.

Mahesh Limaye’s cinematography is a little predictable in its bustle-and-bristle images. Fortunately the storytelling is anything but predictable.

Screenwriting has always been the greatest strength of Bhandarkar’s cinema. The screenplay conveys a lived-in ‘overheard-at-a-party’ kind of conversational tone.

Rhetorics and high-drama are exchanged for fearless transparency in the characterisations and conversations. What we eventually look at is not a tantalizing dekko at the beau monde but a breathtaking map of a heartbroken humanity who occupy the upper crust of the urban social order and eventually have to slow down to wonder, ‘Is this really worth it?”

By the the time ramp queen Meghna Mathur reaches this self-searching stage, “Fashion” becomes not a macro-cosmic view of the ramp world, but a story of two women, one who already ‘has-been’ there (Kangana Ranaut) and the other who just about saves herself from catastrophe in the nick of time.

The sequences between Priyanka and Kangana are the highlights of this bumpy journey into heartbreak and desolation. Some sequences leave a lump in the throat like the one where the ousted ramp queen Kangana confronts and warns Priyanka in a restaurant loo, or later after they bond.

Whether it’s sexual or emotional, Bhandarkar has never flinched from telling it like it is. “Fashion” shocks us with its brutal forthrightness on matters of the heart.

Samir Soni performs a complex tight-rope as a closeted-gay designer, who balances a lover with his mother’s demand for a wife with a marriage of convenience with a stunning model friend played by Mugdha Godse.

Mugdha is the female discovery of the year. With a great figure and face that registers a spectrum of emotions, she gives a compelling consistency to her goodhearted model’s character.

What Kangana does in “Fashion”, no other actress can do. But there’re no surprises in her performance as she has done it before.

Priyanka catches you completely unawares. Her transformation from the bubbly Chandigarh girl to the super-ambitious supermodel, who dumps her boyfriend and conscience to pursue her dreams, is achieved with a gentle subtlety and bridled passion.

This is Priyanka’s coming-of-age film. She looks like a zillion bucks. And acts like a woman who connects with the darkest, most desperate human emotions without wallowing in them.

Every character is written to accentuate the specific actor’s grace in the given space. The performances of Kitu Gidwani and Ashwin Mushran stand out. Harsh Chaya’s ‘gay lisp’ was the only annoying appendage.

Also, the ramp walks could have been done with slightly more élan and subtlety.

Eventually, the evocative screenplay decides to give its fallen heroine a second chance. But that seems more like cinematic liberty.

Bhandarkar takes us through a labyrinth of emotions, some devastating in their gut-level directness. But at the end, we come away with a film that gives us something to hold on to permanently even as the characters on screen lose practically everything worth holding on to.

A truly outstanding film.

Roadside Romeo - Bollywood Movie Review

Film: “Roadside Romeo” (animation)
Director: Jugal Hansraj
Cast: Voices of Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Javed Jaffrey
Rating: **

‘Oh Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou?’ Forget Shakespeare and all his spin-offs. “Roadside Romeo” is the coolest wham.

What’s it about? Well, it’s a bout of a pout and a bit of a kick, a whacky romance between two savvy under-dogs thrown our way in a casual chic manner that makes the animation characters seem like replicas of their potboiler avatars from feature films.

Maybe the plot should’ve been less formula-driven to go with the innovative format and genre. Nonetheless, this has got to be the most urbane and coolest take on the rites and wrongs of that thing called love.

First things first. So far animation films in India have been mainly restricted to revisionist interpretations of the mythologicals.

In “Roadside Romeo”, director Jugal Hansraj goes for the jugular and the jocular. The story of a rich canine from the well-to-do part of the city and the slum seductress Laila is peppered with every ingredient that makes an alluring entertainer.

The main voices are used to telling advantage. Saif scores subtle points over Kareena whose dubbing tends to veer towards boredom. But then she is the blasé seductress, isn’t she?

But it is Javed Jaffrey’s seasoned voice that brings great vigour and vivacity to the slum-lord’s role.

There are the non-primary characters too, giving the central romance a catchily cute spin without taking the slim narrative to an over-the-top stratosphere.

Most important, the quality of animation and the detailing that has gone behind its execution are exemplary. We really haven’t seen anything like this in Hindi. The songs, dialogues and action add up to quite a fun-filled festival of swirling colours and dancing divas and devils.

“Roadside Romeo” is a smartly-executed piece of slip-in-slip-out cinema. It makes for ideal popcorn entertainment that kids will enjoy and the grown-ups will giggle about.

Dostana - Bollywood Movie Review

Director: Tarun Mansukhani
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, Priyanka Chopra, Kirron Kher, Boman Irani
Rating: **1/2

Get this straight. Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham are not gay. They are just happy pretending to be bed partners. In the endeavour, they pull out all stops and get into the gay zone with a gusto that stumps all moralists.

There are butt-and-bum jokes galore, some even pointed at the leading lady. But hold that frown. Chill…It’s all for fun.

The theme of heterosexual characters pretending to be gay to get a precious abode in the bustle of the metropolis is pretty cool.

Abhishek and John, both in full form, get into the gay groove without going over the top. They come out with flying colours through most of the material that’s provided to them to sink their teeth into. While John combines terrific body language with some great comic timing, Abhishek’s expressions are a scream in their pitch-perfection.

One of the most brilliantly-written sequences orchestrates all the characters of this gay-play in the same room. There’re the play-acting gay protagonists, a gay magazine editor (Boman Irani), a gay marriage-bureau official and of course Abhishek’s homophobic mother (Kirron Kher) who screams and rants and then accepts her son’s apparent sexual preference.

You could simply marvel at the two principal actors giving so much of heart to their parts.

After a point you’re tempted to stop counting the number of times the word ‘gay’ gets in the way of the narrative. From ‘Mera beta gay hai’, courtesy Kirron Kher, to a ‘Han main gay hoon’, “Dostana” wins the how-to-say-gay-in-every-which-way award of the year.

Sandwiched between the two brilliantly-poised heroes is Priyanka Chopra, glowing like a 1,000-watt bulb in her immaculate wardrobe and beachwear.

So here’s the bottom line. Hindi cinema finally comes out of the closet.

The characters get ample chance to extend the parameters of conventional cinema without toppling into the abyss of overstatement.

First-time writer-director Tarun Mansukhani has the zing thing in his vision. Miami, shot with fetching gusto by Aynanka Bose, lifts the luscious locales to more than a tourist paradise. The desi characters seem to belong to this beachside paradise.

Well-toned bodies tanned to perfection, sinewy movements on the beach and on the dance floor, songs, music and feverish fiesta of sexually-driven people who want it all. And fast. “Dostana” is the ultimate hedonists’ dream.

The narrative pace slackens considerably in the second-half, what with the heroes expanding their homosexual hijinks into a triangle with Priyanka thrown in for good measure. Then the triangle dilates into a quadrangle as Bobby Deol makes a belated appearance as the boss who first intimidates and irritates the working girl into a motion of anger and submission. And then sweeps her off her feet.

Is this to keep the heterosexuals happy?

What keeps the narrative going is the sheer zest for life and the mood of wackiness which Shilpa Shetty sets at the outset with her ‘ooh-la-la’ item song. The gags involve everyone from the caricatured and spinsterish landlady to an incredibly clueless magazine editor (Bobby Deol), who agrees to behave like a moron at our pseudo-gay heroes say-so.

It’s all in fun. Not to be taken seriously. Not even when Abhishek and John lip-lock in mock-ecstasy for a farewell kiss that certainly leaves Priyanka breathless.

Dasvidaniya - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Vinay Pathak, Neha Dhupia, Ranvir Shorey, Sarita Joshi and Gaurav Gera
Director: Shashant Singh
Rating: ***

There’s something to be said about this sensitive slice-of-life cinema. And it’s this. You really can’t keep a good man down.

Returning to the ambit of the dull working-class protagonist that he almost patented in “Bheja Fry”, Vinay Pathak delivers yet another bravura performance as a man who learns to live only when he learns he has to die.

The premise done to death (pun intended) in films as disparate as Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikuru” and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s “Anand”, gets its power and glory from the simple yet never simplistic narrative that grows on you piece by piece, just as the lessons of life creep up belatedly on our hero Amar Kaul (Vinay).

With every dying day he lives a little more of that life he leaves behind. Though the film’s leisurely pace doesn’t quite capture the urgency of the moment, “Dasvidaniya” scores high points for its sincerity of performance.

The narrative has been patterned prettily as a pastiche of 10 episodes, each dealing with a facet of Amar Kaul’s life that he would like to retrieve from the archives of angst and claim as his own before he’s gone.

The pace often drops to a willowy whisper. The tone gets predominantly stifled. The narration is constantly hushed, never rushed even as the shuffling, procrastinating hero speeds through things in his pending file that he needs done before he’s through with life.

The beauty and harmony of life’s essential core is obtained in passages of relaxed rumination and casual conversations that show us where we often go wrong in our daily dealings. This is done without wagging a disapproving finger at the audience.

Vinay gets the flavour of the tragic hero’s comic escapades just right. He’s partly Charlie Chaplin, and partly Robert Benigni. But finally this is an actor who does his own thing. Make no mistake about that.

Helping him in his endeavour are like-minded friends like Rajit Kapur, Neha Dhupia, Ranvir Shorey, Sarita Joshi and Gaurav Gera — all pitching in with transparently- sincere performances.

There is not one faked moment in “Dasvidaniya”. You may feel portions of the film - like the Kailash Kher number “Mumma” - are manipulative in their intentions. But that’s life. You win some. You lose most of it.

Kudos to Vinay for making another winner out of another incorrigible loser’s story.

Ek Vivaah... Aisa Bhi - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Sonu Sood, Eesha Koppikhar, Alok Nath, Smita Jaykar, Vishal Malhotra
Director: Kaushik Ghatak
Rating: * 1/2

Nobility as a quality in cinema seems almost the hallmark of Sooraj Barjatya’s cinema. Specially during these times of stress cynicism and violence, any film that doesn’t belch out venomous fumes is worthy of applause.

But wait. Before we cheer “Ek Vivaah… Aisa Bhi” for walking the straight and narrow road, let’s be warned. The route taken by the narration looks like a tepid and technically shoddy facsimile of Anil Ganguly’s “Tapasya”, which was produced by Barjatya, and more recently, the Barjatya-directed “Vivah” that won extra points for its elegant and fluent simplicity of narration.

Director Kaushik Ghatak takes us through Barjatya’s joint-family system. Yes, even the infamous ‘gaajar ka halwa’ (sweet dish made out of shredded carrot) makes its mouth-watering appearance during the first wedding that rolls out at the start.

Yup, the film begins and ends with elaborate weddings replete with the whole cast plus sundry junior artists dressed in garish pinks, mauves and greens prancing to the sound of festivities.

But somewhere this prolonged music-video ‘Vivaah…’ lacks the graceful zing of the other Shahid Kapur-Amrita Rao film two years ago which had enough meals and morning walks to make our digestive system feel balanced out.

“Ek Vivaah…” is lopsided in its fervent festivity. The first-half where a romance grows between two small town singers Sonu Sood and Eesha Koppikhar creaks with monotonous semi-classical songs.

The music composed by Ravindra Jain is simply awful. Jain had done the songs and music in the original film “Tapasya”. One still remembers Kishore Kumar’s theme song “Jo raah chuni tuney” with affection.

The songs and music in “Ek Vivaah… Aisa Bhi” are dreadfully dull. The film gets by on the strength of Bengali litterateur Ashapurna Devi’s powerful story of a self-willed woman who sacrifices marriage to look after her siblings.

Parts of the second-half capture the emotional aroma of the original story. Specially effective is the relationship between the spinster and her devoted soulmate who refuses to marry any other girl.

Suchitra Sen and Ashok Kumar shared a similar platonic rapport in Asit Sen’s “Mamta”. And so did Raakhee Gulzar and Parikshit Sahni in “Tapasya”. They had the spirit.

Eesha and Sonu are sincere, but they lack the gravity and ingrained wisdom and dignity required to portray lives that go beyond self interest.

What works for this “Vivaah…” is its intrinsic integrity. At a time when everyone is making films that either go for the guffaw or head for the libido, here’s a film that tackles very basic traditional values and the feelings underlining the colourful festivities related to the Hindu wedding. The language is often so old fashioned that it borders on the archaic.

But at least nobody is acting oversmart.

Golmaal Returns - Bollywood Movie Review

Cast: Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Anjana Sukhani, Arshad Warsi, Amrita Arora, Shreyas Talpade and Celina Jaitley
Director: Rohit Shetty
Rating: *

The sequel to the successful “Golmaal” is filled with in-house jokes - for instance when Ajay Devgan weaves the titles of his films into the dialogues. Or the hilarious takeoff by that talented Ashwini Kalsekar on Rani Mukerji’s randy tart’s act from Sanjay Bhansali’s “Saawariya”… it’s a rare moment of genuine laughter in this comedy of earsplitting guffaws, all emanating from the screen rather than out of it.

Fast, furious and fatuous “Golmaal Returns” isn’t quite that Diwali blues-chaser you expect it to be. The comic timing, though skilled, is wasted by the actors in sequences that try to breathe fire into a burnt-out oven.

No wonder the comicality is half-baked and often repetitive. The jokes from the first film are extended to the second, often with far-from-funny results. Many large sections of satire just lack attractive attire.

What was Kareena Kapoor doing in this corny concoction? Playing a fan of the saas-bahu serials, she’s named Ekta, as a homage to the soap queen Ekta Kapoor whose brother incidentally plays Kareena’s brother in the movie.

Tusshar Kapoor is a howl. And a whine. And a whoop. And a snivel. Since he is mute, he sharpens his ability to emote through jungle calls. He’s a revelation.

The camaraderie among the cast is quite evident. The male actors bond with gusto and Shreyas Talpade, who is the new recruit to the revelry, joins in without skipping a beat. His comic timing is delightfully sinewy.

But what happened to Arshad Warsi? His quick entry and exit as cop begins to get on the nerves after a while.

But Tusshar and Shreyas whip up a wacky humour. Most of the material about a suspicious wife and several red herrings strewn across a path that’s self-consciously forged on the grounds of Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City is very old-fashioned in its approach to slapstick humour. Crowds hover around studio-built malls and streets trying to look casual.

They provide a rough and random backdrop to what’s basically material for a sex comedy on stage.

The characters run in breathlessly, say their jokey lines, fall over each other in rituals of suggestive laughter and then fall out of the frames waiting for the next gag to beckon them. It’s all supposed to be hilariously funny. But is often just a pretext for more a pantomime of parody than the real thing.

At the end there’s a threat for a third segment of “Golmaal”.

It would all depend on how much money the part two manages to bring in.

Going by the audiences’ riotous response, it seems no-brainers are eminently fashionable.

Shoot On Sight - Bollywood Movie Review

Film: “Shoot On Sight”
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Greta Scacchi, Gulshan Grover, Mikaal Zulfikar
Director: Jagmohan Mundhra; Rating: ***

“Shoot On Sight” works as a wake-up call for those slumbering in their bourgeois belief that terrorism is as far away from home as Osama Bin Laden is from the US.

It’s a frightening piece of fiction laced with a fair amount of warmth and affection that lulls us into a false sense of wellbeing. In essence, the plot takes us back to the domesticated terrorism of Alan Pakula’s “The Devil’s Own” or more recently Subhash Ghai’s “Black And White” where a young wide-eyed seemingly-unspoilt guest in the house turns out to be a closet-terrorist.

Where “Shoot On Sight” scores is in laying out the blueprint for global terrorism through characters who appear real in words, body language and political ideology.

Jagmohan Mundhra has earlier balanced a social cause with a message in “Provoked”. Here the ‘thrill’ element emanates far more effortlessly from the characters and their predicament, partly because the theme of terrorism renders itself far dramatically to a cinematic treatment than domestic violence.

London is shot by cinematographer Madhu Ambat with all its inherent buzz and blemishes without fuss or rush. The flow of adrenaline as the British cops zero in on their distinguished Pakistani colleague’s nephew as a terrorist is rather reined in than rushed.

This isn’t a film that’s in a hurry to get there. But it knows how to value the audiences’ time.

And this is where “Shoot On Sight” scores the optimum impact. Mundhra revels in generous levels of understatement most of the time. Whether showing the fanaticism in the mosque (Om Puri, aptly extravagant) or the dilemma of the cop’s Pakistan-British daughter - Mundhra packs it all into the simmering cultural cauldron with dexterity and dignity.

While on the whole the characters in the cop-protagonist Tariq Ali’s home and workplace come to life with vigorous fluency, some portions of the storytelling fall flat. Naseer’s assistant, played by Laila Rouass, comes to a soggy end in a river with the suddenness of a video-game with its socket pulled out. The hastily-executed climax in a shopping mall where Tariq Ali’s nephew is shot down with a sweeping-under-the-carpet haste, is a screaming shame.

Mostly, Mundhra uses economy of expression to great effect. Sometimes just one or two scenes are enough to establish the camaraderie between characters creating a crisscross of inter-relations with disconcerting deftness.

There’s just one intimate interlude in the kitchen at the start between the Pakistani cop Naseer and his British wife played Greta Scacchi. It’s enough to show the enduring empathy between the couple. The rift that seeps into their marriage because of the closet-terrorist nephew’s presence in their house is again represented in a flash of anger and indignation where Naseer accuses Scacchi of discrimination.

A culturally-defining moment that stays with you after the last bang-bang.

A major part of the film’s success goes to the the actors. Om Puri as a radical clergy, Gulshan Grover as Naseer’s butcher-friend, and the British actors, who play Naseer’s colleagues at the precinct, they all add a wealth of credibility to Mundhra’s tale of malevolence in a city that’s outwardly a haven for healing.

Debutant Mikaal Zulfikar as Naseer’s nephew gives a comfortably-defined performance. Mikaal gets the point early in the narrative when on arrival from Pakistan in London, driving from the airport he gets to know his English aunt has not converted to Islam.

Watch the young actor’s subtle shift of expression from easy grace to disgust and disapproval — it’s frightening to see because it reflects the reality about how young people all over the world are converted to extremist causes.

What finally gives “Shoot On Sight” a compelling edge beyond the expected, making it more than just a pantomime of post-terrorism mores, is Naseer.

As always Naseer merges into the character pitching the emotions at a level where they appear to be thought of on the-the-spot and certainly not for the sake of a camera. Domestic scenes and details served up in delicious vignettes provide a back projection to Naseer’s complex character. Naseer glides effortlessly with his character as it goes from cultural comfort to fundamentalist isolation. The actor and the character become one.