Special 26: Asli Power Kahaani Me Hoti Hai

Special 26 (Chabbis), directed by Neeraj Pandey (of A Wednesday fame), is a special film indeed. It is a pretty simple retelling of an extraordinary act; and it delivers. This film also convincingly proves that given a good script and a director who has a steady head on his shoulders, every actor will try and do justice to their roles to the best of their abilities.

Special 26 (Chabbis)

Special Chabbis is a heist drama based in 1987 about a quartet of conmen (Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Rajesh Sharma and Kishor Kadam) who raid politicians and businessmen by posing as CBI and Income Tax officers. The very first heist of the film sets the premise; it unravels the players involved and the strategy they usually play with. What comes thereafter is how this quartet manages to tweak that strategy consistently in order to adjust with the changing situations as they are doggedly followed by Inspector Wasim (Manoj Bajpai) of the ‘real’ CBI, Sub-inspector Ranveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) and Constable Shanti ji (Divya Dutta). The mandatory (?) romantic interludes and song sequences are provided thanks to Akshay’s love interest Priya (Kajal Aggarwal).

The cat-and-mouse game between the chors and the police reminded me of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. But unlike that classic which was painstakingly mounted on a lavish platform, Special 26 has to make do with some pretty tacky computer generated backdrops in certain scenes in order to create the India of 1980s. I am happy that the Director and the Cinematographer Bobby Singh (who tragically passed away at the age of 38) at least took some pain in order to ensure that the required cars, costumes and publications fill the screen space.

What am I doing?? Why am I being such a nitpicker? Special 26 was never supposed to be heavy on the production.. It has the story, characters, and sequences to more than make up for any factual discrepancy. Neeraj Pandey got the casting just right. His old favorites Anupam Kher and Jimmy Shergill live up the faith that their director has on them. Anupam Kher specially flourishes as the nervous conman who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of family planning. The supporting cast with the exception of Rajesh Sharma is given ample scope to make an impression. Manoj Bajpai flying high after his tremendous performance in Gangs of Wasseypur, gives a nice restrained performance in a role that demands him to talk fluently with his eyes. Kajal Aggarwal looks really beautiful in her 80s look but is rather wasted in a thankless role; a role that Special 26 could have lived without. The true surprise for me was Akshay Kumar. It is a pleasure to see him in a role where he is not making a fool of himself (neither intentionally nor unintentionally). After Oh My God, this is one more movie where has given an earnest and natural performance.

Overall, Special 26 is definitely worth a watch. The first half may lag because of seemingly repetitive robbery sequences and unnecessary songs, but the second half and specially the climax more than make up for it.

Verdict: 8/10

The Last Stand – Schwarzenegger Stands Tall

It is always a pleasure to watch movies like ‘The Expendables 2‘ and ‘The Last Stand’. Not because they cater to the escapist action junkie in me, but because they cater to the Schwarzenegger fan in me. I still remember going to the local single-screen theater as a kid to watch Terminator and trying to imitate his “I will be baaack” in his trademark accent. What I enjoy most about Schwarzenegger flicks is the fact that I can completely identify with them. I can safely replace the cast of his film with Bollywood actors and imagine how it would be if a Hindi film were made with the same story. The Last Stand, directed by the South Korean Jee-Woon Kim, is as Bollywood as Bollywood can be; and I’m not complaining.

The premise (Yes! There is one) is pretty simple. A notorious Mexican drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega, inconsequential) manages to escape from the rusted iron fist of FBI officer John Bannister (Forest Whitaker, visibly uncomfortable) and decides to make a run for it in… hold your breath… NOT a plane… NOT a chopper… but in a highly modified Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1! How do I know that it’s a Corvette C6 ZR1, you ask? Well, this fact is pushed again and again into the screenplay in a blatant attempt of product placement. So you have statements like “How do you stop this car?” “You blow it up!”, “why didn’t he take a chopper?” “because the car is faster than any chopper!” etc etc, you get the picture, right? It’s a Corvette C6 ZR1. Point taken! Let’s move on!… So yeah, drug lord Cortez decides to cross the INTERNATIONAL BORDER of US and Mexico in a Corvette C6 ZR1 and his own private army which seems to be very strong when it comes to removing barricades from the road but is quite understaffed when it comes to removing Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his first outing as a lead actor since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, plays Sheriff Ray Owens. Ray Owens is an old and tired ex-LAPD who decides to hang up his boots and sip a beer in the sleepy town of Sommerton Junction. Oddly enough, for someone named Ray Owens, he sports a rather weird Austrian accent. So.. yes… Ray Owens and his rag tag team of deputies (including freshly minted ones like Johny Knoxville of the Jackass infamy) are the last line of defense between the Corvette C6 ZR1 and Mexico. How convenient!! Everything that happens next is what Mr. Schwarzenegger is accustomed to doing for the last 3 decades.

For an action film, the Last Stand has a pretty short line-up of action set pieces. This is probably because in this film although only Arnold seems like someone who is capable of doing some action, he is evidently quite incapable of even jumping on a car and running into a diner without huffing and puffing. The 65-year old is clearly old and not cut out for much action but what he lacks in virility, he makes up in charisma! He still has fabulous screen presence and I actually ended up rooting for him when he took up that famous shot gun of his. Total paisa vasool! There are some decently good one-liners here and there, but the dialogues in general suck.

Like most Schwarzenegger movies, I ended up replacing the cast with Indian actors. So I imagined some dreaded terrorist to escape from police custody and try to crossover to Nepal in a Mahindra Thar or a Scorpio… So that he can later go to his home base (I’m being politically correct here so I’m not naming any country… but you get the picture, don’t you?) and the only person stopping him is… hmmm… first choice was Dharmendra but he is a little too old for this… How about Sunny Deol? Or Nana Patekar? Or hell if you want to make 200 crores out of it, let’s just put Chulbul Pandey as the last line of defense!! Once that part is dealt with, everything else will fall into place… because frankly, nothing else matters!

Coming back to The Last Stand. Obviously it is a must watch for that vast legion of Schwarzenegger fans because in case you had any doubts, he has still got it! But it is also a worthwhile watch for people who pay obscene amounts in multiplexes to watch movies and then crib with statements like “India me aisi movies kab banengi?” (when will India make movies like this?)… Well, my friend, India can surely make a ‘The Last Stand’… If it manages to find its Schwarzenegger.

Rating: 8 on 10 (all 8 points for Mr. Schwarzenegger!)

Barfi! – A Guilt-free Indulgence

Barfi!, written and directed by Anurag Basu, is mushy and soft when you first taste it, slightly chewy in the middle, but gives a memorable sweet aftertaste.

It is a simple yet well-conceived and well-enacted story of Murphy, or Barfi (as the incredible Ranbir Kapoor ‘calls’ himself), about the women he meets (the brave Priyanka Chopra and beautiful Ileana D’cruz), about how they change his life, and most importantly about how he changes theirs. Barfi is both hearing and speech impaired since birth, who, to the dismay of the audience, never once fishes for sympathy. Dismay; because the Hindi film industry has unfairly raised multiple generations of Indians using characters who leverage their disabilities to tug heart-strings with gay abandon. So Barfi provides an element of cognitive dissonance to the audience. A rather enjoyable dissonance if I may add.

In this age of large scale media bombardments, it is difficult to surprise viewers with a plot that they have not already guessed from the promos and over-enthusiastic reviews. Hence I will resist the temptation of re-exposing the story and inadvertently giving away more plot-lines. But remember this: some stories are less about what is unravelled and more about how it is unravelled. A discerning viewer may be able to predict the story before it is told but will enjoy its telling nonetheless.

Ranbir Kapoor, as Barfi, is fabulous. One may allege that he has borrowed quite a few pages from greats like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and his showman grandfather Raj Kapoor. But I feel that it takes great audacity for even undertaking such an endeavour and it is not unethical either. if Jean Dujardin can do it in ‘The Artist’, then why not Ranbir? Talking of audacity, a round of applause should go to Priyanka for even attempting to play Jhilmil. Yes, she sometimes blurs the line between autism and mental retardation but that can be forgiven in the larger scheme of things. Ileana D’cruz is a revelation. I know that she is not new to acting and that she has had quite a successful career down south. I also know that she is more known for starring rather than acting. So Ileana’s Shruti comes across as a very pleasant surprise.

I’ve always believed that a good movie is like a good subway sandwich. The sauces you choose are as important as the the bread or the filings, if not more. Barfi has a great supporting cast comprising old faithfuls like Akash Khurana, Ashish Vidyarthi, Rupa Ganguly and Saurabh Shukla. Although if I were to nitpick, I’d have preferred to see Ashish and Akash interchange roles in order to make the Jhilmil plot less predictable.

Director Anurag Basu can finally be forgiven for Kites. He writes and directs Barfi with equal love and care. Cinematography by Ravi Varman is so great that I wouldn’t be surprised if Darjeeling sees more honeymooning couples this wedding season. Pritam does a very good job with the music and the picturization only makes the songs more memorable.

If I were to be pushed against a wall to pick out problems, I’d say that it has to be the length of film in the second half. Specially Barfi and Jhilmil’s journey from Darjeeling to Kolkata. No doubt West Bengal has been picturized beautifully but it does come across as the director’s indulgence. Also, Pritam and gang playing in the background, a la ‘Life.. in a Metro‘, starts getting on the nerves after a while.

Movies like Barfi challenge conventional wisdom that you need unconventional actors to make an unconventional film. Go indulge, guilt-free.

Rating: 8/10 (one each for Ranbir, Priyanka, Ileana, Anurag, Pritam, Ravi and Darjeeling; with one more given by me for good measure)

Cocktail – Why drinks don’t mix

The first rule of drinking is that “you do not mix drinks”. The second rule of drinking is that “you DO NOT mix drinks”. Cocktail, directed by Homi Adajania (Being Cyrus) and written by Imtiaz Ali (Socha na tha & Jab we met) and Sajid Ali, breaks both these sacrosanct rules of drink club. First half is frothy and fun like beer while the second half is a bottoms up of whiskey. The result? A tizzying hangover for everyone in the audience ‘involved’.

Cocktail starts off on very shaky grounds. Gautam (Saif Ali Khan, old, tired, trying too hard) is a serial flirt who staunchly believes that the way to finding the true love of your life is to sleep with everyone else. Veronica (Deepika Padukone, smoking hot, needs to learn Hindi) is a Paris Hiton-esque wild kid who tinkers with her camera between wild parties and hangovers. Meera (Diana Penty, sweet, commendable debut) is a demure ‘bharatiya naari’ who gets embroiled in a hoax marriage by Kunal (Randeep Hooda, minuscule role, promising). Gautam flirts with Meera before ending up sleeping and living in with Veronica, before finding ‘true love’ in Meera and before finding himself torn between the two. The story, in case you care, is conveniently predictable and reaches its logical (?) end.

I was squirming in my seat every time I saw Saif flirt with a girl approximately half his age. He is too old for this. But the bigger problem is that he even looks too old for this. He basically takes a leaf out of Aamir Khan’s Akash from Dil Chahta Hai and makes a pulp out of it. In the second half, he has precious little to do except ham, look lost and reprise the now legendary “lekin main… Array wo.. suno to…” dialogue from DCH in his climactic proposal. There is no doubt that Deepika looks great. Also here she has been given some pretty meaty scenes as well. But she kills it every time by screwing up the diction. In one of the major scenes of hers, she ends up saying ‘may’ instead of ‘main’. And that’s that. Diana is lovely. She looks sweet, acts her part without going over the top and provides the film with probably the only emotional anchor. Boman Irani and Dimple Kapadia are great in their respective roles. A special mention should also go to Dimple for finally mentioning the word menopause in a major Hindi movie.

As is the case with most big budget movies these days, Cocktail is technically brilliant. Anil Mehta shoots London and Cape Town as if he’s in love with them. The background music by Salim-Sulaiman is really good and the music by Pritam is great. Although I am having a tough time believing if his music is original.

I really hate it when a film shows promise and shies away from delivering it. Cocktail could have been a great new-age movie centring around live-in relationships and mature friendships. Instead, it strengthens every known cliche of Hindi films: the girl who parties hard and drinks has to have an unhappy childhood or a broken home and she definitely cant win (even if she decides to embrace the bharatiya naari image); the guy can pretty much get away with anything because he’s ‘saat samundar paar’; the demure bharatiya naari has to realise her love only when she is drunk and has partied for the first time. In the end, it becomes a Sangam (1964) where Saif becomes Vyjantimala and Deepika and Diana become Rajendra Kumar and Raj Kapoor disrespectively.

Cocktail proves that spirits (emotions), if not mixed properly, can lead to a terrible hangover. Lemonade, please!

Rating: 3/10 (one for the music, one for photography and one for Diana)

Shanghai: A Bitter Aftertaste

I tried my best to control my expectations. I knew that Shanghai is the fourth offering of Dibakar Banerjee after ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’, ‘Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’ and ‘Love, Sex aur Dhokha’. I knew that Abhay Deol hardly ever goes wrong with the choice of his script and movies. I knew that Emraan Hashmi will be seen in a never-seen—before avatar. I knew it all, yet I tried to control my expectations. Then I read the reviews by other critics today morning. And I failed myself. I will never know what difference it’d have made had I seen Shanghai without reading the reviews.

Yes, Shanghai is a well-shot movie. Nikos Andritsakis, who had previously shot LSD, has done a really good job. Yes, Emraan Hashmi proves that he is more than just a lucky bugger with luckier lips. Yes, Farooque Shaikh is absolutely brilliant as usual. But as I came out of the movie hall, it just didn’t feel right. There was a faintly bitter aftertaste. I really wanted to love Shanghai. If only it had given me enough reasons.

Okay, so Shanghai is a political thriller, a genre that Indian cinema has hardly been able to master in spite of having so much ‘material’ floating all around. IBP wants to set up an International Business Park and convert the fictional town of ‘Bharatnagar’ into Shanghai. The proverbial bone in the flesh is Dr. Ali Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee, underutilized) who is bumped off. Dr. Ahmedi’s ex-student/ex-flame Shalini (Kalki) strongly believes that there is a conspiracy behind the seemingly simple looking accident and Joginder Parmar (Emraan Hashmi, Impressive), a moonlighting pornographer, claims that he can help her out. In the form of a one-man inquiry commission, a young IAS officer T.A. Krishnan (Abhay Deol, miscast) is thrown into the pool as a damage control measure by the state Chief Minister. What happens next comes at a price of movie ticket.

So what’s wrong with the movie? Well, for one I found the pacing of the story very languid. Nothing much happens and, except for the last 10 minutes, most of it is quite predictable. The connections between the central government, the state government and the IBP are never made clear. I also felt that too much was left to be understood through inference; a task very difficult when you are in a theater with 70 other people, most of who have already lost interest or are busy pacifying their toddlers. I fail to understand why any director except Anurag Kashyap would want to hire Kalki. She looks the same, cries  the same, falls on her knees the same and cries even more the same in every movie! I also felt that Abhay Deol was miscast in the role. Dibakar should have taken a gamble that RGV took with Mohanlal in Company. Let a South Indian play a South Indian. I wonder how Vikram, Suriya or even Siddharth would have been in this role.

The film definitely has its moments. Some of the characters are outstanding. Supriya Pathak Kapur, Pitobash and Farooque Shaikh deserve special mention. The background score is marvelous. The story is intelligent (but too intelligent, eventually). Dibakar Banerjee must have decided at the very outset that the political characters or instances will not be reminiscent of any poltical party or person. He succeeds; I could neither identify nor could I identify with any of the political twists in this political thriller.

All in all, Shanghai comes across a tad undercooked. I beg to differ with most of the critics out there. This is definitely not Dibakar Banerjee’s best movie.

Rating: 5/10