Dhoom 2 (धूम २)(Hindi, 2006)

What should I say about this movie – इश्क ने आर्यन निकम्मा कर दिया, वरना वो भी आदमी थे काम के (Love has made Aryan useless, else he was a very capable man). Or should I use the one that ACP Jai uses at the end of the movie - आशिक का जनाज़ा है ज़रा धूम से निकले (it’s a lover’s death procession, should have some bang in it)?

Dhoom 2 shows a gruff ACP Jai Dixit (Abhishek Bachchan) chasing the super-thief Aryan aka Mr. A (Hritik Roshan). Supporting Jai in his efforts are ex-mechanic, now sub-inspector Ali (Uday Chopra); Jai’s college-friend, now ACP Shonali Bose (Bipasha Basu); Shonali’s sister Monali Bose (again, Bipasha Basu), a brazilian beachcomber at Copa Cabana beach and a pregnant wife Sweety (Reema Sen). Supporting Aryan is a small-time crook Sunahri (Aishwarya Rai), who has been appointed by Jai to help catch Aryan but who falls in love with Aryan herself.

Mr. A is not an ordinary thief, though. Like Hritik says in his earlier movie, Lakshya, “Life में जो भी करना है अच्छे से करो”. तो चोर बनना है तो Mr. A जैसा बनो (If you have to be a thief, be like Mr. A). He just steals priceless antique pieces from all over the world, choosing his locations such that connecting them on a world map will form an A, the same symbol that he leaves as his mark at every place he steals from. A master of disguise, extreme sports and gadgetry, Aryan works alone and does not trust anyone, till Sunahri comes into his life. He plans a heist with Sunahri where Jai is expecting Sunahri to give Aryan away but Sunahri falls in love with Aryan and betrays Jai.

Dhoom redefined “style” in Indian movies. Dhoom 2 ups that style quotient ten times. Just as Dhoom belonged to John Abraham, Dhoom 2 belongs to Hritik Roshan. He is just too good. His style in executing the extreme sports sequences (I don’t even know the names of all of those), his dancing, his comfort with various disguises is just amazing. Other actors were as expected. Aishwarya Rai does a good rendition of a girl torn between two things, and the pair of Hritik-Aishwarya just rocks. Abhishek Bachchan is his normal cool self. During the movie, I was thinking what’s the difference between cool and hot in terms of style. Abhishek is cool, Hritik is hot. Uday Chopra is avoidable, as usual. Bipasha does what she is good at doing, oozing sensuality.

The action sequences are well-shot and are sure to draw a wow! The only drawback of the movie is its pace, which goes quite slow at times. The movie could have been better by focusing more on heists and less on the Aryan-Sunahri love story. To the extent that Jai in the end says – Love story hai, isliye… I would have loved to have a couple of more “steals” in the movie. That’s a minor point, however, in a movie which otherwise is thoroughly enjoyable. I found a lot of similarities to The Thomas Crown Affair, wonder why no-one else noticed that.

Recommendation – Has to be seen in theaters
Rating – ✔✔✔

Jaaneman (जानेमन)(Hindi, 2006)

Remind me to thank Cineworld Ipswich that they did NOT screen Jaaneman while I was in Ipswich, and I was spared of watching this movie in a theatre. You have to wonder, why do some movies get made? OK, granted that you have made the mistake of producing a bad movie, shouldn’t you see it once yourself to see if it is worth springing on an unsuspecting public? Shouldn’t you be banned against going ahead and promoting the movie as the next best thing since Big Bang?

Perhaps I should direct my comments more at Star News, on which I had seen rave reviews of the movie and had seen so many viewers praising it. Obviously fabricated! I mean, sensationalist journalism is one thing, deliberately leading the viewers towards a torturous path is a crime. Having missed the movie in theaters, I saw it on DVD and had to really fight the temptation of shutting it down.

OK, I hear you shouting, “Get on with the review”. Well, Jaaneman is the story of two guys, Agastya (Akshay Kapoor) and Suhaan (Salman Khan), both of whom love Piya (Preity Zinta). Agastya is a studious nerd who can’t open his mouth in front of Piya, while Suhaan is the rock-star who loves and marries Piya. At the start of the movie, Agastya has returned from US after seven years to find Piya, only to find that Piya and Suhaan are now divorced because of some misunderstanding due to Suhaan’s career aspirations. Suhaan, who is now out-of-job and hence cannot make alimony payments, plots to help Agastya to impress Piya so that they get married and he gets away from alimony by declaring Piya is no longer dependent on him. However, in the process, he finds out that Piya has a child. Twist - now he wants both the child and Piya back in his life. A sickening hackneyed love triangle, with the standard ending of Agastya returning back to US after reuniting Piya and Suhaan. The much-talked-about unique ending is nothing more than Agastya finding a Piya-lookalike and pairing up with her. Sick!

On the acting front, Salman disappoints as expected, Akshay and Priety are ok. Anupam Kher has this talent of doing very good and very bad acting, and this time, it’s the turn of bad. On a story execution and directorial front, the movie never grips you to empathise with any character and to wonder what will happen if he does not end up getting the girl. Cinematography is average.

Recommendation – Avoid it, unless you are a die-hard Salman or Akshay fan and have to watch all their movies.

Rating - ✘✘✘

Casino Royale (English, 2006)

Sirs and Mademoiselles! How would you like your Bond today? Rare, as in Roger Moore; or well-done as in Sean Connery? Do you like your Bond to be a suave, smooth metrosexual like Pierce Brosnan; or would you like to move back to the masculine, handsome hunk image of Bond with a well-chiselled body, hair on the chest and a rough, unsure edge to him? If the last one, sir, we have today in our Casino Royale - Daniel Craig.

Any long running franchise worth its salt has to keep on redefining its protagonist’s image with the times, and with the death of the feminine metrosexual man on the style scene, it was time for Bond to go back to the basics, to start being manly enough to be the man every woman wants. To achieve this, the producers picked up Daniel Craig as the man and the first Ian Fleming book as the story. Casino Royale tracks Bond chasing a terrorists’ financier who has lost terrorists’ money on stock markets and has to recover that money in a high-stakes poker game in Casino Royale.

I am not going to say anything more about the story, because story is not what we go to watch Bond films for. I am not a Bond fan, so I really don’t know what does one go to watch Bond films for anyway? Pathetic stories, pedestrian acting. Perhaps it’s the style, the impossible smoothness with which Bond behaves in impossible scenarios. If that, then Casino Royale fails. Daniel Craig simply does not have the style quotient of any of his predecessors. Or perhaps it is the contradiction of a man that Bond is –caring towards his girls and yet always two-timing them. If that, this movie is wonderful. Craig portrays the “women are his only weakness” part of Bond very well. Or is it the famous opening sequence of a Bond movie? If so, this movies opening sequence is superb. A stylish presentation of Bond acquiring his 00 status, followed by perhaps one of the greatest chase sequences ever.

Casino Royale is a welcome move away from the extra-gadget-friendly that Pierce Brosnan’s Bond had become. Casino Royale is a welcome move towards a manlier Bond. But it stops short somewhere. It does not make you go wide-eyed at the things Bond does, neither does it bring the smile on your face when you used to see a Bond getting out of a fight, straightening his tie, and walking into a party, his suit unblemished. In the attempt of going back to basics, Casino Royale becomes a movie too much like a ’80s Dharmendra (a Bollywood Actor) flick.

Recommendation – GO watch it, it’s a Bond flick, after all. You have to watch it even it is Bad, and this one is quite decent by Bond standards.

Rating – ✔✔

Borat (English/ Kazhak, 2006)

Once in a while, there comes a radically different movie which becomes a major success, though half of the people are left wondering if the success is because of some real content or just the “being radical” part. The praises in reviews just spirals, sometimes because a reviewer can’t bring himself to criticize the movie lest he should be considered outdated or old-fashioned. Borat is such a movie.

Borat is a Kazakhstan journalist who is tourist USA to learn American culture and convey it to his people. The movie is a hilarious satire on the prejudices that Americans hold themselves – these being highlighted by showing the American reaction to a loud portrayal of supposed Eastern European prejudices.

The basic premise of the movie is quite good, and it makes for several funny scenes in the movie. However, the movie was just too loud for my taste. The good scenes from the film – like Borat asking to a set of feminists, “You mean Woman are equal to Man even when they have smaller brains?”, or Americans talking of equality over a Dinner party but getting offended when Borat gets a black prostitute as his guest – are quite enjoyable. I certainly draw a line though, at seeing a man’s face buried in a fat man’s bum on a large screen.

The execution of the movie is very loud, and in your face. The movie attempts to be funny throughout and ends up being funny most of the time. You can always close your eyes for the scenes you don’t like. There is not much to act, as it’s a movie of one gag after another, but the Borat guy does it well. Please excuse me for writing an uneducated review this time, I simply did not find the movie interesting enough to find out more about it.

Recommendation – Go watch it. You will never find such a movie again.
Rating – ✔✘✘✘ (✔ for what I liked, ✘s for the rest of the movie)

Prestige (English, 2006)

Are you watching closely? If not, do, or you will miss one of the best films of the year. Prestige is the story of two magicians – Alfred Borden aka The Professor (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier aka The Great Danton (High Jackman), from their starting years working together to their becoming bitter rivals, always trying to outdo each other in magic tricks, pitting Professor’s superior magic tricks against The Great Danton’s showmanship.

I had gone in with the expectations of seeing a war of magic tricks. That would have been crude. This movie is anything but crude. It is the story of the inner passion of two men – similar in many respects but fundamentally different. Similar in their pursuit of better magic, different in the ways they adopt to achieve their goals, different in the kind of sacrifices they make to achieve superiority. Even the motive for one-upmanship is different – for one it is to have better tricks, for other to have that ultimate applause.

The magic in the movie in not in tricks, but in the men playing those tricks, or preparing for and planning those tricks. In a superb performance from Hugh Jackman, the magic that a man’s ambition can be is portrayed on the screen. With good performances from Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson and Michael Caine, the movie leaves us spellbound with admiration for these actors.

The execution of the movie is superb. Christopher Nolan knows how to pace his movie, what to show and what to reveal when and how and how to get the best out of his cast and crew.

The only weak point of the movie is the fanciful use of Tesla, the scientist to create a magical machine which… Let me not spoil the movie for you, but let me tell you that whatever it does sounds as unscientific as can be.

Recommendation – Don’t miss it.

Rating – ✔✔✔✔

A Good Year (English, 2006)

Romance is not dead! Even in the world full of money and sex, life can still stand still on viewing a beautiful sunrise, or a chess table on which you played in childhood, or for that matter, a girl who is a vision.

A Good Year is the story of Max Skinner (Russell Crowe). Max Skinner is a London based bonds trader. Max Skinner does not do weekends, Max Skinner does not take holidays; Max Skinner makes money. So when Max Skinner inherits a vineyard in Provence, France, the place where he says, “All my memories begin within 100 yards from this spot” – all he can think of is how to go and sell it as fast as possible. However, once he reaches there, he is unable to get away. Slowly he realises that it is not the place which doesn’t fit his life, it is his life which doesn’t fit the place; and it is the decision that he has to take for himself – money or his life?

As clichéd a story as can get, perhaps so outdated that it is now new. A romance fitting into the basic definition of romance – totally impractical, but so charming that you stop thinking of practicality. That’s exactly what happens in the movie. With the charming beauty of Provence, yet another stellar performance by Russell Crowe and the execution of a romantic plot which reminds you of everything you have left behind to run in the rat race of modern times.

Recommendation – For the eternal romantic inside all of us, the movie is a must. Those who have managed to kill that inner romance, please avoid the movie.

Rating – ✔✔✔