BULLETT RAJA: Commercial, predictable & average action thriller! Witty one-liners make it Watchable! [2.5]

Names suggest. Names carry perceptions. So whenever you hear ‘Tigmanshu Dhulia’, you expect razor-sharp story-telling [PAAN SINGH TOMAR], utter participation of passion mixed with art [SAAHEB, BIWI AUR GANGSTER] or if nothing else, earnestness shining in the framework for sure [HAASIL]. Intentionally or involuntarily; sounding as if another south action entertainer dubbed in Hindi, Dhulia’s ‘BULLETT RAJA’ has flares of all these but overshadowed & eclipsed heavily by added star value, superficial style & an undeclared delusion in one’s head to be in the sheep-race of 100 Cr club.

Uttar Pradesh- the terra firma of filthy politics, gory goonism, and caste-driven social establishment is the place where ‘BULLETT RAJA’ fits the most. With serenely ferocious Rudra [Played by confident Jimmy Shergill] joined at the hip, fearlessly rowdy Raja [Saif in a comfortable zone] is nothing but a political commando rising and shining under the most powerful politician played by Raj Babbar. Situation goes upside down when the grimy game of power & control gifts back Raja an unbearable loss of his lifetime to flame the anger of vengeance that would blaze the whole of enterprise behind.

A story weakened by confusing screenplay, shabby-unimpressive-infuriating work in the music department & a bad hand in editing were enough to mess up all the reputation Dhulia has earned until comes to rescue the writing, giving plenty of smart & quirky one-liners that hold your interest throughout. Hear this, when villainous Chunky Pandey narrates a mythological incident about Lord Brahma using some foul words [in smartly muted sound], Raja blasts him with bullets saying, “Dharmik mamlon mein hum ashleelta bardasht nahin karte!” Writing also celebrates the emotions one carries for his caste. Playing a Brahmin by caste, Saif will be seen mouthing arrogance profoundly in most of his lines e.g. “Brahmin bhookha toh sudama, rootha toh raavan” or “Brahmin hoon, janam se samajh ke aaya hoon”. Enjoyable & entertaining!

Performances are strictly average and there is nothing that could compel you for a jaw-drop response. Though Jimmy Shergill impresses in the first half and his equation with Saif creates a pleasant sight for eyes & most of the enjoyable moments. Vidyut Jammwal enters the scene after interval and his sequences don’t look more than his acting or rather action showreel. I would love to see him in a meatier role. Sonakshi disappoints the most. This one is a complete superfluous role for her in all these years. There is a hotel scene where Jimmy decides to lock himself in an adjacent room to give Saif & Sonakshi their own space and she is so unwanted that you don’t really want it to happen. Gladly, Saif doesn’t make you feel so and takes you through this partly intriguing action thriller relentlessly.

‘BULLETT RAJA’ is enjoyable in parts and watchable only for its harsh but satirical take on various political & social scenarios mainly in Uttar Pradesh. Dhulia shows his skill to extract raw humor soaked in an unsympathetic rustic feel with languages spoken physically and verbally both. Be attentive with what one-liner will come next from any of the characters and you might experience some good laugh. Overall, it is a revenge drama that is commercial, predictable and targeted only to create some buzz at the box-office, something that is never expected from Tigmanshu Dhulia![2.5/5]    

GORI TERE PYAAR MEIN!: So regular & cliché that you want it to end in the interval only! Forget it! [2/5]

Ok, I have been on trip for enough now. My first outing as a filmmaker happened 3 years back & was quite a successful effort (…and forgetful too) to place me in the club of ‘filmmakers of young generation’. So, it’s time to hit back since everyone around me is expecting it…but with what? Or in this case, with whom? Well, with my mentor who has always been in the business and not a hard nut to crack if it is anything associated with candyfloss urban romantic comedies! Who else but the Karan Johar and his Dharma Productions!

So, it’s final! It would be another boy-meets-girl romantic film with some good peppy song & dance numbers [nicely planned 3 before interval & 3 after interval], charmingly cute hero, the most desirable zero-sized heroine and all glossy decked up stylish look & feel. Done. After all, it is the safest bet in Bollywood. But wait; there should be something new, something additional, some kind of twist that can set me up as a sensitive filmmaker who dares to push his boundaries. Yes, we will literally push our boundaries from posh apartments in Metros to some remote village with a name vaguely resembled with Bollywood’s pet ‘Jhumri Telaiya’. And guess what? LAGAAN has always been my all-time favourite film. I always have this dream about shooting my film in a village, at least remade in Mumbai Filmcity with all necessities [Luxury is so negative] intact.

    

Now the story! Do we really need one? Only if you are asking, the boy is a spoilt brat who doesn’t want to spend his nights at home and sings ‘izzat se, kiss my a**’ at the discothèque. The girl here is fun loving, dynamic & very much focused in life. She can be seen dining in the best of the restaurants in town & shaking her bum on ‘Tooh’ in a high-profile ‘shaadi’ but still she is very much an environmentalist reminding one of Shabana Azmi. They meet. Love happens. Principles clash. They break-up. Enters a new girl! She makes him realise that all he really wants from life is nothing but the girl. Interval. Now to win her back, boy has to travel all the way to our ‘Jhumri Telaiya’ and work for the welfare of its villagers. Interesting no?

& now to make it a sure-shot success, all we need is good casting. What about Imran Khan? He looks one spoilt brat, more than that he looks great on screen. He fits the bill. Really? But our boy belongs to a Tamilian family. What about dialect? Who cares, especially when even his simple Hindi sounds as some tough tongue-twister! We will also play some cheesy one-liners around his fairness as ‘hospital mein badli ho gaya tha’. Funny, isn’t it? The girl can only be played by the glam doll Kareena Kapoor Khan. She is meant to be a sensible actor who can look exactly as pretty-as made-up as she could be, even if she is playing a deglam role [remember her real life journalist in SATYAGRAHA].

So, this is yours truly Punit Malhotra and since my second film GORI TERE PYAAR MEIN! is out now; I am here to sell my film to you. Well, it is anything but a regular love-story as you can decide yourself by going through paragraphs written above. The film in fact is so satisfying [or annoying with clichés], you would like it to end in the interval only. Songs will give you plenty of time in between to take loo-breaks. Our village is very different from what you have seen in real life. People here are either workshy or professional dancers responsible for entertainment & only entertainment.

Overall, it is a film that will not harm you if you won’t mess with it. It is a film that believes in ‘forgive & forget’. You should forgive all the clichés and forget it immediately after leaving the theatre. It is a film that is best to enjoy if you have nothing else to do…and I mean NOTHING else to do. [2/5] 

SINGH SAAB THE GREAT: Loud, melodramatic, outdated action potboiler! SINGHAM saab the great!! [2/5]

With a catchy phrase of ‘‘badla nahin badlaav’, this SINGH SAAB THE GREAT fights against corruption & more but in his own way. He saves a girl from an obsessive lover-turned-acid attacker and pours the bottle in his pants, only to realize later that it was cleanly swapped with absolutely harmless nontoxic water. In others, he hits back to ill-practices of hefty donations for higher education, crime-syndicates indulged into food adulteration & illegal storage, the in-vein bribery in bureaucratic system etc.

At one stage, he also doesn’t forget to comment on TRP-driven media with ‘aap journalist hain…thodi toh samajhdaari dikhayiye’. Sounds good?? Yes, sounds good but loud too…in fact, extremely loud! & that’s the problem with SINGH SAAB THE GREAT! Everything that happens, happens with a noisy-ear deafening sound beyond the range of decibels set for normal human hearing.

Anil Sharma’s SINGH SAAB THE GREAT is a loud, melodramatic, over-aged action potboiler that is best enjoyable at single screen theatres where claps set the mood for anything outrageous and compensate for the most of inconsequential parts. A supposedly comeback vehicle of the real action star Sunny Deol, film seems to be going forward with a noble cause of social reformation as its structural content base but fails to built an inspiring legend out of it to meet its desired end. A mediocre script filled with run of the mill plot-subplots & superfluous emotional sequences including hero’s women affiliations i.e. lovely wife, bubbly sister!

Story written by GADAR fame Shaktimaan smells rotten & out-dated where an honest district collector Saranjeet Singh [played by Sunny Deol] sweats his blood out to stop corruption personified by a local dominant king of all illegal actions Bhoodev Singh [played by Prakash Raj in his regular avatar as if coming straight from the sets of Singham & Dabangg 2]. In one scene, when the villainous Prakash Raj tries to twist Deol’s character Saranjeet Singh’s arm by kidnapping his sister, Saranjeet Singh hits back with taking Prakash Raj’s wife & daughter into his custody. Now, isn’t it something we all have thought as an escape-plan to our emotional to the core Bollywood heroes? But surprisingly it’s one of the few exciting moments in the film that brings an effortless smile on your face.

On the performances, Sunny looks every part of his character. He succeeds in charming you with his personality and the honesty dripping off his face. Prakash Raj, when not chewing off his lips, sure entertains you in bits & pieces especially in an item song where he dances with his left feet following ‘dance like no one is watching’ attitude. You have to see it to believe it [Considering his real life better-half Pony Verma being an established choreographer]. New face Urvashi Rautela is mostly there as a regular heroine material with her plastic smile best for advertising the new toothpaste in your nearest supermarket. Amrita Rao is inconsistent but looks quite impressive. You also need to have some kind of magical powers to deal with unbearably annoying sidekicks of both on screen & that includes actors like Johnny Lever, Manoj Pahwa.

I wish if it would have been released soon after GADAR, it would have become an instant crowdpuller but as of now when everyone looks so done with SINGHAM era, it is just another of the league! You can even re-coined its name as ‘SINGHAM SAAB THE GREAT’! Watch if Sunny’s Roar can evoke electrifying energy in you! For me, it’s just OK! [2/5]

RAM-LEELA: Grand, vibrant & unapologetically sexy but not far from being formulaic! Ranveer & Deepika save the Day! [3.5/5]

As told twice in the film, “Besharam, badtameez, khudgarz hota hai…par pyaar toh aisa hi hota hai (Shameless, insolent & self-centered…but then, that’s what love is all about)”, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Magnum Opus RAM-LEELA clearly sticks to the same in its attitude and in content too. A film that is unapologetically sexy, passionate and bold in nature! A film that celebrates love and life through the most vibrant colours one can throw! A film that portrays cinema as a broad canvas to paint picturesque strokes of human emotions freely and at large.

In his commercial adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Sanjay Leela Bhansali creates a fictional territory somewhere near the deserted Runn of Kutch where bullets and guns are more feasible than roses. In the midst of blood & gore rivalry between two communities flourishes the love in the most violent way. Flamboyant Ram (Played by Ranveer Singh) meets even more flashy & intrepid Leela (Played by Deepika Padukone) and the physical attraction at first takes it from there as a thoroughly fiery & flaming passionate love between the two. Now we all have seen ‘Romeo & Juliet’ adaptations of all kinds ranging from the finest (Aamir-Juhi starrer QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK could be one) to the worst (this year’s ISSAQ); so if you are really asking or looking here for newness and novelty in the storyline you would be fooling yourself big time. But if you have an eagle-eye for the detailing in art & craft, this is undoubtedly the most evolved adaptation till date.

The driving force in the film that really sets screen on fire, is the splendid chemistry between Ranveer & Deepika. When was the last time you actually noticed a Bollywood couple acting adult while making love on screen? When was the last time you could truly sense the gravity of passion between the two while enjoying a fervent kiss? And that too without having any pinch of hesitation or some kind of apprehension in the air! Ranveer rules as a typical hero material that can carry certain oomph to drive his entire female fan following crazy and also in chorus to the same, can make your heart bleed with an emotional flair in his piece of act. Deepika is nothing less than a live magic on screen. She mesmerizes you with her confident-poised look & vividly poignant portrayal of a character that is never a regular in Bollywood. Bravura performance! Supriya Pathak Kapoor as Ba is a treat to watch and the best among some interesting & competent names in the list of supporting cast i.e Richa Chaddha, Sharad Kelkar, Gulshan Devaiah (of Shaitan), Abhimanyu Singh & Jameel Khan (Gangs of Wasseypur fame).

                                                                                                                                

& how can we really not talk about the grandeur in art design, the vibrancy in costumes with joie de vivre & the superlative cinematography setting each and every frame equivalent to a painting on the wall! The teams responsible for these make sure you can’t let your eyes off the screen even for once but is it not obvious when we are for a SLB film? So, what are the things that can make you uncomfortable in a put-off situation?? Well, too much of dead predictable twists in the second half, confusing sub-plots to create melodramatic tension between the lovers, dragged duration of long 2 hours 35 min, a large amount of ‘not-needed’ gunfire acts are sure some of the demerits film holds to restrict itself from being called as a masterstroke from a class filmmaker!

My suggestion! Watch it on the big screen to make the celebration of grandness bigger & better and for the sparkling chemistry between Ranveer & Deepika! They alone will save your money & the day. [3.5/5]   

SATYA 2: Another disastrous contribution to Indian cinema…with love from Ram Gopal Varma! [1/5]

No matter what cast, creed & category you belong, you must have encountered people mostly clad in crisp ironed formals & with great vocal skills; who sure have a ‘never heard before’ plan to secure your happy life, a profitable concept to put your money in for a humongous guaranteed return or even a ‘work from home’ chain-business to join for an easy & quick solution to all your worries. Who hasn’t met a salesman before, with pamphlets & booklets to handover you on your regular bus-stand, at market place & where not?

In similar manner, we see the leading man of SATYA 2- Ram Gopal Varma’s another disastrous contribution to Indian cinema, selling off a promising concept of forming a new underworld ‘company’ that would believe in not showing off its powers but in planting its roots all over undercover to extract more in a safer way. The only problem here is, the plan may sound convincing at first but has no concrete ground to proceed further and sadly, the way it gets described and explained is nothing but an irritating- infuriating blabber all the way. As a result, you have no choice left but to snatch the pamphlet, roll it and start looking for the nearest and first dustbin to throw it away like we do with the most such plans.

Allegedly a sequel to 1998’s path breathing underworld movie SATYA of great team work (Anurag Kashyap, Gulzar, Vishal Bhardwaj), SATYA 2 unashamedly doesn’t show any connection to its prequel. In fact, it is as bad to SATYA as RGV’s AAG was to ‘SHOLAY’. The irony is both the films are in name of one filmmaker and no one can really blame or thrash out the other for being so offensive. We all have been waiting for the real RGV to come out soon but at this point of time, I would like to believe in a quite filmy situation where the real Ram Gopal Varma of RANGEELA, RAAT, BHOOT, SATYA, KAUN is now captured in somewhere and his place is now taken over by his ‘humshakal’ who’s ready to devastate all the respect as a filmmaker he had earned from left, right & centre (Trust me, this is more entertaining plot than the most of RGV’s recent failures J)

Unlike the character sensitively underplayed by J D Chakrvarthy in 1998’s hit, the new Satya in town [played by a newcomer credited as Puneet Singh Ratn for Hindi Version and as Sarwanand in Telugu] is insipid, bland & boring, mainly because of the writing. The writing is too lethargic to create sense. Imagine a narrative voice-over with pure Hindi words like ‘utpann, sarvnaash, chintan’, and in times when there is a song to be thrown in, it goes like “…and they went to Kashmir for honeymoon”. Song is over. & now it says, “…and after the honeymoon, they came back to Mumbai”. What an explanation! And who says Bollywood doesn’t show logics!!

On serious note, time has come when we should console & comfort the cinema lovers in us with a ‘hard to accept’ realization that there was a filmmaker who inevitably desired and derived us through his many prominent artworks for a potential change in Indian cinema but is now lost somewhere in the undercurrents of his own mutinous nature! 

SATYA 2 is not Ram Gopal Varma’s worst but sure a forgettable & shoddy work of substandard that kills all my hopes to see him rise & shine again! Stay Away! [1/5]

KRRISH 3: Unimaginative, unoriginal, borrowed and a bigger disappointment! [2/5]

If you heard something like, “agar mera yeh experiment kaamyaab ho gaya, main yeh-main woh…” you should never be in doubts that you are watching a science-fiction movie (…from Bollywood ofcourse). But thrice?...in the whole 2 hour 33 min of duration filled with inspired yet uninspiring visual effects?? Really?? Then sure you ought to have your uncertainties on gravity of the skilled writing.

In other scene, when a superhero supposedly killed by the evil returns inexplicably or rather in a scientific breakthrough too suitable to sound plausible, a kid confronts the shocked & shaken baddie played by Vivek Oberoi as, “kyun? Phat gayi kya?”. Well, the audience laughed but I couldn’t as if we really want our kids to grow in such shape. Though eventually it is a family entertainer, Rakesh Roshan’s KRRISH 3 can’t be declared sole responsible for that but definitely for being least original, least entertaining & for shamelessly taking cues from the past hits of the west. On one hand, Sr. Roshan tries to woo you with extensive visual effects never seen before in India, but also never lets his gluttony go off to encash the Indian sentimental spree. So, the plot goes for the toss in order to swing aimlessly between the both!

Krishna (Hrithik Roshan in a tailor-made role) is trying his hard to balance his life in Mumbai with his father Rohit (Jr. Roshan again in a comparatively more charming role) & wife Priya (Priyanka Chopra in a regular), between his normal routine and the disappearing ‘superhero’ acts as Krrish to save people’s lives. Meanwhile, an evil mind named Kaal (Vivek Oberoi in a menacing character interestingly modeled on the similar lines of Sir Juda in Subhash Ghai’s KARZ) is busy creating an army of MAANVARs (Mutants from the fusion of humans with animals) to rule the world and regain his powers. Rest is all about how the two clash & collide with their own set of intentions to destroy buildings, demolish towers and make people (especially viewers more than the ones on screen) suffer not only physically but mentally and emotionally too.

Theoretically, a superhero movie needs an upper hand on the VFX front. KRRISH 3 fulfills that basic rule by creating some of the unseen effects in Indian cinema but ‘is that enough’ is the biggest question. There is not one single action/ VFX sequence in the film that comes with an ‘original’ tag…and I bet if you can show me at least one! I wish if the team of writers would have sit more on the plot to make it inspiring rather than deciding on what all effects we can borrow from Hollywood Hits to thrill the audience! KOI MIL GAYA has proved in the past that if incorporated smartly in the plot, even the emotional quotient would work as a strong share of interest, but sadly here in KRRISH 3 it was all done just for the sake of it. Novelty is gone already and now the sensibility too.

On the performance side, there is no second thought on Hrithik being the crowd puller. He maintains the level he has achieved. He charms you with his intensity, his ability and his skills as a complete performer. Vivek as Kaal is strictly average. Kangna as his one of the mutants has an interesting role to pull out. She is poised. She is confident. She is promising. Priyanka Chopra incidentally has nothing new to surprise.

In an advanced world of technology, where even kids have opened all the possible windows to access latest landmarks in the said field, I am not very sure if KRRISH 3 would be able to make it to their appreciation. It only makes you believe in an unsaid rule that medium can never rule out the message, especially if it is borrowed, clichéd, corny, tacky and unimaginative. Think twice before buying your tickets! [2/5]