KICK: Have faith in God aka Salman & you might enjoy him taking you for a ride! [2/5]

Many describe most of the mass-entertainers a ‘paisa-vasool’ film. I really want to know what this reckless term is all about. Does a ‘dhaansu’ entry of the hero pay you back a 50 rupee note? How much a Nargis Fakhri item number is worth of, accordingly? And how to evaluate all those silly fight sequences and an emotional backup to the story to justify all the ridiculous actions our hero does?? I am still trying to locate my ‘paisa’ spent on Sajid Nadiadwala’s KICK in my wallet, if it’s come back! No, it’s not there yet! My ‘Paisa’ is not ‘Vasool-ed’.

Getting into direction with a Salman Khan film is one of the wisest decisions Sajid would ever have made. The man who knows it all [Sajid being the most celebrated Film producer] meets the man who does it all [Salman is known for that] and the outcome is all set to break records on box-office but not without testing your patience and questioning your intelligence. The man in question here is nothing but God to his fans. Everything he does on screen robotically becomes believable and justifiable. Otherwise, who would have the guts to propose a name like ‘Devi’ to a character played by Salman Khan? (No offence to women out there!)

So, he’s a good-hearted guy who endorses alcohol ferociously and gets offended by the idea of being a ‘Ghar Jamai’ though he has nothing to be proud of except, of course a good ‘being human’ heart. Wow, how manly he is! Only thing he seeks from life is a kind of adrenalin rush and he can really go far for that. Even stealing from the riches becomes one of the mediums to achieve one such kick. Reminds of DHOOM 3? Why not, it is a distant cousin to that in many aspects. Replacing one accented leading lady with the other irksome victim of same disorder could be one.

KICK also suffers from a bunch of ironies. One that leaves you in splits is when Devi [the Salman Khan] is repeatedly called a ‘headache’, ‘torture’ and ‘unjhelable’ by none other than his girlfriend. Was she referring to the film? I hope so. In one of the last scenes, Salman is seen dancing on ‘Saat Samundar Paar’ from VISHWATMA. This is undeniably the sweetest and cutest tribute to Divya Bharti from his husband Sajid but the irony doesn’t find a place to hide that the yesteryear actress’s suspicious death has drinking habits as allegedly one of the main causes and this whole sequence encourages drinking like there’s no one watching. Awful! 

On the performance meter, it’s Randeep Hooda who brings in the most controlled performance. For making himself confidently able to stand against someone like Salman in a film designed for Salman, Hooda deserves it. The most annoying of the lot is Nawazuddin Siddiqui. His weirdly wicked act of a villainous laugh is so old-fashioned and maddening to hear one after another. As for as Salman is concerned, he is hardly concerned about it! As a true ardent fan, we should not look for logics in whatever he does like after so much criminal cases against him, he’s seen wearing a police uniform at the end; to make it loud and clear that, “Do not try understanding me!” Well, I dare not! And you better not if going for it! [2/5] 

THE XPOSE: One of the cheesiest suspense thrillers, aka unintentional comedy!! [2/5]

Fans who have had regular access to gossipy magazines like ‘Mayapuri’ and ‘Stardust’ would agree more that bollywood film industry has always been blessed with cheesy, salty and spicy ‘inside’ news pieces on link-ups, break-ups, regular tiffs between stars, catfights in parties and rivalries that run longer than the film on box-office. Now, if someone from those unsighted admirers would have made a film like ‘THE XPOSE’ taking references from here and there, it would have been easily an ignorable offence…but coming from Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, a veteran himself from the industry, it is a shameful cold-blooded crime to present all of it in a hasty, half-baked and horrifically bad light.

THE XPOSE, set in glamorously stylish 60’s, is a fictional memoir inspired by real life incidents happened in bollywood. So you have a moody, egoistic and bigmouthed superstar Ravi Kumar [Played by who else? The Himesh Reshammiya], a character modeled on yesteryear Actor Rajkumar famous for his attitude and many regular interferences on set suitable to his self-proclaimed image. How can you not find the connection when he compliments one of his co-stars on her dress that he could use the same for his house as curtains??

Then, there are a couple of sex-symbols who catfights in parties and bears strong resemblance from real-life contemporaries Zeenat Aman & Parveen Bobby. There is also a top music director KD [India’s latest sensation Yo Yo Honey Singh playing someone like RD Burman] who can sell the same tune to two different filmmakers. If you could do an elephant-eyed examination, you will also find visible suggestions of Sunil Dutt saving Nargis’s life from a fire mishap on set, a publishing house giant replicating Nari Hira of Stardust and hidden interest of underworld in the business. All that and an unfortunate death of a leading actress [Divya Bharti?? Who knows!!]! Everyone is under scanner and the frisky & frolicky fiction takes over the touch of reality!

THE XPOSE is stylish and sensational but cheaply designed, undeveloped ‘insider’s view’ to encash people’s thirst for scandalous ‘behind the curtain’ news. It gets easier if you already in sync with those intimations and indications before hand in order to relate and rejoice but as an outsider, you will always miss the punch here. Watching Himesh delivering lines like, “Main jo bol deta hoon, wohi script ho jaati hai” and “Style pe aap kaam karo, attitude pe maine bachpan se kaam kiya hai” makes you giggle and chuckle at the first but soon you will feel the juice getting either too sweet or too salty to enjoy. Baby-faced Yo Yo Honey Singh looks fresh for the screen and bearable when lip-syncing his own songs. Newcomers Sonali Raut and Zoya Afroz do it as been told and predicted. Adil Hussain brings some credibility in his shorter but smarter performance. By the way, the story gets narrated by Irrfan Khan playing a blackmarketeer at cinema-halls. No explanations would be enough to understand why this special appearance??

With nasal-toned singing, ‘ice-dream khaoongi, Kashmir jaoongi’ kind of inanity in lyrics, average performance, distasteful writing and a suspense that falls more in the grid of unplanned-unintentional-accidental comedy, THE XPOSE is one of the cheesiest suspense thriller that can be watchable if you are allowed to make loud comments on its idiocy in theatre. It’s the only way out to relieve yourself of the load it throws on your intellect. Sadly, multiplex culture doesn’t pursue that any longer! So, better leave it for a home-viewing! [2/5]