HALLA BOL -SAFDAR HASHMI HAAZIR HO

Rabble rouser Raj kumar Santoshi who had lost some ground with a few lacklustre films(Chinatown,Family,Lajja) regains a part of it with Halla Bol – albeit in the same jarring vein as his early films( Ghayal, Damini ,Ghatak ). HB has its heart in its right place but its 20 minutes too long and 200 Decibels too loud.
It starts off as a reprising Madhur Bhandarkar’s super-cynical Page-3 and then latches onto two separate but related stories from the past to bear redemption for its sold-out superstar-Sameer Khan (Ajay Devgun). The first is the citizens’ vigilante~ Jessica Lal murder case and the second is the lesser known gangster slaying of Commie Street theatre activist Safdar Hashmi that not many outside the world of niche Indian theatre know about.
Ajay Devgun(in a thinly disguised personification of Shahrukh Khan) rises up from the streets to the dizzying heights of Bollywood and loses sight of everything along the way-his ideals, morals, even his family and the man he used to be. Then when he inadvertently becomes a witness in a high profile murder case-he turns to his Guru Panjaj Kapoor (Safdar Hashmi~parthasarathi) for some Geeta-vaani and guidance on how to stand up for truth and justice.
HB is bound to be an uncomfortable film for upwardly mobile multiplex audiences but may do well in non-metro centres that are still receptive towards
80’s style cliched-socialist messages & tedious moral posturing against the establishment, its cunning politicans and scheming top-cops.
The film addresses difficult questions about star activism and collective social conscience but fails to make the desired impact because the screenplay changes tone from the farcical to coarse reactionary melodrama-complete with looting, arson, swordfights and unruffled sniggering villians issuing diktats from ‘hedonistic swimming pools’. Real life personalities (including Liquor Barons and New Age Gurus) are quickly painted in shades of black and white to hasten the understanding of the mass subversion of justice and the dialogues seem to be deeply inspired by C-grade Mithun’s ‘Ooty’ potboilers like ‘Jallad’ or ‘Hitler.’
While Ajay Devgun’s already receiving flak for mouthing lines that show his co-stars and the film industry in bad light, Pankaj Kapoor spouts poetry, breathes fire and makes a fine display of his under-rated histrionic abilites in the little screen time that’s allotted to him. If the film’s title is taken from Safdar Hashmi’s slogan then the story should have centred around him. That would have been really worthwhile.

SHOOTOUT AT LOKHANDWALA

Maya Bloody Valentine


Apoorva Lakhia’s Shootout at Lokhandwala isn’t shot at the Lokhandwala High Rise in Andheri (West), Mumbai where half the Hindi film industry lives. Or is it? Half the film industry certainly features in the film. Frustrated cops Sunjay Dutt,Suniel Shetty and Arbaaz Khan from the ATS(Anti Terrorist Squad) take on Backstreet Bhais Vivek Oberoi, Jumping Jack Jeetu’s na-kaara ladka(Tushar Kapoor) and a bunch of other godforsaken losers in the climax that runs for half the length of the film. The cops spend the first half of the film gritting their teeth and offering excuses for their inadequacies in Amitabh Bachchan’s chambers while the baddies run amok. That’s the premise for the bloody eventuality where Dutt turns up with gelled hair, dark glasses a spotless white shirt and an army of tholas to mow down every mafia-man; but not before each one of them makes one touching telephone call (land line only -it’s the early 90’s) to their close ones.
The film starts with a scene from the aftermath. The camera lingers lovingly over blood stained floors, bullet ridden doors, smashed furniture and a Bai (not Bhai) mopping up the staircase landing with her kapda, twisting and rinsing it while bloody water dripping into a bucket as the titles run by. How poetic. Valentine Day’s here. SAL comes across as a perverted love story between its Director and morbid mayhem with no redemption and no survivors. Crime (no longer smuggling in the 70’s or Thakur style rural oppression in the 80’s) is easy-Just Push Play. So what if it does not pay? It clearly is worth its indulgence for its grisly exploitation factor. SAL doesn’t have an iota of a story, a moment of revelation or ingenuity about gangsters, their modus operandi, psyche, or understandable ‘conflict’ with the police. For all that please re-visit RGV’s Satya.
Like all Sanjay Gupta films(Kaante,Musafir)-SAL has state of the art camerawork, editing, and sepia tinted shots from start to end. It has lots of encounters that jump through years like a criminal’s arresting biography, standard Bhai ‘thakela-phatela’ dialogues but alas- zero substance, intrigue and suspense. Just guns that don’t stop firing. There’s no plot but everyone knows how the film will end. Every character and every situation rings hollow but what is genuinely disconcerting is the subvertive glam-factor attributed to guns, gangsters and the extreme crime of cold blooded Supari killings. Imported pistols are cocked, stroked, spoken to and about; all portrayed as adoring extensions of male machismo before they spray bullets across tables, rooms and narrow alleys like divine benediction. Le Mar !
Maybe what Gupta and Lakhia need to stir up their imagination are a few rasping extortion phone calls from Dubai. And then a some of those shingling 9mm rounds in their butts after a tense month of nervous nannying and non-payment. That would help bring a little more reality into characters like Vivek Oberoi’s Maya.

DIL,DOSTI, ETC

Prakash Jha, one of the 80’s NFDC art-film patriarchs who’s now making middle-of-the-road films on Bihar ( Gangajal, Mrityudand, Apaharan)- produces Dil, Dosti, etc. for first time director Manoj Tiwary. Funnily, this Low- Glam & Heavy-Atmosphere film’s title quite aptly explains itself. It starts off with the promise of poetry but peters off to nowhere, much like the future of all its testosterone laden, unstable, nakara characters.
‘ Et-cetera is a word
Used by more than a few
To make people believe
That we know more than we do.’
Shreyas Talpade is the typical collar grabbing, khadi clad Bihari student leader on the campaign trail in the DU campus who befriends a wimpy, city bred fresher (Imaad Shah) and strikes an innocuous bet with him before the opening titles of the film can roll. Shreyas has his eyes set on becoming the college President by hook or by crook and Imaad is sure that he can take three willing women to bed before that, in a single day. The film follows them around till D-day comes and all hell breaks loose-thanks to the bet that hung over them like the proverbial sword of Damocles.
The final ten minutes fracas is especially unforgivable after all the qurbani / camaraderie that is shown building up between the friends. Director Tiwary vainly tries to tighten the noose around his lead pair a-la Sam Mendes’ ‘American Beauty’ & Spike Lee’s ‘The 25th hour’ but falls flat on the dusty campus grounds. With no star cast to position correctly, this low budget venture does manage to re-create campus life for what it really is, minus spandex suited coy chicks on roller skates and forty plus superstars with six-packs prancing around them. There is no mention of the political parties that usually play a big role to at the Univ Elections but the rest of the run up to the big event ring true. The recollection and usage of everything from funny nicknames to the clash of cultures and values, eve teasing and ensuing gang wars inside the campus is accurate and telling. Its close in spirit to DD’s ‘Chunauti’ from 20 years ago. Who remembers that? (“Mun ek seepi hai, Aasha moti hai, Har pal jeevan ka – ek Chunauti hai…”)
Shreyas Talpade, in particular is good as the understated but ambitious neta who pines fors the campus queen but also expects her to turn into a ghoonghat bound sati-savitri bahu. But Imaad Shah, who the film banks heavily on, is one big disappointment. His curly hair and languid gait are reminiscent of the early Naseeruddin Shah but the similarities end there. To start with, he is miscast as the jaded, immoral and heartless Casanova who keeps running away to a brothel every other night to escape ragging at his hostel. What an excuse! Then, he’s also trying to ratofy the Periodic tables and corner a pretty schoolgirl somewhere in between the heavy metals, inert gases and tutions at home-without the aid of any of the tradititonal tools of the trade. He doesn’t sing, dance, pump iron, top his class, rescue damsels in distress, appear in intriguing double roles, beat up hoodlums, win tournaments, flaunt his wealth or appear as the silent, suffering, good Samaritan- but score he does. He also looks like Supandi from Tinkle comics and can’t act for nuts.
Hey-maybe, lineage does matter !!!

HEAVY FUEL

Anurag (Black Friday) Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ is hindi film-noir way ahead of its time. Which is not another way of saying that it is self-indulgent mumbo-jumbo that sacrifices comprehension, logic and a corroborative plot at the altar of superficiality.
Smoking as an abhorrent & destructive indulgence is taken as the moot point of argument between morality, righteousness and social responsibility on one hand and individualistic freedom of choice on the other (maimed one). What begins as the cocky John (Kafkaesque) Abraham’s reluctant battle to quit his addiction at the nagging of his wife (Ayesha Takia) and the coaxing of his freshly liberated squint-eyed pal (Ranbir) quickly turns into a nightmare from the deep dungeons of hell. K goes down to meet Paresh Rawal (Shri Baba Bangali of Sealdah) at his no-retreat Prayogshala and is forced into signing an agreement (tome) to the effect that he wishes to quit smoking. K acts irreverent, stubborn, incredulous and is outright disobedient at the apparent omnipotency of the Baba but is forced to fall in line when the default penalties start to come true. As part of his ‘treatment’, he loses his hearing, friends, brother, wife and finally his soul; that last treasured possession that defined his existence. His astitva finally dissolves in a pink ghoulish soul-soup. But then, wasn’t it his soul that had compelled him to do as he pleased? Not have to listen to anybody?
At the film’s promo-events, John spoke naively about the film being a timely message to the youth about the dangers of smoking but what unfolds is a tangential tale. Stephen King's Quitters Inc ' inspired' No Smoking is replete with black humour, delusional fantasies, paranoia (of the kind caused by withdrawal symptoms) and retributive gore attached to the difficulties of extreme choice. There are excesses like cartoon thought blurbs, quirky references (infidel castro castrated cigars) and an over exposed yellow, grease stained rusty underground atmosphere that’s too reminiscent of C grade torture flicks like Saw and Hostel.
No Smoking’s production values are top notch and out of sync with its target audience. There isn’t any. What target audience can a film which starts with quotes from Plato, Socrates & a Sinatra blurb and then ends with a mandatory Bipasha Basu item number have?
Therein lies NS’s identity crisis and its predictably short life. But here’s a niche film that dares to burn new ground. It provokes without closing its loops and rebukes without passing judgment.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT

In Taare Zameen Par, Aamir Khan plays a sensitive, poised, junior school art teacher who sports a rolex watch, ubercool gelled hair( that’s soon imitated by his favourite pupil) and designer casual t- shirts at an ultra-conservative Tie & Blazer Boarding school. Maybe, he should have paid a visit to Shantiniketan(W.B.) or even Baroda for a clearer picture of the vocation of art education( and educators) in our country. In his one hour in front of the camera, the acclaimed method actor looks like anything but an Art teacher and his smart myopic directorial vision makes a fine mockery of the purpose of Art towards self-revelation behind it. But then, that’s ‘pop-realism’ for you. TZP is sensitive, refined cinema only for those recently glutted by Om Shanti Om. It is indigestible for anyone who can tell his Monet from his Manet.
After normal (in-sensitive) teachers respond to the ‘special needs’ of the dyslexic child by rapping him on his knuckles, making him stand outside class everyday and flunking him summa-cum-laude; Aamir appears as the proverbial knight with a shining brush in hand and paints everything in different shades of oxy-moron. He mouths deep philosophies to nine year old boys who’re trying to sketch still-life, quotes from Oscar Wilde in the Principal’s room and convinces a dyslexic child’s parents that academic success is not everything in life. Then, after a lot of sniffing and touching songs, his film climaxes with the buck-toothed brat beating the whole school in an Art competition. The under dog gets his moment of glory. Face it- mister.Success is everything in life. And Art is just another subject that everyone’s trying to excel in.
The film begins with Darsheel’s charming pranks but starts to wear thin and tear after his condition is diagnosed and he is packed off to Boarding School. There on, there is too much water and not enough paint on his paper and Aamir khan tries to mitigate it with strangely dsylexic contradictions of his own.
Art-as Aamir states is ‘a display of emotions.’ What then –is an ‘Art competition?’ A ‘competition of emotions?’ To its credit TZP has wonderfully written (Prasoon Joshi) and picturised songs, a talented child actor (Darsheel Safary ) and radically different subject matter plus some good intentions at its core. But Aamir Khan messes the film up in trying to reconcile his confused philosophy with the larger parameters of mainstream, commercial Bollywood. In trying to make a strong statement, all the characters emerge as stereotyped caricatures and the situations they find themselves in are absurd while trying to be profound. Pray, in what kind of a school are children openly allowed to point fingers at their teachers and openly laugh at them? And what kind of an Art teacher announces an Art competition that he (the TEACHER) himself competes in along with his students? No surprise then-that he emerges with one of the two best paintings(A vibrant wet-on-wet Samir Mondol watercolour).
If you want to see a classic coming-of-age school story go re-watch’ Dead Poets Society’ or even the recent ‘ The History Boys.’ And if its disabilities in the Indian context- then its Koshish (Sanjeev kumar/Jaya ) or Sparsh (Naseer)…