The end of the IPL tournament marks the return of Bollywood movies to theaters. This weekend’s big release is the screwball comedy Housefull, about an unlucky guy who tries to lift his curse by finding true love. The impressive cast list includes Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ritesh Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Arjun Rampal, Jiah Khan and Boman Irani.
Other Indian movies playing in the Chicago area this weekend include Darling(Telugu), Pappy Appacha (Malayalam), Simha (Telugu) and Sura (Tamil) at the Golf Glen 5.
Over the years, several people have recommended Dil Se to me. Based on the DVD cover, I expected a good but fairly typical romantic drama. Boy, was I wrong. Dil Se takes the genre in unexpected directions, enhancing a well-told story with surreal dance numbers.
The couple on the DVD cover meet on a train platform on a cold night during a downpour. Amar (Shahrukh Khan) assumes that a figure huddled under a blanket is a man and asks him for a match to light his cigarette. A gust of wind blows the blanket away to reveal a lovely woman named Meghna (Manisha Koirala).
Amar flirts clumsily with the taciturn beauty, until she finally asks him to buy her a hot cup of tea. While he’s helping the sleepy tea vendor prepare the chai, a train pulls into the station. Amar arrives on the platform, cups of tea in hand, to see Meghna seated on the train with some rough-looking guys. She gives him one last look as the train pulls away.
They meet again a short time later in Northeast India, where Amar is covering the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence from Britain, for the national radio station. What should be a happy time is marred by ongoing clashes between the army and groups of separatists. Amar interviews the revolutionaries to better understand their goals.
When, in the course of his work, Amar comes across Meghna, she pretends not to recognize him at first, which only intensifies his pursuit. Amar’s pursuit is aggressive, almost as though he feels entitled to her. Still, she doesn’t reject him as forcefully as she has grounds to. She eventually tells him that she’s married. Amar’s attempt to apologize results in him being beaten up and left in a ditch by the men who were on the train with Meghna the first night they met.
Amar is understandably confused, as is the audience. Who is this girl? Is she interested in Amar, or not? Is she telling the truth? It’s no wonder why he finds her so alluring, despite the danger to his personal safety.
There’s an aura of danger surrounding Amar as he files his reports. He’s in essentially foreign territory; he doesn’t speak the language or understand the people. His bravado masks the fact that he’s out of his element, whether talking with terrorists or walking through the desert after his bus breaks down. The only thing he understands is how he feels for Meghna.
Enhancing that feeling of disorientation are the movie’s musical numbers, arguably the best part of the movie. It’s easy to incorporate a song-and-dance number by having the characters join in a parade that just happens to be passing by. It takes guts to make the romantic leads run from soldiers as the city explodes around them during a love song.
The numbers are symbolic rather than literal. This is the ideal way to include musical performances in a movie, as it provides a visual representation of a character’s mindset. It elevates the performances beyond mere devices for selling soundtrack CDs, especially since A. R. Rahman’s amazing songwriting sells itself.
I’m not qualified to say if the choreography in Dil Se is the best ever, but I’m confident that it is some of the most challenging and well-executed. Choreographer Farah Khan demands that actors throw themselves into her dances whole-heartedly. There is no way to half-ass her moves.
The most impressive dance number in the movie, “Chaiyya Chaiyya,” takes place on top of a moving train, traveling through tunnels and over bridges. It’s nearly seven minutes long. The dance is so technically stunning and the setting so precarious, thinking about the practicalities of its filming temporarily brought me out of the movie. Still, it’s so cool that it’s impossible not to enjoy it.
There’s only one Hindi movie playing in the Chicago area the weekend beginning April 23, 2010. Paathshaala, starring Shahid Kapoor, is showing at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles.
I expect next weekend’s new release, Housefull — which stars Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ritesh Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Arjun Rampal and Jiah Khan — to open in a number of theaters across Chicagoland, hopefully bringing the spring Bollywood drought to an end.
This weekend, the Golf Glen 5 is also showing the English-language movie called Anything For You. It stars Sam Ghosh as an Indian-American doctor torn between commitment to his wife and his feelings for an American girl.
Other Indian movies playing around Chicago this weekend include Darling (Telugu), Pramani (Malayalam) and Prasthanam (Telugu) at the Golf Glen 5, which continues to broadcast IPL cricket matches on weekend mornings. Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove is showing the Telugu movies Leader and Kedi.
It’s natural to have sympathy for a person unjustly accused of a crime. Jail assumes that sympathy is all an audience requires in order to identify with the movie’s hero. That’s not the case.
Jail‘s protagonist is Parag (Neil Nitin Mukesh). Soon after celebrating a promotion with his flight attendant girlfriend, Mansi (Mugdha Godse), Parag is pulled over by the cops while driving with his roommate. The roommate pulls a gun on the cops and is shot while fleeing the scene. His backpack contains two kilos of cocaine.
The police assume that Parag is a part of the drug dealing operation and throw him in jail. A judge convicts Parag based on circumstantial evidence. When the comatose roommate dies, so do Parag’s hopes of having his name cleared.
Most people, if falsely accused of a serious crime, would protest their innocence vigorously. Not Parag. He sits at the police station stunned, occasionally stuttering about his confusion. He remains similarly silent throughout his imprisonment. Fellow inmates have one-sided conversations with him. Even a visit from his mother elicits only a mumbled, “Ma.”
Despite his silence, Parag’s fellow inmates sense that he’s a good guy who doesn’t belong in prison. How they can tell from his mute indifference, I’m not sure. Someone must have told them that they were in a movie and that he was the protagonist. Parag himself doesn’t do anything to encourage their friendship or respect.
On one of the rare occasions when Parag actually does something, there’s nothing heroic about his actions. A jerk named Joe buys his early release and brags about it on his way out of prison. Parag attacks him, not because Joe’s being cruel to the other inmates, but because Parag thinks he should be the one getting out instead of Joe.
At the end of the movie, the producers include a note about the thousands of people imprisoned without charges in Indian jails. Reflective of that stance, the prisoners in the movie are nicer than the guards, who are themselves admit to being hampered by bureaucracy. The blame for the system’s injustice is laid on zealous police investigators, lazy judges and greedy defense attorneys.
The conditions of the jail, if realistic, are disturbingly primitive. Dozens of prisoners share one large cell, sleeping on blankets on a dirt floor. There are semi-private toilets and a water trough for bathing and washing clothes. Critics who find American prisons too luxurious would be impressed. The stark setting illustrates how easily it would be to lose a share of one’s humanity in such a place.
But the movie’s success rests ultimately on Mukesh’s performance as Parag, who doesn’t grow throughout the film. It’s hard to get to know a character who’s so unresponsive. Apart from a few breakdowns, he never seems in danger of losing his humanity, in part because his fellow inmates won’t let him. Why they are so concerned with saving him, I’m not sure.
I’m a bit surprised that Eros Entertainment’s Paathshaala, starring Shahid Kapoor, isn’t opening in Chicago. The IPL cricket tournament has stalled movie releases internationally as well as in India. There’s a chance Chicago won’t get a new Hindi film until the star-studded Housefull releases on April 30.
Other Indian movies showing around Chicagoland the weekend beginning Friday, April 16 include In Ghost House Inn: Harihar Nagar 3 (Malayalam), Prasthanam (Telugu) and Varudu (Telugu) at the Golf Glen 5, which continues to show IPL matches on weekend mornings. Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove is showing two Malayalam movies, Drona and My Big Father.
2008’s Drona aspired to be an original, inspirational Indian superhero movie, but failed to reach its potential. Prince, while derivative of Western superhero movies, succeeds as a fun action flick sure to spawn a sequel.
Prince (Vivek Oberoi) is an anti-hero who makes James Bond look like a slacker. Prince is the world’s greatest thief, capable of pulling off outrageous international heists while avoiding capture. He has an arsenal of high-tech gadgets. He’s unbeatable in a fight. Women love him. And, to top it all off, he can dance.
The morning after a job, Prince wakes up to find a butler he doesn’t recognize tending to a mysterious bullet wound on his arm. He can’t remember anything about his life, not even his own name.
Prince is kidnapped by a secret Indian government agency operating covertly in South Africa. The agency leader, Colonel Khanna (Dalip Tahil), explains that Prince lost his memory while stealing a valuable antique coin. Of course, Prince doesn’t remember where he hid the coin.
His girlfriend and criminal partner, Maya, offers to help him. Prince doesn’t recognize Maya but accepts her help. Things get confusing when two other women show up, also claiming to be Maya.
Everyone Prince meets gives him conflicting information about why the missing coin is so special. Is it a tool to entrap a master criminal named Sarang? A magical artifact? A nano-weapon? The only way for Prince to learn the truth and recover his memory is to find the coin.
Prince works because it is self-aware. Hanging inside Prince’s “batcave” of gadgets and costumes are posters of Batman, Spider-man and Iron Man, American superheroes whose movies obviously inspired Prince.
The film is an improvement on one of producer Kumar Taurani’s previous efforts, Race. While Taurani hasn’t lost his love of preposterous explosions that make vehicles flip in midair, Prince‘s lead characters are more appealing that the jerks in Race.
When writing the inevitable sequels to Prince, there are a few flaws from the original that the filmmakers would be wise not to repeat. First are the disappointingly slow chase scenes. If terrain is too bumpy for jeeps and mopeds to operate at high speeds, shoot the scene in a different location.
Second is the woeful misuse of a shark tank. There is but one use for sharks in movies: eating people. That no one falls in the shark tank during a late scene is unforgivable.
Another underused prop is the villain Sarang’s bionic hand. While it looks like something out of Terminator, is doesn’t do anything apart from giving Sarang’s punches a little extra oomph. He could’ve at least, you know, crushed a guy’s throat with it or something.
Apart from a few missed opportunities for grisly deaths, Prince is a fun action movie that, while not mentally taxing, at least makes sense within the rules it sets for itself. In order to enjoy a 2 hour 15 minute Bollywood action movie, that’s often all that I require.
Finally, Chicago area Bollywood fans have a reason to return to the theater. Prince stars Vivek Oberoi as the world’s greatest thief, who loses his memory during the course of a heist. He has six days to recover his memory and save the world. The movie is produced by the same team behind Race, so expect logic-defying action scenes and minimal story.
There are no other Hindi films playing in the Chicago area this weekend. Though it left area theaters weeks ago, My Name Is Khan just passed the $4 million mark in nationwide earnings.
Other Indian movies playing in theaters this weekend include Paiyaa (Tamil), Thanthoni (Malayalam) and Varudu (Telugu) at the Golf Glen 5. Paiyaa is also showing at Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove.
Chicago movie screens remain largely devoid of Bollywood films for yet another week. The only new Hindi movie opening in the area this weekend is the political satire Well Done Abba, which released internationally last week. Well Done Abba opens at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles on Friday, April 2. The Golf Glen 5 is also carrying over Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge.
Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area include Paiyaa (Tamil), Varudu (Telugu) and Yugapurushan (Malayalam) at the Golf Glen 5. Paiyaa is also showing at Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove.
And don’t forget, the Golf Glen 5 broadcasts IPL cricket matches weekend mornings at 9:30 throughout the month of April.
