The horror film Ek Thi Daayan is now available on Eros Now free to subscribers or as a $1.99 rental. Despite an impressive cast and creepy atmosphere, Ek Thi Daayan lacks a coherent mythology to really make it work.
In other Eros Now news, the romance Raanjhanaa joins the catalog on Friday, August 2.
3 Stars (out of 4)
The horrors of human trafficking seem almost unimaginable, but Oass (“The Dew Drop”) does an admirable job of depicting the experience through the eyes of a young girl caught in its web. The film is not easy to watch, but it succeeds in engendering sympathy for the 1.2 million children sold into slavery each year.
The girl at the heart of the film is Kiku (Dibya Chhetri), an 11-year-old from Nepal. She wants to attend school, but her father sees no point. He’s not heartless, just realistic: the few opportunities for work in their village dwindle every day, so there would be nowhere for Kiku to apply her education anyway.
Hope arrives in the form of Kiku’s aunt, who returns to the village clad garishly in furs and gold to emphasize her nouveau riche status. She offers to foster Kiku in the city and send her to school. Kiku and her parents agree, and the girl leaves her mountain village behind.
It quickly becomes apparent that Kiku’s aunt has sinister intentions when she stops at a police station and allows an officer to rape her niece. Kiku is sold to a brothel in Delhi, betrayed by the adult who was supposed to protect her.
The scene of Kiku’s first night in the brothel is horrific. She’s repeatedly raped, screaming continuously as a succession of men loom over her. As upsetting as the scene is to watch, it’s profoundly effective at depicting just how twisted and cruel a man has to be in order to have sex with a woman — correction, a child — who so obviously does not want to participate. I wish every person who ever blamed a woman for having provoked her own rape would watch this scene. No person could ever do anything to warrant such barbaric treatment.
Oass goes on to depict other facets of trafficking, from the illicit relationships between pimps and the police to the role of NGOs in attempting to free women from sex slavery. This fictionalized portrayal of the problem strikes more emotional chords than most documentaries typically can.
However, by taking such a wide view of the problem, the story periodically loses its focus. Kiku disappears from the narrative while the story focuses on the pimps, madams, and prostitutes that populate her world. The sidetracks highlight the complexity of the problem, but it leads to gaps in Kiku’s character development.
When the focus returns to Kiku, she undergoes rapid character changes. One minute she’s just a girl who wants to go home; the next, she’s a jaded hooker volunteering to service a new client. The choice she makes in the film’s final scene, while uplifting, feels abrupt.
Character development issues aside, Oass distills the convoluted problem of modern sex slavery into a story that touches the heart. Here’s hoping the film draws more champions to its cause by personalizing the problem in such a moving way.
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The comedy Bajatey Raho is the only new Hindi movie opening in Chicago area theaters the weekend beginning July 26, 2013.
Bajatey Raho opens on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. It has a mercifully brief runtime of 1 hr. 50 min.
Given that local theaters have been running the trailer for Issaq, I’m a little surprised that the retelling of Romeo & Juliet isn’t opening in Chicago. Then again, my regular theater — the Cantera — is still showing the trailer for Gippi, which released in May, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.
Only one of last weekend’s new releases sticks around for a second week. The slick thriller D-Day carries over for just one showing per day at both the South Barrington 30 and Cantera 17. Auf Wiedersehen, Ramaiya Vastavaiya.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag also carries over for another week at the South Barrington 30 and Cantera 17. The timing of its release was unfortunate since it seems to be getting crowded out of theaters by an abundance of newly-released Hollywood fare. It looks like the gripping biopic won’t even get as long a run in the Chicago area as Raanjhanaa, even though Bhaag Milkha Bhaag beat the romance’s opening weekend tally by over $200,000 in its opening weekend in the U.S.
Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Alias Janaki (Telugu), Left Right Left (Malayalam), Saptapadii (Gujarati), and the Tamil films Maryan, Pattathu Yaani, and Sonna Puriyathu.
1 Star (out of 4)
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“Weird Al” Yankovic has a song called “One More Minute” in which he lists the things he’d rather do than spend time with the woman who broke his heart. Examples include ripping out his own intestines and jumping onto a pile of thumbtacks. While watching Ramaiya Vastavaiya, I gained a new appreciation for the song. Ramaiya Vastavaiya is a stupid movie that I wish I’d never seen.
The film has an incredibly dorky opening. Raghu (Sonu Sood) sits in his cell on the eve of his release from jail, a beatific glow on his face as he stares at photo of himself and his little sister as children. The friendly jailer asks glowing Raghu how a nice guy like him ended up in the clink — it’s been seven years, and you’re just wondering this now, Mr. Jailer? — prompting Raghu to recount a tale of romance between two young people of different economic classes.
Mind you, Raghu isn’t one of the young lovers. The couple comprises his sister, Sona (Shruti Haasan) and her rich boyfriend, Ram (debutant Girish Kumar Taurani, whose father produced the film), whom she meets at a friend’s wedding at which Raghu is not present. Raghu would seem to be an odd choice to narrate a love story he wasn’t around to witness, but Sona’s romance with Ram is just a perfunctory plot contrivance. The story isn’t about how Ram woos the girl but about how he woos Raghu.
Ram is a textbook example of the male-fantasy hero of so many Hindi films (to be fair, many Hollywood films, too). He’s immature, annoying, and spoiled, yet he gets his salt-of-the-earth dream-girl anyway, no effort required. As poorly as the character is written, Taurani does his best to make Ram as irritating as possible.
Ram’s obligatory character growth in which he learns the value of hard work happens not to impress Sona, but to win over Raghu. This is made doubly hard since Raghu arrived at the friend’s wedding in time to witness Ram’s snobby mother accuse Sona of being a gold-digger and have her thrown out of the wedding.
Prabhu Deva’s schizophrenic directing style compounds the film’s many problems. Uncomfortable scenes such as the one involving Ram’s mother follow on the heels of pratfalls and slide-whistle sound effects. The second half of the movie is replete with bodily function gags and lots and lots of cow dung.
Action scenes are edited so jarringly that the action is hard to follow. The climactic fight scene — which ends in unexpected brutality — is so fast and erratic that I started to experience motion sickness.
While Prabhu Deva is renowned as a choreographer, the movie’s dance numbers are nothing special. There’s no context for the film’s big item number, which inexplicably finds Jacqueline Fernandez dolled up and dancing in a field.
Ramaiya Vastavaiya has two things going for it: 1) Shruti Haasan is really, really pretty, and 2) Paresh Ganatra is funny as the manservant Bijli. Is that enough to make me prefer watching Ramaiya Vastavaiya to having my blood sucked out by leeches? No.
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4 Stars (out of 4)
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At least twice in D-Day, Rishi Kapoor’s character Goldman utters the phrase, “Everyone has a price,” as movie villains are wont to do. He fails to heed another truism that the Indian spies pursuing him know all too well: there’s a limit to every person’s utility. Reach yours, and you become expendable.
D-Day introduces the arms dealer Goldman at the start of his reign of terror in 1993. Twenty years and several hundred dead bodies later, India finally gets its chance to nab Goldman at his son’s wedding in Pakistan. India can’t afford to mount the kind of raid the Americans used to catch Bin Laden without risking all-out war, so Chief of Intelligence Ashwini (Nassar) — who’s days away from retirement, naturally — activates a sleeper agent he placed in Karachi years ago.
The agent, Valli (Irrfan Khan), has spent years establishing a life in Karachi, complete with his own barber shop, a wife, and a son. When called upon to do his duty for his country, he’s assisted by three other agents: explosives expert Zoya (Huma Qureshi), getaway driver Aslam (Aakash Daahiya), and cagey mercenary Rudra (Arjun Rampal).
The film shows the crew’s exciting capture of Goldman early on, before backtracking to their initial meeting. Events catch up to Goldman’s capture at the halfway point in the film and proceed from there. Predictably, things don’t go as smoothly as planned.
Even though D-Day contains certain clichéd spy-movie elements — the raid that doesn’t go as planned, the retiring chief — the movie is so well-constructed that it reminds us why those clichés exist. The chief is under a time limit; he has to see this through before he loses his power. If Goldman is captured without incident, there’s no second half to the movie.
D-Day so carefully executes the formula that the audience has come to expect that it’s able to turn some of those expectations on their heads. For example, the movie subverts the kind of romantic song-break familiar to Bollywood fans. Lovers stare longingly into each others eyes while romantic music plays, only one of the lovers is in the process of being brutally victimized by a third party. It’s so damned clever yet completely moving at the same time, that I found myself crying even while my jaw gaped in astonishment.
There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, but Irrfan and Rampal deserve special plaudits for their tense rivalry. Valli’s struggles with the fact that his loyalty to India could cost him his wife and son provoke the ire of misanthropic Rudra, who only begrudgingly accepts that he needs Valli’s knowledge of the local terrain.
D-Day also has a couple of strong female characters, and not in the current Hollywood sense of “strong” meaning a woman who is able to physically overpower men. Qureshi gets to do a bit of fighting, but her strength lies in keeping the crew on task while coping with fears that she’ll never see her husband again. Shruti Haasan has an important role as Pooja, a prostitute whom Rudra shacks up with to save money (rooms in Karachi brothels are apparently more affordable than hotels). Pooja knows Rudra will leave her like every other man she services does, but her eyes give away the faintest hint of hope.
While D-Day is an all-out entertaining spy thriller, it’s aware of the nuances of Pakistani-Indian relations. It makes it clear that victim-aggressor status is fluid and subjective, and it gives credit to the intelligence agencies of both countries for knowing that as well. When war is always a possibility, sometimes allowing your opponent to save face is the most prudent course of action.
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Two new Hindi films are set to open in Chicago area theaters on July 19, 2013. First up is the romantic comedy Ramaiya Vastavaiya, directed by Prabhu Deva.
Ramaiya Vastavaiya opens on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles, AMC South Barrinton 30 in South Barrington, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. All three theaters list different runtimes for the film, ranging from 2 hrs. 20 min. to 2 hrs. 30 min.
Also new in theaters this week is the thriller D-Day, starring Irrfan Khan, Arjun Rampal and Rishi Kapoor.
D-Day also opens on Friday at all of the above theaters. The runtimes listed for it range from 2 hrs. 15 min. to 2 hrs. 33 min.
After earning $647,112 in its opening weekend in U.S. theaters, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag carries over for a second week at all three of the above theaters, plus the AMC River East 21 in Chicago, Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, and AMC Loews Woodridge 18 in Woodridge. Many cinemas have reduced the number of daily showings of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in order to accommodate this week’s four new Hollywood releases, so check the listings before you head to the theater.
If you just can’t get enough Irrfan Khan, Life of Pi gets a limited national re-release on Friday, showing locally at the South Barrington 30.
Other Indian movies playing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Maryan (Tamil), Saptapadii (Gujarati), and the Telugu films Kevvu Keka and Sahasam.
Golmaal Returns is now available for streaming on Netflix. I can’t understate how much I hated this movie. I declared it my worst film of 2008 (even worse than Love Story 2050!).
3.5 Stars (out of 4)
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American audiences are used to seeing biographies of famous people whose histories we already know: Abraham Lincoln, Jackie Robinson, etc. It’s delightful to come across a personal story that is totally fresh, at least to audiences outside of India. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a fine tribute to a man whose life deserves to be made into a movie.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag begins at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Milkha Singh (Farhan Akhtar) leads the field in the 400 meters until he turns to look behind him, a move inexplicable to those watching the race. He finishes the race in fourth place. Milkha subsequently turns down an opportunity to lead an Indian delegation to Pakistan to compete in a friendly race, despite being India’s most famous athlete.
Milkha’s coach from his Army days explains that his pupil turned down the offer not out of embarrassment for having lost the race. Rather, he blames Pakistan for the deaths of his parents thirteen years earlier, during the riots that followed partition. The last words young Milkha heard his father say were, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag!” (“Run Milkha Run!”). Those were the same words his national team coach yelled during the Olympics that caused Milkha to turn, expecting to see the swordsman on horseback that he ran from as a boy.
The Army coach, Gurudev (Pawan Malhotra, who gives a touching performance), narrates Milkha’s history to his national team coach, Ranveer (Yograj Singh), and a government representative while on a train ride to Milkha’s home, where they hope to convince Milkha to change his mind and lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan. The significant events of Milkha’s life are told out of sequence, but flashbacks flow seamlessly from one time period to the next.
Though the film is primarily populated with male characters — Milkha’s friends, competitors, fellow soldiers, and coaches — women play a significant role in directing Milkha’s destiny. His decision to join the army is spurred by a desire to impress a young woman, Biro (Sonam Kapoor). At the time, the army supplied the athletes for the Indian Olympic team, so Biro’s part in getting Milkha into the military is critical. Kapoor and Akhtar share a sweet chemistry together.
It’s just as important to Milkha to make his older sister, Isri (Divya Dutta) proud, since she raised him following the deaths of their parents. Dutta is powerful in the film, particularly during a scene in which Isri and Milkha are reunited in a refuge camp.
A third female influence in Milkha’s life is Stella (Rebecca Breeds), an Australian woman he meets at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. The consequences of their brief fling lead Milkha to rededicate himself to his training, setting up an impressive time-lapse jump rope sequence that highlights the amazing physical transformation Akhtar underwent for his role. Breeds does a super job, and her scenes with Akhtar are incredibly sexy.
The trip to Australia is one of the few speed bumps in the film. The abrupt transition into the new setting is perhaps meant to emphasize how out of place Milkha feels in a foreign country, but it just feels clunky. A country-western style dance number in an Aussie bar is awkward, and the song isn’t very good either. It could’ve been cut from the film without being missed.
Other scenes that could’ve been cut feature a beautiful Indian Olympic swimmer named Perizaad (Meesha Shafi). While her role in Milkha’s real life may have been important, scenes of her flirting with Milkha don’t move the story forward.
Apart from a few unnecessary scenes, the film earns its 188 minute runtime. Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra paces the story well and includes some clever shots to pack in as much information as possible. For example, a closeup of a hand holding a stopwatch occupies the right half of the screen, while Milkha breaks through the finish line again and again. Each time, the stopwatch shows Milkha’s time improving.
Of course, the Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is nothing without Akhtar, and he is spectacular. His physical transformation is impressive, but more so is the way he adapts Milkha depending on the situation. He gives a complete picture of Milkha in his various roles: little brother, lover, soldier, champion. It’s a joy to watch.
By following some of the typical structure of sports movies, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is easily accessible to any audience, regardless of whether one has previously heard of Milkha Singh before or not. Here’s hoping international audiences give this film a chance. Milkha Singh is someone worth knowing.
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The sports biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (“Run Milkha Run“) opens in the Chicago area on July 12, 2013.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag opens on Friday at the AMC River East 21 in Chicago, Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, AMC Loews Woodridge 18 in Woodridge, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. It has a listed runtime of 3 hrs. 8 min.
After earning $314,958 in its first weekend in U.S. theaters, Lootera carries over for a second week at the Golf Glen 5, South Barrington 30, and Cantera 17.
Both the South Barrington 30 and Cantera 17 are holding over Raanjhanaa for a fourth week, with U.S. earnings of $875,051 so far. The South Barrington 30 gives a seventh week to Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Its U.S. earnings stand at $3,807,488.
Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Sahasam (Telugu), Saptapadii (Gujarati), Shutter (Malayalam), and Singam 2 (Tamil).
4 Stars (out of 4)
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Vikramaditya Motwane made his directorial debut in 2010 with the incredible movie Udaan. His sophomore effort is Lootera (“Robber”), a film that is romantic, tragic, beautiful, and damned near perfect.
The story is set in the early 1950s, not long after Great Britain abdicated its control of India. Local governments are in the process of reclaiming and redistributing the wealth gifted by the British to aristocratic families. The Zamindar of Manikpur is slow to accept that life as he knew it is about to change.
At the same time, a young archeologist named Varun (Ranveer Singh) arrives to excavate an ancient temple on the Zamindar’s estate. The handsome archeologist attracts the attention of the Zamindar’s bright daughter, Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha). Romance blossoms under the restrained social conventions of the time. The two contrive to spend time together under the guise of Varun teaching Pakhi how to paint, even though she knows far more about the art than he does.
Varun’s assistant, Debdas, warns him to end his flirtations before he breaks Pakhi’s heart. They will leave as soon as their project ends, and besides, Varun’s uncle won’t allow him to get married.
Lootera takes its time parsing out information, allowing the audience to fall in love with the characters before hinting at the possible complications. Varun and Pakhi are both young, smart, and attractive. Her father is fond of Varun, not to mention rich. Why would Varun’s uncle object to their relationship?
When the answer is revealed, it sets off a cascade of events that set up a thrilling second half. Amit Tridevi’s score augments the film perfectly, as does the frequent absence of a background score when atmospheric sounds are more appropriate.
Overall, Lootera is a quiet movie. Varun and Pakhi speak in whispers or sit together in silence, drawing the audience into the intimacy of their relationship.
With such a tight focus on the leading couple, the success of the film depends entirely upon the performances of Singh and Sinha. Both actors are more than up to the task. Singh does some excellent work when Varun tries to heed Debdas’ advice and push Pakhi away. He speaks of not wanting to see her anymore, but his face can’t help but give Pakhi — and the audience — a hint that he’s lying.
Pakhi undergoes some major changes of the course of the movie, and Sinha is superb at adapting while keeping the core of the character intact. Even in Pakhi’s darkest moments, some small joy lights up her face in the same smile as the innocent girl introduced at the start of the film. This is undoubtedly Sinha’s finest work to date.
The pacing of the story, the gorgeous cinematography, and the tremendous acting make Lootera a movie that should have universal appeal and stand the test of time. I look forward to revisiting this many times in the years to come — and recommending it to everyone I know.
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