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Movie Review: Revolver Rani (2014)

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RevolverRani0.5 Star (out of 4)

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You know that flustered feeling you get when some older relative starts telling you a story about someone you don’t know, without giving you any context? “Bob Smith’s daughter found a new wedding venue, so now his dog can have that operation.” You’re left with more questions than answers, and you’re not even sure why you’re supposed to care. That’s the feeling one gets from Revolver Rani.

Writer-director Sai Kabir’s gangster drama lacks any of the hallmarks one expects from a story told by anyone over the age of seven — let alone a professional moviemaker — such as logical plot progression, character development, continuity, or audience awareness.

The story begins so abruptly that it feels as if the first part of the film was accidentally cut from the reel. Uday Bhan Singh (Zakir Hussain), who may be a crook, is elected minister of a small town. Two of his cronies beg Uday’s leave to kill Alka Singh — whoever she is — to avenge their brother’s death at her hands, but Uday says no. This scenario repeats itself several more times throughout the film, and it’s just as tiresome each time.

Instead, the brothers kidnap Alka’s boyfriend, Rohan (Vir Das). Then the opening credits roll.

Ten minutes into the film, there’s still no sign of Kangana Ranaut, the star upon whose fame the project is sold. We can presume (correctly) that Ranaut plays Alka Singh, but we have no proof, and no information as to who Alka is or why she is important.

After the credits, Alka finally shows up to rescue Rohan. The action immediately cuts to a flashback in which Rohan arranges to win an underwear-modeling contest held in Alka’s honor — huh??? — in order to use her money and influence to further his acting career.

This is the way the whole movie unfolds. Scenes are stitched together seemingly at random. Characters operate without backstory, motivation, or clearly explained connections to one another. Political machinations presented as the obvious course of action are baffling without the necessary context.

I have no doubt that the world of Revolver Rani and its inhabitants make perfect sense to Sai Kabir. He just forgot that the rest of us can’t see inside his head.

There are plenty of opportunities to fill-in the details of this cinematic world, but Kabir instead clutters the story with boring song montages that don’t elucidate anything. Worse still, most of the music in Revolver Rani is bad.

As talented an actress as Ranaut is, she’s given so little to work with that Alka’s character winds up a garbled mess: soft-spoken one minute, enraged and gun-toting the next. No one else in the picture fares any better.

The idea of a modern female gangster with Wild West sensibilities and a couture wardrobe is intriguing. So is the notion of how such a woman would incorporate marriage and kids into her violent lifestyle. But these ideas don’t go anywhere in the confusing, half-baked Revolver Rani.

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Movie Review: Second Hand Husband (2015)

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SecondHandHusband0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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For an example of the problem with Bollywood nepotism, look no further than Second Hand Husband. In her big screen debut, Govinda’s daughter Tina Ahuja manages to be the worst part of a truly terrible movie.

Ahuja isn’t remotely prepared for a major role in a film, let alone to be a romantic lead. Her primary problem is that she squints her eyes when she talks, as though the mental strain of emoting while delivering her lines requires special concentration.

Ahuja’s role in the Second Hand Husband is that of Gurpreet, world’s dumbest divorce lawyer. She’s unable to prevent her client/boyfriend Rajbir (Gippy Grewal) from being hit with a hefty alimony payment in his divorce from Neha (Geeta Basra) because she doesn’t know what alimony is. When her parents ask her to explain the concept, she says, “Even I’m not clear about it.”

After she eventually reads the details of the settlement (let’s hope Rajbir isn’t actually paying for her services), Gurpreet finds a loophole that will get Rajbir out of his payments and allow the two of them to marry. Rajbir’s alimony stops when Neha remarries, so the two set about trying to find his ex-wife a new husband.

Well, that’s what the movie is about for all of ten minutes. The story shifts completely to the antics of Rajbir’s drunk-driving, philandering boss, Ajit, whom we are supposed to find adorable because he’s played by Dharmendra.

There are subplots about Ajit’s wife and her own divorce proceedings, her brother’s family, Gurpreet’s family, a thief turned tea vendor, and a lovelorn cop played by Vijay Raaz (who gives a more sympathetic performance than this movie deserves).

All of this serves to keep Rajbir and Gurpreet apart, not in a romantic sense but in the sense that they have very few scenes together, despite their deferred marriage being the driver behind the whole story. One guess is that Gurpreet’s role was larger at one point, but was minimized later after writer-director Smeep Kang realized Ahuja can’t act. (She can’t dance, either. During most of one song set in a dance club, she sits.)

Then again, it could just be that Kang doesn’t know how to tell a story. Characters are introduced without explanation, taking over the narrative even though we don’t know or care who they are. Transitions between scenes fail to give a sense of time or place.

The dialogue is so expository and delivered at a such a slow pace that Second Hand Husband feels like a foreign language instructional video. The subtitle translation also stinks. When Gurpreet begs Neha, “Didi (sister), please,” the line is written as, “Baby, please.”

Apart from Raaz, the film’s performances are annoying at best, phoned in at worst. Grewal — also in his Bollywood debut — does nothing to distinguish himself. Dharmendra lacks charm. Basra is a shrill stereotype, though Kang deserves much of the blame for creating such lazy, outmoded characters.

Second Hand Husband takes a solid, high-concept premise and ruins it in the name of launching two acting careers unlikely to take off. Skip it.

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Movie Review: Welcome 2 Karachi (2015)

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WelcomeToKarachi0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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When a character in Welcome 2 Karachi says, “I want to shoot myself,” it felt like he’d read my mind. Watching this alleged comedy is torture.

I’m still not entirely sure where the film’s first scenes take place. Former British Navy officer Shammi (Arshad Warsi) and his idiot friend, Kedar (Jackky Bhagnani), work for Kedar’s dad, an event planner. They discuss Kedar’s desire to move to America, preferably via a boat from London.

Kedar’s dad puts the guys in charge of a yacht party, accompanied by a dozen bikini clad white women. The boat sinks after being caught in a ridiculous CGI cyclone, and Shammi and Kedar wash ashore in…Karachi, Pakistan?

Despite all the indications that the movie opens in the UK — Shammi’s British Navy discharge, talk of traveling from London to America, a boatload of white women — they must have been in India all along. Otherwise, their arrival in Pakistan would make no sense. Not that sense has much value in Welcome 2 Karachi.

The movie is casually violent to a jarring degree. While the guys are still passed out onshore, a bomb explodes next to them, killing dozens of people. They joke around in a morgue. When the guys seek help from the Indian embassy, they trigger gun battles between several other embassies: the US and Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and Russia and Ukraine. Because ongoing conflicts with civilian casualties are hilarious.

Lowbrow jokes based on offensive generalizations are tossed about without care. Every Pakistani is violent. White women are scantily-clad sex objects. Americans are buffoons keen to take credit for military victories they didn’t earn. India is always the best, yet the first thing Shammi and Kedar request upon their rescue as accidental heroes is joint US-UK citizenship.

Lauren Gottlieb plays a Pakistani spy, but the fact that she’s actually a white American means that Kedar and Shammi can hallucinate her performing a sexy dance number in a bra top and hotpants.

Her character doesn’t do much to drive the plot forward, but then again, neither do any other characters. Stuff just happens, and characters drop in and out of the narrative at random. By the time Shammi & Kedar’s redemptive arc peaks with them having to rescue a plane full of deaf Paralympians, I wanted to barf.

As poorly constructed as the story is, the technical execution in Welcome 2 Karachi is worse. Every bit of CGI — from the cyclone to the plane taking off — looks cheap. The voice dubbing is wretched. It’s easy to tell which characters have been dubbed because their lips don’t match the words they speak.

The movie has particular trouble with its American characters. The dubbing is so bad that the same character’s voice changes from scene to scene. A high-pitched Southern accent becomes a flat, middle-American accent the next.

Also, why is the American embassy in India staffed by Aussies, and the American embassy in Pakistan staffed by Brits?

Welcome 2 Karachi‘s single biggest problem is that its main characters are annoying. Almost every character who meets Shammi and Kedar eventually tells them to shut up. If everyone else in the film finds them that irritating, imagine how annoying they must be to a bored, confused audience.

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Movie Review: Inkaar (2013)

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Inkaarmovieposter0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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If director Sudhir Mishra’s goal with Inkaar (“Denial“) is to depict in painful detail the kind of gender discrimination women are confronted with every day, then mission accomplished. But Mishra doesn’t condemn such discrimination or suggest that change is possible. If anything, Inkaar is more about a sexual harasser’s redemption than justice for his victim.

One of Mishra’s many problems in telling the story that he co-wrote with Manoj Tyagi is that he thinks the black-and-white case of sexual harassment at the film’s center is a conflict with shades of grey. Hotshot advertising executive Rahul Verma (Arjun Rampal) propositions his former protegé and lover, Maya (Chitrangada Singh) for sex, and when she refuses, he threatens to destroy her career.

The framework for the plot is a series of interviews conducted by a social worker named Mrs. Kamdhar (Deepti Nawal), hired by the ad firm to determine who between Maya and Rahul is telling the truth. In a violation of any sort of professional protocol or victim’s rights, Maya and Rahul are deposed in front of their coworkers, some of whom are openly hostile to Maya. As the proceedings drag on, Mrs. Kamdhar brings Rahul into Maya’s session so they can “talk this out face to face,” as though this is a schoolyard tiff between children.

Mishra’s blindness to his own bias makes it impossible for him to tell a balanced story. He uses negative stereotypes of women to create Maya’s character without any narrative foundation. If there are to be any shades of grey in the case, then Maya must have some kind of agenda. She is routinely called “ambitious” — particularly by Rahul — a common slam against women deemed to be aiming above their station.

However, Maya doesn’t do anything aggressively ambitious other than perform her job well. At one point, she takes a dead-end job in Delhi just to get away from Rahul, but she’s so good that she gets reassigned to New York, where her stellar performance earns her a seat on the firm’s Board of Directors.

Rahul is the only one who claims that Maya is gunning for his job. She voices no such desire, and neither does anyone else in the firm believe that’s what she wants. Yet Mishra uses Rahul’s paranoia as sufficient evidence of Maya’s ambition.

Mishra further stacks the odds against Maya by routinely depicting her as a drunk. On the flip side, Rahul’s childhood is nostalgically shown in flashbacks, his father teaching him lessons about male pride. Cutaways in the present show Rahul tending to his ailing dad, affirming Rahul as a loyal family man.

Early in Maya’s career at the ad firm, she and Rahul — her mentor — become romantically involved. Much is made of the sexual relationship’s ramifications for Maya’s career, but no one questions whether it is appropriate for Rahul. He sleeps with an exec from another firm and a model working on an ad campaign, and no one raises concerns about how his behavior affects his company’s image. It’s taken for granted that a man can sleep with whomever he chooses, without consequence.

The real giveaway of Mishra’s bias is the different standard by which everyone in the film judges Maya’s and Rahul’s professional conduct. Her one professional transgression is that she pitches an idea that Rahul had originally conceived — and rejected — to a client without crediting Rahul. Everyone in the meeting flips out, as though this is the absolute worst thing one can do in a professional setting.

However, the characters barely react at all to Rahul’s much more detrimental conduct. First, he admits to deliberately withholding crucial client information from Maya in order to tarnish her image, resulting in the firm losing the client’s business. Rahul costs his company millions of dollars, and no one bats an eye.

Second, he admits in the hearing to propositioning Maya with sexual favors in exchange for a better working relationship. Adjourn the meeting, Mrs. Kamdhar! Prepare Rahul’s termination letter!

But that’s not what happens. Everyone in the meeting — including Mrs, Kamdhar — buys Rahul’s horrendous excuse: he only sexually harassed her to avoid doing what he really wanted to do, which was slap her.

Mishra could’ve let that comment hang, but instead, he tries to make violence against women sexy. He shows Rahul and Maya silhouetted against a blue background, Maya’s hair flying as her head snaps in response to Rahul’s slaps.

Inkaar depicts violence and harassment of women as titillating tabloid fodder in a world of unchallenged patriarchy. Rather than fire a male sexual predator who has cost his employer millions of dollars, the boss, KK (Kaizaad Kotwal) — who tells Maya that by filing the sexual harassment complaint, she proves that “women are too weak and emotional for senior management positions” — proposes not only terminating and counter-suing Maya, but making sure she can’t get a job at any other firm in India.

Maya’s only allies in the office aren’t in a position to help her. Even the supposedly neutral and experienced mediator Mrs. Kamdhar is susceptible to bribes and Rahul’s flirtatious flattery. She fails to render a verdict because Maya and Rahul “both seem to believe what they are saying.”

The resolution to the conflict is decided by Rahul, who gets the chance to redeem himself. Maya doesn’t determine her own fate, and nothing in the resolution suggests her co-workers feelings toward her have improved. Mishra’s message in Inkaar confirms entrenched patriarchy, warning women to be grateful that sexual harassment exists as an alternative to violence.

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Movie Review: Jackpot (2013)

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Jackpot_2013,_official_poster0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Given how much I enjoyed director Kaizad Gustad’s incredibly stupid film Boom, I hoped that Jackpot would also be so-bad-it’s-good. Sadly, Jackpot is as inept as Boom, but nowhere near as fun.

I would describe the plot of Jackpot if I could. Even after watching the whole movie — which is a mercifully short ninety minutes — I still have no idea what happened. A group of people try to con a casino owner named Boss (Naseeruddin Shah) out of money. That’s the best I can do.

Gustad must have a grudge against context, because he provides none. We don’t know who the con artists are, what their relationships are to one another, and what their relationship is to Boss. There’s also no sense of when any scene is taking place. The action jumps back and forth in time with no clue as to how one scene relates to another chronologically.

The thieves’ plan is totally convoluted, with con layered on top of con, and it’s impossible to tell what money is stolen when and as a result of what con job. The thieves steal money to get into a poker tournament, steal the money from the poker tournament, and try to convince Boss to invest in Disneyland in Goa, all while they try to steal money from one another. It makes no sense.

The con artists are led by Francis (Sachiin Joshi, who exudes whatever the opposite of charisma is). He has a sexual, possibly romantic relationship with Maya (Sunny Leone), who works for and may have a sexual relationship with Boss. There’s also Kirti (Elvis Mascarenhas), who serves no purpose in the story, and Anthony (Bharath Nivas), who is a dumbass.

From an unintentional comedy standpoint, the best part of the film is the plan to have Anthony win the poker tournament. The whole plan hinges on his ability to count cards. However, not only does Anthony not know how to play poker, he doesn’t even know what the cards are. They have to explain to him that there are four suits in a deck of cards: two red and two black.

Ultimately, Anthony wins the tournament. While he stands on a stage to receive his briefcase full of money, Francis runs by and steals it. If Francis was just going to steal the briefcase anyway, why did Anthony have to win the tournament?!

As if Boom weren’t proof enough, Jackpot cements that Gustad is a terrible writer and director. Jackpot‘s plot makes no sense. Gustad handles his actors so clumsily that he makes Naseeruddin Shah look like a goof. Sunny Leone has a confused smile painted on her face most of the time, since she apparently doesn’t know any more about what’s happening in the movie than the audience does.

Gustad’s framing and scene execution is also idiotic. He routinely speeds up shots of characters walking and driving, rather than just having the characters walk shorter distances. There’s no dynamism in any of the scenes since the characters are almost always sitting down. The only person who isn’t is Leone, the bulk of whose screentime consists of shots of her torso while she mills about behind other characters having seated conversations.

I wish that this train wreck was funny enough for me to recommend, but it isn’t. If you have ninety minutes to waste, just stare at a wall. It will be more rewarding than watching Jackpot.

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Movie Review: Heropanti (2014)

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Heropanti_Poster0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Heropanti (“Big Attitude”, according to the subtitles) labors under the misapprehension that it is a progressive film. Despite a couple of statements disapproving of arranged marriage, the movie ultimately ends up reinforcing the patriarchal system it thinks it’s criticizing.

The plot is the same story we’ve seen a hundred times in Hindi cinema. The hero (debutant Tiger Shroff) wants to marry a girl (Kriti Sanon), but her father (Prakash Raj) disapproves. Rather than elope with her, the hero uses his brute strength to convince her father to let the couple marry.

The action takes place in a small town over which Chaudhray (Raj) rules with an iron fist. When his eldest daughter, Renu (Sandeepa Dhar), runs off with a man, Rakesh (Devanshu Sharma), Chaudhray has his goons round up Rakesh’s friends and hold them prisoner until they disclose the couple’s whereabouts.

Shroff’s Bablu is captured along with two of his friends/lackeys and Kiki, an annoying guy who’s kidnapped by mistake. The comic relief Kiki is supposed to supply consists of him endlessly repeating the phrase, “What is the position?”

While in captivity, Bablu discloses that he’s fallen in love at first sight. This triggers a flashback to Bablu ogling a woman — Sanon’s Dimpy — on the street. He sees the same mystery woman again at a temple as he and the lackeys try to escape, and his moon-eyed staring results in their recapture. Only later does Bablu find out Dimpy’s (hilarious) name and learn that she’s Chaudhray’s youngest daughter.

Why do we need the flashback to Bablu scoping Dimpy on the street? It ruins the pacing of the story and wastes time in a movie that’s already plenty boring. Had Bablu seen Dimpy for the first time at the temple, it would’ve made their botched escape more exciting and made him a more interesting character.

As it is, Shroff’s Bablu seems like a younger knock-off of a typical Salman Khan character  — smug, invincible, and perfect except for the fact that he’s single — only with Hrithik Roshan’s physique and dance moves. With young actors like Sushant Singh Rajput, Sidharth Malhotra, and Varun Dhawan making big impressions early in their careers, Shroff seems like a throwback to a type of hero that’s on the way out. This is a perplexing film to choose for one’s debut.

Sanon shows real promise. She gives Dimpy a spark that livens up a character possessed of very little agency. It will be interesting to see what Sanon can do with a character who’s more than just a damsel in distress.

Dimpy’s in a hopeless position that gets at the crux of Heropanti‘s problems. She falls for Bablu in return but can’t act on it because Chaudhray has promised to marry her to one of his underlings. Also, Chaudhray repeatedly states that when he finds Renu, he’s going to “burn her alive.” He does find her, though director Sabbir Khan doesn’t show us what actually becomes of Renu.

Despite knowing of Chaudhray’s willingness to murder his own child to save face, Bablu tells Dimpy, “You have to fight. That’s how you get equality.” But when push comes to shove, Bablu abandons the notion of a woman’s right to choose her own marriage partner. He tells Chaudray, “I don’t want to take away your right to decide who she marries.”

Dimpy has no control over what the men around her do with her body. Before knowing her identity, Bablu gets drunk and puts his hands all over her in a darkened room. She’s left alone for all of twenty minutes in Delhi, and a gang of men try to rape her. Her father ultimately “gives” her to her groom, as though she were an object. The camera routinely zooms in on her bare torso, further objectifying her.

Heropanti is so out of touch that it’s mystifying that it was even made, let alone used as the vehicle to launch Shroff’s movie career. It’s hard to imagine the teenage girls who are Shroff’s most obvious potential fanbase being impressed by a movie that thinks they shouldn’t have control over their own lives or bodies.

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Movie Review: Koyelaanchal (2014)

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Koyelaanchal0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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The only info one needs when deciding whether to watch Koyelaanchal is that director Ashu Trikha includes multiple flashbacks from the perspective of an infant. Let me repeat: A baby has flashbacks in a violent drama about the coal mafia.

The fact that Koyelaanchal is about the coal mafia is the only fact anyone can be sure of regarding the movie. It’s so disorganized that it’s never established which character is the film’s protagonist. It could be the coal don, Saryu Bhan Singh (Vinod Khanna). It could be the don’s hired killer, Karua (Vipinno). It could be Nisheeth (Suniel Shetty), the government bureaucrat sent to clean up the town. It could be the baby.

Koyelaanchal begins with a glimpse into life in the title town. A bunch of people die in a bunch of separate incidents, though it’s not clear why. All that’s clear is that the police don’t care and that Saryu Bhan is the town bigwig.

Nisheeth arrives from Delhi, ready to lay down the law. He’s disabused of that notion when Karua slits a guy’s throat in front of him, and the police chief (Deepraj Rana) says the victim probably had it coming.

On Saryu Bhan’s orders, Karua attempts to scare Nisheeth by shooting at him and stealing his car. Uh oh: Nisheeth’s baby is in the back seat! Queue the interval break.

After spending the first half establishing that Karua is Saryu Bhan’s cold-blooded, mindless lapdog — he washes Saryu Bhan’s feet and drinks the wash water, for Pete’s sake — the bulk of the second half of the movie is spent on an unbelievable comedy/character redemption arc as Karua takes care of the baby.

Asking the audience to suddenly find it charming as Karua — a guy who killed a labor protestor on stage at a rally using a dancer’s scarf — gets grossed out by a baby peeing is absurd. But it’s not as absurd as the baby’s flashbacks.

The baby watches as the admittedly fit Karua does push ups on the floor of their hideout shack. The camera fades to black-and-white as the baby fondly remembers being carried by Nisheeth on his shoulders. Cut back to the present, where the wistful baby crawls over to Karua and climbs on his back. Karua resumes his push ups, giving the baby the ride he so longed for.

If that’s not enough to make you puke, Koyelaanchal is full of enough blood, gore, vomit, and urine to make you do so.

Nisheeth yells a lot, but he does next to nothing to save his kidnapped child. Saryu Bhan might be a compelling character if Trikha had allotted time for character development, instead of wasting time by having random Maoists blow stuff up periodically.

There’s nothing in it to make me recommend Koyelaanchal. The few laughs it generates are completely unintentional. (Drinking game idea: take a shot every time Karua points a gun at the baby.) Even the dramatic elements aren’t interesting enough to overcome the movie’s sluggish pace and underdeveloped characters.

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Movie Review: Jai Ho (2014)

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JaiHo0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Jai Ho is as lazy and lacking in self-awareness as a movie can be. It ignores its own shallow grasp of morality to promote the message of every recent Salman Khan movie: the answer to government corruption is a single, violent man.

Just how shallow is the take on morality in Jai Ho, a remake of a Telugu movie (Stalin) based on a Hollywood movie (Pay It Forward)? The notion of “paying it forward” — you help three people, then they each help three more people, and so on — is developed by a middle schooler in the Hollywood version, and by a man in his late forties in Jai Ho.

Of course it’s good to do nice things for other people. But the characters in Jai Ho talk about it so damned much, it’s as though the filmmakers think they invented the idea. “Generosity and helpfulness can benefit individuals and society? Who knew? Write forty minutes of dialogue to belabor the point!”

The title character, Jai (Salman Khan), who’s apparently a professional doer-of-favors, following his expulsion from the army, tries to popularize the notion of “paying it forward.” Everything is fine until his mom tells him that some people may not wish to participate, and that he shouldn’t be disappointed by that.

Jai’s realization that his idea may not be universally embraced causes him to lose his mind. In a blind rage, he attacks a guy harassing a street urchin. The guy just happens to be connected to a corrupt politician who winds up trying to murder Jai’s family. The situation is resolved by Jai fighting dozens of guys single-handedly and Suniel Shetty plowing through traffic in a tank.

Let’s get this straight: Jai’s responds to learning that there are mean people in the world by going on a violent rampage, endangering his family and friends and any unfortunate motorists who get in the way of Suniel Shetty’s tank. Way to make the world a better place, Jai!

What’s even more depressing is that violence really is Jai’s only recourse to stop the corrupt bureaucrat, played by Danny Denzongpa. The only evidence of systemic political change as a result of Jai’s gory heroics is that another politician — played by Mohnish Bahl — decides to look the other way.

The movie relies on emotional pandering in place of solid storytelling. Producer-director Sohail Khan trots out disabled kids anytime he wants to bring the audience to tears and soldiers when he wants to stoke the fires of patriotism. Lest the audience fail to grasp the cinematic shorthand, there are musical cues and sound effects to let them know what emotions they are supposed to feel.

As with most of Salman Khan’s recent roles, his character’s only flaw at the beginning of the movie is that he doesn’t yet have a girlfriend. Daisy Shah is shoehorned into the story to fill the love interest role, even though she has nothing to do with the main plot. She’s never imperiled because of her relationship with Jai, she doesn’t partake in Jai’s do-gooder scheme, and she disappears during the climax.

There is exactly one good thing about Jai Ho, and that is Naman Jain as Jai’s young nephew, Kabir. He’s legitimately funny, and he’s by far the best actor in the bunch. Jai Ho should’ve made Kabir the main character, borrowing more from Pay It Forward and less from Stalin. That might’ve been a good movie.

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Movie Review: Bullett Raja (2013)

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Bullett_raja0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Bullett Raja is an identity-less hodgepodge of scenes assembled with no master plan. Things happen because, well, this is what happens in movies. Rooftop chase? Check. Love at first sight? Check. Exploding car? Check.

There’s so little connecting the scenes in Bullett Raja that it almost seems like a deliberate choice on writer-director-producer Tigmanshu Dhulia’s part: a middle finger to an audience he assumes will uncritically devour anything, so long as punches are thrown and female torsos bared.

All of Bullett Raja‘s problems stem from an utter lack of character development. Saif Ali Khan’s Raja is a chameleon. He’s whoever he needs to be in any given scene, shifting at will.

The movie begins with Raja crashing a wedding to avoid some goons. (The cause of his beef with the faceless goons is never addressed.) One of the guests, Rudra (Jimmy Shergill), figures out that Raja doesn’t belong there, but befriends him anyway. (Why? Doesn’t matter.) When Raja assists Rudra in a gun battle that disrupts the wedding, the two become best friends forever.

Rudra’s uncle offers to make the two into gangsters, but they refuse because they don’t like violence (the previous day’s shootout already forgotten, apparently). But when Uncle is murdered, the two decide to become the most notorious assassins in Uttar Pradesh. Naturally, right?

Who the heck are these guys who can turn from pacifists into cold-blooded killers in a single day? Rudra and Raja have no independent identities; they only serve the plot. Because of that, it’s impossible to discern what their motives are. Do they want to be rich? Famous? Powerful? It’s never made clear why they do what they do.

Other elements are introduced into the film at random to add color and extend the overly long runtime. There’s the former assassin now living as a woman to avoid prosecution. The guys kidnap a woman, Mitali (Sonakshi Sinha), who immediately falls in love with Raja. Innumerable politicians and businessmen operate in some system that’s never explained. Also, Raja and Rudra become teen idols, because what kid doesn’t want to grow up to be a contract killer?

The introduction of Vidyut Jamwal’s character, Munna, is the clunkiest of all the story’s many clunky elements. A police inspector assures a politician that he knows the perfect man to take out Raja, once and for all. Cut to Officer Munna out in the desert, beating up a gang of bandits who have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the rest of the story.

Why?

Why? Why? Why? What do any of the characters hope to gain? Why does anything happen in this whole frigging movie? WHY?!

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Movie Review: Sandcastle (2012)

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Sandcastle0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Sandcastle is a movie that so wants to be meaningful that it feels desperate and inauthentic. Debutant director Shomshuklla’s decision to take the auteur approach — writing the screenplay, casting the film, and even handling the costuming herself — ultimately dooms the project, since every element feels compromised by the director’s divided attention.

The story centers on the unhappy life of Sheila (Shahana Chatterjee), a married writer who won’t stop talking about her feelings. She talks to her friends and her book agent. She talks aloud to herself while sitting in a cafe. She even invents a happy-go-lucky fictional alter ego named Maya (Malvika Jethwani) to ensure than she never has to shut up.

While this fictitious alter ego is interesting in concept, the rules governing Maya are unclear. Is she a hallucination only Sheila can see? Is she a split personality that speaks via Sheila’s body? Is she intermittently corporeal, brought to life by Sheila’s will then dismissed? Does she exist without Sheila?

At a couple of points, Sheila’s family members seem to see Maya and be able to interact with her. (They also throw a birthday party for a little girl who appears to be entirely a figment of Sheila’s imagination. Does no one in her family suspect schizophrenia?) When Sheila asks her family what they think of Maya, they respond with oddball statements like, “She’s a riddle,” or, “Is she a mystery?”

As if the goofy observations weren’t annoying enough, virtually every line in the movie is delivered with an extended pause in the middle, in order to make the characters seem deep and introspective. If the content is good, the audience will be able to tell without it having to call such obvious attention to itself.

So much emphasis is placed on Maya’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl role in Sheila’s life that all of the other flesh-and-blood characters get short shrift. Sheila’s husband, Vikram (Rajat Sharma), is supposed to be the source of all Sheila’s problems, but he only shows up in a handful of scenes. When he is around, he seems nice enough. If he’s an awful guy, we need to see it.

There’s so much damned talking in Sandcastle that Shomshuklla herself appears to get bored. As Sheila and a friend dissect the role of the contemporary housewife, the camera wanders to shots of birds, potted plants, and a bowl of cashews. If there isn’t enough happening on screen to hold the director’s attention, why should the audience bother watching?

The story structure is so loose that it hardly exists. Scenes are divided into chapters in a nod to Sheila’s profession, but there’s no order or significance to the chapter organization. It’s hard to tell which scenes are flashbacks and which are present day.

Much of the dialogue seems cobbled together from a diary full of observations on modern womanhood, but the ideas don’t pull together to form a cohesive story. Since most of the ideas are conveyed via conversations between two or three characters, the film lacks visual interest. Perhaps Sandcastle would’ve made a better book than a movie.

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