Tag Archives: 2 Stars

Movie Review: G – A Wanton Heart (2015)

3 Replies

2 Stars (out of 4)

G – A Wanton Heart makes its world premiere at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival on October 4, 2015, at 2 p.m.

Without a strong narrative as a base, rookie filmmaker Rahul Dahiya’s G – A Wanton Heart can’t be the meaningful examination of cultural ills it aspires to be. Instead, it’s mostly social justice torture porn.

G has no true protagonists, only a handful of characters from the same village whose importance to the story varies over time. We are first introduced to a thief named Keku as he tries to molest his cousin’s wife while she sleeps. He then tries to rape Preeti, the kidnapped owner of a van he’s stolen.

The rape attempt is interrupted by Virender, the leader of Keku’s bandit trio, though he’s not in a hurry to intervene. Virender switches seats with Keku, and himself leans on the woman’s shoulder before laying his head in her lap.

The car theft sequence highlights a recurring theme in the film: women have zero autonomy over their own bodies. Men grab and grope, leer and proposition, with no negative consequences for their lascivious behavior.

Every man in G is a horny pervert. Every one. The men who aren’t actively trying to have sex with women are watching some other man try to do so. Boys watch as a teenager photographs a naive adolescent girl under her clothes, and toothless old men gawk at those same photos on their mobile phones.

Whenever a woman tries to act on her own sexual desires, she is punished for it. Heck, even if she’s violated against her will, she’s still punished. Women and girls are held entirely responsible for their own sexual purity, and it’s seemingly the mission of the whole village to police the conduct of its female residents.

Though Dahiya tries to make a point about repressive sexual mores in rural India — going so far as to end the film with statistics about honor killings — the message fails to connect without a narrative to anchor it. The absence of a clear protagonist (or protagonists) keeps the audience from connecting with the characters.

The vision of Indian village life that Dahiya paints is a portrait of hell on earth, particularly for women. One wonders how any village females survive long enough to bear their own children when every infraction is punishable by death.

Issues such as honor killings, gender bias, and women’s safety remain a huge problem in India, and yet, clearly villages survive. Though mainstream Bollywood movies often paint an overly rosy picture of village life, there is certainly some basis in reality for the wholesome simplicity Bollywood admires. Dahiya’s depiction lacks context.

In G – A Wanton Heart, there is no hope for any of the female characters, nowhere to turn. The men who claim to love them — boyfriends, brothers, fathers — won’t protect them, and are often among those calling for their deaths. With no chance for a better life, why live? And yet real Indian women persevere, village girls dreaming of school and futures they define for themselves.

It’s not that the movie needs to be hopeful, just that there must be room for hope. Without that, G – A Wanton Heart becomes an inadvertent glorification of the very patriarchal violence its creator abhors.

Link

  • G – A Wanton Heart at IMDb

Movie Review: Hunterrr (2015)

9 Replies

Hunterrr2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy/rent the movie at iTunes

Compelling performances are the saving grace of Hunterrr, an otherwise unsatisfying tale of a playboy who won’t grow up.

Hunterrr isn’t as colorfully sexy as its poster suggests. Gulshan Devaiah plays Mandar, a thirty-something man on the good-looking side of average with all the style acumen of stereotypical IT guy. He’s a lech who sizes up every woman he sees, planning his next conquest.

Since he’s no supermodel himself, Mandar has a method for improving his odds: don’t pursue the most attractive woman in a group; go for second best. Second best is still good, but her self-esteem is likely lower than that of her lovelier counterpart, making her more susceptible to flattery.

Only when Mandar gets called “uncle” while hitting on a woman at a bar does he realize he’s getting too old to play Casanova. He reasons that an arranged marriage guarantees him a permanent sex partner, but he finds his promiscuous habits hard to break even after he meets his betrothed: fun, beautiful Tripti (Radhika Apte).

Hunterrr is told in non-linear fashion, flashing back to Mandar’s early days as a pervert. Scenes of young Mandar with his cousins — handsome Kshitij (Vaibbhav Tatwawdi) and chubby Yusuf (Sagar Deshmukh) — are primarily excuses for scatological jokes. Writer-director Harshavardhan Kulkarni punctuates the comic sex romp with awkwardly serious moments, making it hard to feel comfortable with the film’s tone.

This is a tough movie to enjoy largely because Mandar is so awful. He never faces any serious consequences for his behavior, and he assumes no responsibility for the consequences faced by the women he beds. When Yusuf points out that a housewife Mandar’s been shtupping is on her way to divorce court after her husband discovered the affair, Mandar just shrugs and leaves town.

Credit to Devaiah for playing such a believable sociopath. He makes Mandar seem so ordinary, non-threatening even, until we realize how little Mandar cares about other people. The film even ends with Mandar cheerfully explaining to Yusuf that he’ll get away with his latest transgression because most women are too embarrassed to admit to any kind of sexual contact, consensual or not.

Tripti is as charming as Mandar is loathsome. She’s frank about her own romantic history, with a slightly bawdy sense of humor. Like Devaiah, Apte’s performance is grounded and convincing. She’s the real star of the film.

Kulkarni is great at writing complex female characters, whether it’s Tripti in Hunterrr or Meeta in Hasee Toh Phasee. Here’s hoping his future films focus more on his sophisticated heroines than on the dopey guys he saddles them with.

Links

Movie Review: Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015)

26 Replies

tanu-weds-manu-returns-poster2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Tanu Weds Manu Returns is the feel-bad romantic comedy of the year. Lighthearted moments are undercut by a cynicism about the institution of marriage that leaves one feeling melancholy at best, depressed at worst.

2011’s Tanu Weds Manu was a conventional romcom about a pair of opposites: wild-child Tanu (Kangana Ranaut) and steadfast Manu (R. Madhavan). Tanu Weds Manu Returns (TWMR, henceforth) picks up after the first four years of their miserable marriage.

Tanu is so desperate to get out of her marriage that she has Manu committed to a London mental institution. She later feels bad, calling Manu’s friend Pappi (Deepak Dobriyal) to rescue her husband while she flies back to India.

The couple wind up at their respective family homes in different cities (the geography in TWMR is confusing for international audiences). Tanu flirts with her parents’ tenant, Chintu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), and unwisely reconnects with her short-tempered ex-boyfriend, Raja (Jimmy Shergill). Manu notices a college athlete who is the spitting image of Tanu, only with a pixie cut. He stalks Kusum (also Ranaut) until she relents, and they start dating.

Manu falling for his wife’s younger lookalike is a cute story setup, but it gets creepier the more serious the relationship becomes. Pappi warns that the new relationship is a bad idea — especially since it begins before Tanu and Manu are officially divorced — but he doesn’t call Manu’s obsession what it is: weird.

It hard to know who to root for in this movie. Tanu and Manu are both incredible jerks to each other. Tanu is arrogant and lacks empathy. Manu is selfish but wishy-washy. He doesn’t even possess enough will to make his climactic decision on his own, without prompting.

Worse, TWMR makes the characters’ circumstances so dire that its impossible to resolve the story in a satisfying way. There are really only a handful of things that one spouse could say to the other that would permanently destroy their marriage. When Tanu is at her most pitiable, Manu says one of those things to her. It’s crushing to watch.

Director Anand L. Rai and writer Himanshu Sharma give themselves only two possible outcomes: either Tanu and Manu get back together, or Manu weds Kusum and says good-bye to Tanu forever. Neither option feels good, and both are bad for Kusum.

Kusum is the movie’s redeeming element. She’s an independent tomboy, but she’s also sweet and honest. She’s reluctant to get romantically involved with anyone because, if the relationship negatively affects her athletics, it will make it that much harder for other girls from her village to get scholarships in the future. That Manu pursues her anyway is a sign of his selfishness.

Ranuat’s acting abilities are widely acclaimed, and it’s fun to see her pull off two very different roles in the same movie with such ease. Dobriyal is also entertainingly twitchy as Pappi. Manu’s not much of character as it is, and Madhavan doesn’t add much.

In addition to an unsatisfying story, international audiences will be hampered by poorly translated subtitles. Minor spelling errors — such as writing “apologies” instead of “apologize” — hint at greater problems in translating the humor from Hindi to English. The crowd of mostly native Hindi speakers at my showing laughed uproariously to lines that, in English, read as utilitarian.

Watch Tanu Weds Manu Returns for Kangana Ranaut. Just don’t expect to have a lot of fun while doing it.

Links

Movie Review: Samrat & Co. (2014)

1 Reply

Samrat_&_Co_—_poster2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

As a fan of the hit British TV series Sherlock, a Bollywood version of the same sounded like a disaster. Thankfully, Samrat & Co. is watchable, but just barely.

Bollywood’s Sherlock is Samrat (Rajeev Khandelwal), a detective who relieves stress by partaking in underground boxing matches. Lest the audience get a bad first impression, Samrat explains that his illicit prize money goes to charity. Never mind that boxing seems like a ridiculously dangerous pastime for a man who relies on his intellect to solve crimes.

The “Co.” of Samrat & Co. is just one guy, tabloid TV host Chakrandhar (Gopal Dutt). Just to make absolutely clear that the filmmakers know that they are making a Sherlock knockoff/tribute, Chakrandhar says, “I’m Watson, and he’s Sherlock.”

Apart from a story focused on a brilliant detective and his sidekick, Samrat & Co. has little in common with Sherlock. There are none of the visual effects that define the British series, except for one instance in which the solution to a word puzzle briefly floats on screen. (The film’s few puzzles are simple, and watching a character as supposedly brilliant as Samrat struggle with them is frustrating.)

Khandelwal’s Samrat is a normal guy, as socially at ease as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is awkward. It’s the supporting cast — like dim-witted Chakrandhar and chatterbox maid Shanti (Puja Gupta) — whose attempts to add quirkiness to the movie prove more irritating than endearing.

The central mystery involves a rich man in Shimla — Mahendra Pratap Singh (Girish Karnad) — whose garden appears to be cursed. After Singh is murdered at his own birthday party, Samrat sorts through numerous suspects to find the killer.

The movie’s cast is huge, and there are way too many potential suspects to keep track of. When Samrat zeroes in on Deepak (Rajneesh Duggal) as a potential culprit, I was hardly sure who Deepak was. His character is introduced while Samrat scans some CCTV footage, and they have one brief conversation before their showdown. The showdown itself includes a bout in the world’s least safe fighting arena, perched on a cliff’s edge and ringed by a wooden picket fence. The insurance premiums must be outrageous.

Kandelwal’s performance is fine, but it’s not especially compelling. Madalsa Sharma is tolerable as Dimpy, Singh’s daughter and Samrat’s sort-of love interest. There’s not much to commend any of the supporting actors besides Shreya Narayan, whose character, Divya (Singh’s other daughter), is refreshingly mute.

As flawed as Samrat & Co. is, it deserves credit for trying something a little different. Mystery isn’t a common Bollywood genre, so the movie at least offers a change of pace. Samrat & Co. is neither great nor terrible.

Links

Movie Review: Tevar (2015)

12 Replies

Tevar_Official_Poster2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Arjun Kapoor’s lead character seems more like an interruption than a necessary element of Tevar (“Attitude“).

Don’t get me wrong: as the story is constructed, the fate of Sonakshi Sinha’s character, Radhika, depends entirely upon Kapoor’s Pintu. That’s because Radhika is the most embarrassingly helpless character Sinha has played yet, which is saying something. Instead of a hapless plot device, I wish she’d been capable of saving herself — rendering Pintu altogether unnecessary.

Because Tevar is just another formulaic, hero-driven, Bollywood action flick, the movie opens with a lengthy introduction of Pintu. Surprise, surprise: he’s a slacker who just wants to hang out with his buddies, who repeatedly tell him how cool he is. As is typical in such films, his only flaw is a lack of a girlfriend. Not that he couldn’t get one if he wanted one. He just doesn’t want some chick to cut into his bro time.

Once Pintu’s intro is over, we get to the movie that I really wanted to see. Manoj Bajpayee plays Gajendar, a goon who does the dirty work for his older brother, a politician played by Rajesh Sharma. Gajendar falls madly in love with Radhika when he sees her dance in a concert.

On the advice of his sidekick, Kakdi (Subrat Dutta), Gajendar tries to impress the much younger Radhika, doffing his sweater vest in favor of jeans and a motorcycle jacket. The attempt fails. Gajendar is further humiliated by Radhika’s reporter brother, who threatens to take down both Gajendar and his brother if he contacts Radhika again.

Here’s what I wanted from Tevar: Gajendar tries to pretend he’s something he’s not in order to win Radhika. When that doesn’t work, he resorts to his old, violent ways. Radhika has to figure out how to stop Gajendar and save her family. Why shouldn’t the heroine be the one with “attitude” for a change?

What I got was Radhika waiting helplessly for someone to rescue her. Pintu just happens to get there first. Whenever Radhika takes control of her own destiny, she does something idiotic like leave her hiding place to check on the well-being of Pintu, who is essentially invincible.

That invincibility neuters all the fight sequences. Stuff breaks and people go flying, but the scenes lack gravity and danger. The epic eye roll Gajendar gives when Pintu rises from what should’ve been a mortal blow is spot on.

Pintu’s invincibility is such a powerful aphrodisiac for Radhika that’s she’s willing to abandon the complicated plan to get her to safety just to hear Pintu say, “I love you.” It’s stupid and insulting.

Sinha’s cringe-inducing performance aside, the acting in Tevar is pretty good. Kapoor is charming when the script permits him to be. Bajpayee is one of Bollywood’s go-to villains for a reason. It’s hard to take your eyes off of him.

Yet Dutta managed to steal my attention from Bajpayee on a number of occasions, not with anything flashy, but by doing little things to make Kakdi seem like a real person, not just an automaton who performs only when he’s the focus of a scene. While Gajendar is in the foreground, staring transfixed by Radhika’s dancing, Kakdi is in the background ushering people to their seats and clapping along with the music.

Dutta shows some real menace in spots, too, as when Kakdi strolls in slow motion toward Pintu, flanked by armed guards. Maybe there’s room for another go-to villain in town.

Ultimately, Tevar sublimates its unique elements in order to give us more of the same. Putting a different actor in the role of morally righteous superman doesn’t change anything.

Links

Movie Review: Roar — Tigers of the Sundarbans (2014)

11 Replies

roar2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

“I am unnecessarily putting all of you in danger,” says Pandit (Abhinav Shukla) to his soon-to-be-dead commandos. Yes, you are, Pandit. But if you didn’t, we wouldn’t have Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans — an inept killer animal flick that is nevertheless tons of fun.

Pandit imperils his army buddies to settle a personal vendetta against a tiger. His photographer brother, Uday (Pulkit), rescued a white tiger cub from a poacher’s trap in the Sundarbans. Instead of just leaving the tiger alone, Uday brought the cub to his house, where it was collected by the rightfully pissed forest warden (Achint Kaur). The mother tiger followed her child’s scent to the house and killed Uday.

Neither Uday or Pandit ever comprehend why what Uday did was wrong. When a human steals a tiger cub from the forest, how exactly is a tiger supposed to differentiate between a poacher and a well-meaning photographer?

Armed with an unwavering sense of his own righteousness and a helluva lot of guns, Pandit heads into the forest to kill the tiger that killed his brother. (Never mind that killing tigers is illegal.) Pandit recruits a gaggle of fellow commandos, none of whom is given any meaningful character traits.

The exception is the lone female commando, CJ (Nora Fatehi), whose distinguishing character traits are her breasts. Her battle gear consists of a fishnet glove, skimpy shorts, and a camouflage bustier.

Lest the crew run short on cleavage, Pandit hires a sexy tracker, Jhumpa (Himarsha). She echoes the female warden’s warnings to Pandit that Uday’s death was merely the act of a mother protecting her child. Pandit brushes off their suggestion as womanly sentimentality. However, when a male poacher named Bheera (Subrat Dutta) says that Uday was killed because of the tiger’s protective maternal instincts, Pandit believes him immediately.

This unwillingness to believe the women is a good example of Pandit’s dominant trait: he’s an asshole. He shouts a lot and is mean to the people who try to help him on his pointless, fatal quest. He doesn’t do a single heroic thing in the movie.

After the tiger escapes Pandit’s first ridiculous trap — which involves suspending some of the gang up in the trees by jock straps — his team follows the tiger’s trail downriver, into some misty, mystical tiger homeworld. Legend has it that no one who has ever ventured past the mist has been heard from again. Yet the second CJ is separated from the group, some dudes try to rape her.

The acting in Roar is abysmal. The camerawork is terrible. The story is beyond stupid.

But that’s not why people like me pony up for absurd killer animal movies. It’s all about the bad CGI action, and boy, is there a lot of it in Roar. Though the movements of the white tigress were motion-captured from actual tigers (orange-colored ones), her coloring is painted on, making the whole creature look synthetic. The tigress swims through deep water, yet manages to find purchase and leap onto the team’s boat.

Most of the action consists of the crew posing while holding guns, but not moving much. That’s because the trees of the Sundarbans have to send their roots up through the ground in order to get oxygen during high tides. The ground looks as though there are 6-inch-long sticks poking out of it every few inches. As a result, chase scenes are laughably slow as the actors tip-toe through the woods trying not to impale their feet.

Roar‘s funniest quality is the morality governing Pandit’s quest. The theme of almost every recent killer animal and disaster movie that’s aired in the United States in recent years — primarily on the Syfy channel — is that humans have tampered with nature, and now nature is fighting back.

Pandit’s view is that nature is freaking dangerous, and we’d better nuke the Sundarbans to save us from the man-eating tigers, flying snakes, and bloodthirsty flamingos. The movie’s theme is so hilariously stupid that it can’t even be called irresponsible. The key to enjoying Roar — which I certainly did — is not to take it remotely seriously.

Links

Movie Review: Bang Bang (2014)

33 Replies

Bang_Bang_(2014_Film)2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

When Jimmy Shergill offers the villain of Bang Bang some “extra cheese,” he’s not just talking about a pizza topping. He’s describing the tone of the film. Either that or he’s priming the audience for the ridiculous product placement to come.

Shergill’s role in Bang Bang as Indian Army Colonel Viren Nanda is minor. He’s dead before the opening credits roll, murdered by Interpol’s most-wanted terrorist, Omar Zafar (Danny Denzongpa) — but not before giving a needlessly patriotic speech.

Zafar puts out a notice to the world’s criminals — via Facebook? Twitter? — offering a bounty for the Kohinoor: a giant diamond stolen from India by the British during Queen Victoria’s reign. The diamond is filched from the Tower of London by Rajveer (Hrithik Roshan).

While on the run from some goons, Rajveer pauses to romance Harleen (Katrina Kaif), a lovely bank receptionist who’s been stood up by her internet date. Harleen is the absolute, most completely pathetic woman in the whole world because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. No boyfriend means no potential husband, and according to Bang Bang, an unmarried woman’s life is a meaningless waste.

Harleen gets caught up in Rajveer’s run from Zafar’s gang. The adventure takes her to all the exotic places she’s only dreamed of visiting. That Harleen spends much of the film drugged and being dragged from place to place suits Kaif’s abilities.

There are moments in Bang Bang that are a lot of fun. The dance song during the closing credits — aptly titled “Bang Bang” — is super catchy. The action scenes are entertaining, if only slightly more believable than those from an earlier Roshan action flick, Dhoom 2. Some of the dialogue is really clever and funny.

However, Kaif and Roshan aren’t up to the best of the material. There’s no chemistry between the two — although a kiss between them goes a long way to erasing memories of Kaif’s clumsy liplock with Shahrukh Khan in Jab Tak Hai Jaan — and neither is a good enough comic actor to deliver the humorous lines. Yes, Roshan is jacked and has about 1% body fat. It doesn’t make him right for this part.

For all of the stuff that blows up, Bang Bang is dull. Plot lines resolve slowly, and time is wasted on shots (from the neck up) of Kaif looking wistful in the shower. The background score is unbelievably corny.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, there’s some really cynical product placement in Bang Bang. A pivotal scene is set in a Pizza Hut located on the top of a mountain, on the edge of a cliff, with no place for a parking lot. Nevertheless, the restaurant is crowded.

Not so crowded that Rajveer and Harleen can’t ponder the merits of thin versus stuffed crust, mind you. The kid behind the counter (Aditya Prakash) suggests a pan pizza as a compromise. The kid is the best actor in the film.

Links

Movie Review: Kochadaiiyaan (2014)

3 Replies

Kochadaiiyaan2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Note: I watched the Hindi version of the film with English subtitles.

Fantasy is a genre rarely explored in Bollywood, especially films of the sword-and-sorcery variety. Kochadaiiyaan (“The King with a Long, Curly Mane“) fills that void, incorporating grand, mythical elements into an animated historical adventure.

However, the film’s story is undermined by director Soundarya R. Ashwin’s and writer K. S. Ravikumar’s fixation on plot twists. Instead of telling the story in a linear fashion, Ashwin and Ravikumar throw in a twist every half-hour or so, revealing that what appeared to be the truth was a lie. Wait another half-hour, and the truth is again turned on its head.

The twists aren’t well-designed. There’s no feeling of inevitability to them. They confuse more than they illuminate. Instead of inspiring an “Ah ha!” reaction, the only response is, “Huh?”

The story revolves around a strategic military genius named Rana (voiced and played by Rajinikanth in motion capture before being rendered on screen). The plot jumps between Rana’s rise to power in the kingdom of Kalingapuri, his return to his homeland of Kottaipattinam, and his recollections of his father, another great military strategist called Kochadaiiyaan (also played by Rajinikanth).

Sadly, Kochadaiiyaan isn’t a self-contained story, but rather a set-up for a sequel. Its incomplete ending is abrupt and frustrating.

Much was made in the promotion of the film regarding the advanced (for India) technology used in the animation. Had expectations been downplayed, perhaps the quality of the animation wouldn’t seem so disappointing. Even using motion capture, the animation looks no better than an early PlayStation 2-era video game cutscene.

Figure movement is the film’s biggest visual flaw. Fluidity of movement is hit-or-miss when it comes to the human characters, which is a huge problem in the movie’s many dance numbers (though some numbers fare better than others). On a related note, A. R. Rahman’s soundtrack is stirring, but not replete with hit singles.

An even bigger problem with the animation is the jerky movement of the film’s animals. Epic battle scenes become laughable with one glance at the arthritic horses “galloping” into war.

Character renderings also vary in degrees of quality. Rajinikanth is recognizable, his hairstyle changing to suit his multiple characters. Rana’s love interest, Vadhana Devi, looks more like Juhi Chawla than the actress who voiced her, Deepika Padukone.

Director Ashwin’s best use of animation is in giving a grand scale to Kochadaiiyaan‘s environments. Buildings are larger, battlefields more vast, and background characters more plentiful than most live-action film budgets could accommodate.

As for the acting in the film, it’s hard to judge, given the shortcomings of the animation. One tic that grows funnier over time is the characters’ penchant for stating the full name of the kingdom “Kottaipattinam.” I’d love to see a video compilation of every time a character says it, because it would probably include a hundred clips and run about five minutes long.

Links

Movie Review: Raja Natwarlal (2014)

6 Replies

RajaNatwarlal2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

One of a movie’s most precious resources is time. Filmmakers have a matter of minutes to establish characters and set up the plot, and then only an hour or two to resolve the story in a satisfying way. Raja Natwarlal allocates far too much time to a romance that needs no explanation and too little time on a complicated heist that does.

Director Kunal Deshmukh and writer Parveez Sheikh rely heavily on genre shorthand. Emraan Hashmi plays Raja, a small-time con artist with a heart of gold. When a heist goes wrong, he turns to a mentor — Yogi (Paresh Rawal) — who gives him two rules: don’t question my orders, and don’t fall in love.

The second rule is a problem because Raja has a girlfriend, an exotic dancer named Ziya (Humaima Malik). We know that Ziya is the most important thing in Raja’s life because the film devotes four song-and-dance numbers to their relationship, plus a fifth during the closing credits.

So much time is wasted on Raja and Ziya dancing in the club, in the rain, and on a tour of Cape Town that the details of the big heist Raja and Yogi are trying to pull off get glossed over.

Raja and Yogi both want revenge against wealthy, corrupt cricket enthusiast Varda Yadav (Kay Kay Menon). They concoct a plan to steal Yadav’s money by tricking him into thinking he’s buying a cricket team.

Yogi gathers a crew of three or four sidekicks who get barely any introduction and virtually no lines of dialogue. This isn’t Ocean’s Eleven or The Italian Job. This is just Raja, Yogi, and some other guys.

By the end of the con, the crew has mysteriously ballooned to more than a dozen guys. There’s no explanation of who they are or how they are recruited, apart from a hitman played by the shamefully underutilized Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. Predictably, one of the anonymous new guys is a mop-topped teenage computer hacker.

With so many heist film clichés in play and without any sense of how the con is unfolding as it’s happening, it never feels like Raja is any danger. Every event seems like it’s either part of a master plan or confirmation of Yogi’s fear that love really has turned Raja into a mush-brained schmuck.

It doesn’t help that Yadav isn’t a threatening villain. He only gets one scene of violence. A corrupt police officer named Singh is more menacing, but his integration into the plot is weak.

Scenes with Officer Singh highlight another problem: how do all the characters seem to know so much about Raja’s schemes? When Raja and his initial partner, Raghav (Deepak Tijori), mistakenly steal a bunch of cash from Yadav early on, Yadav and the cops find out about it almost immediately. How?

They probably found out while Raja was singing and dancing with Ziya in the strip club for the second time, which is actually the film’s third dance number in the opening twenty minutes (Raja gets a solo number as well). That’s an awful lot of time wasted on dancing that could’ve been spent on plot development.

Links

Movie Review: Singham Returns (2014)

16 Replies

Singham_Returns_Poster2 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

The release of Singham Returns on Independence Day in India feels wrong. Rarely does a movie try so hard to be patriotic but feel so cynical and almost anarchistic. When a country’s political, judicial, and religious leadership is depicted as so corrupt that the establishment of a police state seems preferable, the problems are far too big for one man, even if that man is Bajirao Singham.

While Singham is supposed to be a morally perfect dispenser of divine justice, he advocates a system in which he and his fellow police officers are judge, jury, and executioner. His methods are themselves criminal, so Singham relies on sympathetic politicians and reporters to turn a blind eye. It amounts to a conspiracy to protect an unelected individual who has assumed the ability to decide life or death.

Maybe it’s just that the release of Singham Returns comes at the end of a week in which an unarmed teenager in a small town in America was killed by the police in public, and that the protests that followed were greeted by police with tear gas, sniper rifles, and the imprisonment of skeptical politicians and media members. Whatever the reason, the solutions offered by Singham Returns seem terrifying.

Following his successful cleanup of Goa in 2011’s Singham, supercop Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) is promoted to Mumbai. His former teacher, Guruji (Anupam Kher), wants to eradicate political bribery and has a slate of young reform candidates poised to challenge in the upcoming elections.

In order to keep the black money flowing, corrupt politician Prakash Rao (Zakir Hussain) and the crooked evangelist Babaji (Amole Gupta) threaten Guruji and his candidates. But Singham won’t allow such intimidation on his watch.

Like all Bollywood supercop characters, Singham’s only character flaw is that he’s unmarried. Apparently, every character who carried over from the first movie to the second has forgotten about Kavya (Kajal Agarwal), Singham’s fiancée from the first movie, who is never mentioned.

Instead, Singham is fixed up with Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan), the sister of one of the candidates. The totality of Avni’s character is that she is irrationally jealous and eats a lot. This is an embarrassing role for an actor of Kapoor Khan’s talent.

Kher and Pankaj Tripathi — who plays one of Rao’s goons — give two of the film’s noteworthy supporting performances. Dayanand Shetty is also entertaining as Singham’s big deputy, Daya.

Devgn’s performance is fine, but his character is not. Singham quickly resorts to violence when provoked, and his wrath is indiscriminate: directed at obvious villains, but also at their victims and brainwashed minions. He lashes out, even when it hurts his moral standing in the community. He advocates the murder of those he deems guilty, independent of any judicial system.

Sure, there are plenty of explosions and enough fights to make you wonder if director Rohit Shetty bought his “slap” sound effects in bulk. Singham Returns isn’t boring. It’s just hard to cheer for a superhero who seems so undemocratic.

Links