Tag Archives: Bipasha Basu

Movie Review: Players (2012)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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With source material as rich as not one, but two, versions of The Italian Job to draw from, Players should be a slam dunk. Wisely, filmmaking duo Abbas-Mustan take the best aspects from their inspiration and add enough new touches to make it an enjoyable Indian action flick.

My biggest fear before seeing Players was that it wouldn’t be able to hold interest for 2 hours and 47 minutes. But Players is about as well-paced as a nearly three-hour-long movie can be, hitting plot points at the right times so as not to let the action drag.

Abhishek Bachchan anchors the film as Charlie Masceranas, a career thief. He learns from a dying friend about the Russian government’s plans to transfer a large amount of gold bars to Romania. With the help of his imprisoned mentor, Victor (Vinod Khanna), Charlie assembles a team of experts to execute a daring heist.

The team includes Charlie’s sometimes girlfriend, Riya (Bipasha Basu), master of disguise Sunny (Omi Vaidya), explosives expert Bilal (Sikander Kher), illusionist Ronnie (Bobby Deol) and a hacker named Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh).

So as not to appear to condone thievery, the filmmakers give the crew corny motivations for stealing the gold. Charlie wants to fulfill Victor’s dream of opening India’s largest orphanage. Ronnie, a former magician, wants to build a fully automated house for his daughter, who was accidentally paralyzed during one of his tricks.

Ronnie gets some unintentionally hilarious lines when he explains the end of his stage career: “Magic doesn’t do anything. It only ruins lives.”

Thankfully, Sunny, Bilal, Spider and Riya are just in it for the money. When the plan goes awry, Victor’s daughter, Naina (Sonam Kapoor), comes to Charlie’s aid.

There are some nice interactions between the team members. Sunny and Bilal are funny sparring partners, and Naina’s crush on Charlie creates tension between her and Riya. Charlie is the anchor, but this really is an ensemble film.

Besides the star cast, the movie’s main attractions are its action sequences. The gold-theft scene is tense, and the car chases are pretty good. Strange editing and artificially sped-up shots keep the fight scenes from looking their best, but interesting locales like Russia and New Zealand elevate the whole experience.

A tendency toward corniness pervades Players, to its detriment. It keeps the film from achieving the snappy sophistication of the films that inspired it. In addition to Charlie’s and Ronnie’s Robin Hood motivations, the score heavy-handedly tries to provoke emotions.

The most pandering element in Players is the needless inclusion of comic actor Johnny Lever, a regular feature in Abbas-Mustan films. I don’t find Lever funny, or more accurately, I don’t find the outrageous characters he always plays funny. That directors feel the need to pair his appearances with wacky sound effects just makes things worse. Any spell the movie could hope to cast is broken when Lever appears onscreen.

Another element that can’t be overlooked is how pointedly the movie targets a male audience. Basu and Kapoor both have a couple of forgettable dance numbers requiring to them to gyrate in skimpy dresses. Another female character is viewed through frosted glass as she showers. Almost every Anglo woman in the movie is kitted out in hot pants.

Yet the male stars aren’t required to doff their clothes, apart from a brief scene featuring Mukesh in a bubble bath. Bachchan and Deol are regular romantic leads, and Kher is clearly fit. Why not work in a shirtless shot of one of them, in the name of gender equality?

The thread of sexism isn’t limited to who’s asked to expose the most skin. Naina and Riya are both asked to play the role of seductress to aid the team, which features five men (six, including Victor) and only two women. Language denigrating women goes largely unchallenged by the male heroes.

That said, Players works as an action film. It hits the right notes often enough to sustain excitement for almost three hours, which is the primary objective of any action movie.

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Opening January 6: Players

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2012 kicks off in star-studded style when the Bollywood action film Players hits theaters on January 6. The remake of The Italian Job (complete with Mini Coopers) stars Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Sonam Kapoor, Bobby Deol and Neil Nitin Mukesh.

Players opens in the Chicago area 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. The movie has a lengthy runtime of 2 hrs. 47 min.

Given how well Don 2 has performed during its first two weeks in theaters, it’s no surprise that the 3D heist film carries over for a third week at all of the above theaters. Its total U.S. haul stands at $3,288,692.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Beautiful (Malayalam), Rajanna (Telugu) and Rajapattai (Tamil).

Movie Review: Dum Maaro Dum (2011)

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1 Star (out of 4)

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Copious amounts of sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, fights, chases and torture fail to liven up the dull and disorganized Dum Maaro Dum.

An opening shot of a dead body, accompanied by a voiceover by Abhishek Bachchan about the deadly drug trade in Goa, suggest a riveting tale of murder and corruption in a beachfront paradise. As soon as the opening credits finish, boredom sets in.

The movie is immediately mired in the backstory of one of the side characters, a teen named Lorry (Prateik Babbar). Lorry can’t afford to join his girlfriend at college in America, so he accepts a job as a drug mule, in order to earn the money for tuition. What I just summarized in one sentence takes up 25 minutes of screentime.

Twitchy-looking Lorry gets busted at the Goa airport by Kamath (Bachchan), a formerly corrupt vice cop trying to redeem himself after the accidental deaths of his wife and son. Kamath sends Lorry to jail, but the kid won’t reveal the whereabouts of the mysterious drug kingpin “Michael Barbosa.”

Kamath gets help from a musician name Joki (Rana Daggubati) in exchange for leniency for Lorry. Joki’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe (Bipasha Basu), is currently seeing another major drug dealer, Lorsa Biscuta (Aditya Pancholi). If anyone knows where Barbosa is, it’s Biscuta.

The plot isn’t nearly as straightforward as the above recap. There are flashbacks to pointless backstory, which prevents giving the characters enough time to grow (and grow on us) as events unfold in the modern-day.

This presents a serious problem, as Kamath — the presumptive, though not explicitly defined, lead character — is a monster. In addition to Kamath’s corrupt past and his penchant for beating up suspects, he sodomizes a drug runner with a pistol in order to make the guy confess. The movie’s villains may rack up a higher body count, but Kamath’s methods are more brutal and vile.

Substituting backstory for character development brings the action of the film to a crawl. Boring exposition about events not germane to the current situation is punctuated by party scenes, sex scenes and fight scenes. If you spend most of the film rudely texting on your cell phone, only to look up when the music cues something exciting on-screen, you might be fooled into thinking Dum Maaro Dum is an exciting movie.

The climax of the movie is actually pretty clever — so much so that the producers canceled the gala premiere in order to preserve the secret ending. But it seems as though writer Shridhar Raghavan started with the climax and struggled to craft the story that leads up to it.

Perhaps the poster tells us everything we need to know about Dum Maaro Dum. The poster features the svelte torso of Deepika Padukone, who makes a special appearance in a performance of the title track. Padukone is onscreen for all of five minutes, in a dance number that happens one hour and 45 minutes into the film. It is the best part of the movie.

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Opening April 22: Dum Maaro Dum and Zokkomon

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Two new Hindi movies open in the Chicago area the weekend beginning April 22, 2011. The Disney live-action superhero flick Zokkomon gets a limited release, opening on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles.

The other new Bollywood movie opening this weekend is Dum Maaro Dum, a gangster drama set in Goa starring Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu.

Dum Maaro Dum opens on Friday at four area theaters: AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4 in Chicago, Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and Regal Cantera Stadium 30 in Warrenville. The film has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 12 min.

Thank You, having earned $392,194 in the U.S. so far, gets a third week at the South Barrington 30.

Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area this weekend include KO (Tamil), Mr. Perfect (Telugu) and Teen Maar (Telugu) at the Golf Glen 5.

Movie Review: Pankh (2010)

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0 Stars (out of 4)

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Normally, I don’t write reviews of movies I don’t finish, but I’m making an exception for Pankh. I had to stop the DVD after 30 minutes, because director Sudipto Chattopadhyay’s ceaselessly spinning and rotating camera gave me motion sickness.

Pankh is Chattopadhyay’s first directorial effort, under the banner White Feather Arthouse Films. Chattopadhyay seems to think making an “art” movie is little more than a license to disregard the rules of competent filmmaking and get away with stuff the censor board would normally disallow.

The movie’s story is fractured into flashbacks and dream sequences that interrupt the flow of the action set in the present. The story revolves around a young man named Jerry (Maradona Rebello). When he was a child, Jerry’s mother, Mary (Lilette Dubey), tried to foist her own dreams of screen stardom onto her son, making him appear in movies dressed as a girl under the stage name “Baby Kusum.”

As an adult, Jerry predictably struggles with his sexual and gender identities. He seeks refuge in a fantasy world where he meets with a glamorous screen diva, played by Bipasha Basu.

The dream sequences are the most physically unsettling parts of the movie. In one, the camera, trained on Basu, rotates on a pivot while simultaneously tilting from side-to-side, like a rocking boat. I got dizzy watching it and turned the DVD off.

But stupid camera techniques are used in the present day scenes as well. At one point, as Jerry talks to an old acquaintance, the camera is turned 90 degrees to the left. Jerry’s face is visible in the top right corner of the screen, while his body is off camera. All that’s visible of his friend is the top of his head in the bottom left corner of the screen.

I could forgive the nauseating camera work if it had a point. In The Blair Witch Project, the shaky handheld camera shots were supposed to make it feel like a documentary. Chattopadhyay uses the camera the way he does in Pankh just because he can.

Chattopadhyay tries to make Pankh edgier with somewhat scandalous content. Jerry smokes and does drugs. Characters swear profusely in English, and their Hindi curse words are bleeped. In one fantasy scene, Jerry is depicted as Jesus carrying a cross. Jerry and another male character are shown masturbating.

As a filmmaker, Chattopadhyay is like the 13-year-old boy left home alone, trying to get away with doing as many “adult” things as possible before his parents return. There’s no maturity to his attempts at edginess. I can only imagine how painful — physically and emotionally — it would’ve been to endure the final 70 minutes of Pankh.

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Movie Review: Lamhaa (2010)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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I should start by noting that, in the case of this review, the star rating above is likely instructive only to my fellow Americans and other Westerners who have an average or below-average understanding of the ongoing dispute over Kashmir. To fully appreciate Lamhaa (“Moment”), one needs a familiarity with the history, geography and politics of Kashmir that I (and I suspect most Americans) don’t have.

While I got the gist of the movie and enjoyed many of the performances, I came away uncertain of the motivations of various factions and what their relationships to one another are. Since I can’t be sure how much of the fault for the misunderstanding lies with the filmmaker and how much lies with me, I can only half-heartedly recommend Lamhaa to American filmgoers.

The plot concerns the return of an Indian Army officer, Vikram (Sanjay Dutt), to Kashmir, where he served during deadly riots that engulfed the region in 1989. Various separatist groups are working with politicians and industrialists to inflame public passion for autonomous self-rule and spur another round of riots twenty years later. To what end, I’m not sure, though it’s clear that money and power are at stake.

When Vikram arrives on the scene, he’s shown in slow-motion tossing his backpack over his shoulder and striding purposefully toward the camera. It’s the tough-guy-fantasy version of a beautiful blonde swinging her long hair over her shoulder in slow-mo. Besides the silly slow-mo, the cinematography is quite good, with quick zooms and a hand-held feel akin to the Syfy series Battlestar Galactica.

In trying to uncover plans for the renewed uprising, Vikram assumes the identity “Gul.” He meets Aziza (Bipasha Basu), the hot-tempered daughter of a local politician, Haji (Anupam Kher). Haji adopted Aziza after her own politician father was assassinated, raising her to lead a female gang of thugs known as the Fatima Squad.

Vikram saves Aziza’s life, and she gradually begins to trust him. When her childhood sweetheart, Aatif (Kunal Kapoor), pledges to run for office without using Haji’s violent tactics, Aziza begins to realize just how dangerous Haji is. She and Vikram work to uncover exactly what Haji has secretly been planning.

The actual unfolding of events is much more muddled than my recap. There are insurgent groups training child soldiers; industrialists doing business with the governments of India and Pakistan as well as the insurgents; “half-widows” trying to learn the fates of husbands arrested years ago by the Indian army.

Elements like the half-widows seem inserted into the movie just for the sake of providing a complete picture of the problems in Kashmir. They do little to advance the plot. The song montages are similarly needless time-fillers. A montage of Dutt’s character playing with little kids is particularly awkward.

What makes Lamhaa truly confusing are the frequent changes in location throughout Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Each new location is labeled at the bottom of the screen, but the labels are covered up by English dialog subtitles. There are scenes of border crossings, but thanks to the subtitles covering the location names, I have no idea which borders were being crossed.

The final impression given by Lamhaa — and the one that I believe the director wanted to convey — is that Kashmir is a complex place controlled by people whose desire for power and wealth overrides the needs of citizens with serious problems. I only wish a true understanding of the movie didn’t require the use of a map and some Venn diagrams.

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Movie Review: Aakrosh (2010)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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When watching a Hindi movie, I often consider whether someone who has never seen a Bollywood movie before would enjoy it. To someone who likes romances, I’d recommend Love Aaj Kal; for a fan of family-friendly sports movies, I’d suggest Chak De India. But I think Aakrosh might have the widest appeal to American filmgoers (adults only, as there is some graphic violence).

Aakrosh‘s biggest selling point is its construction. It’s a well-paced thriller in which the lead characters — who truly grow over the course of the film — are placed in a difficult situation that becomes terrifying as the story progresses. The familiar format accommodates a few musical numbers that identify Aakrosh as distinctly Indian, though they do make the movie a tad long.

What adds to Aakrosh‘s appeal is that it deals with a topic unfamiliar to many Americans: honor killings. When honor killings make the news in the United States, they typically involve a young woman murdered by her own family for an act perceived as shameful. Aakrosh presents another side of the practice, in which suitors are killed in order to force a young woman into a political marriage approved by her family.

The story’s heroes are Siddhant (Akshaye Khanna) and Pratap (Ajay Devgan), two investigators sent to learn the whereabouts of three Delhi medical students who disappeared from a village two months earlier. Siddhant, also from Delhi, is the lead investigator who assumes this case will proceed as smoothly as his previous cases have. Pratap knows from having grown up in the area that Siddhant’s rule-of-law methods won’t work in Jhanjhar.

There’s a corrupt local system of governance built on the caste system that exists, despite Delhi edicts declaring castes obsolete. The police, politicians and business owners conspire to keep lower-caste, working-class villagers on the fringes of society. Those who aspire to rise above their station frequently disappear. When Siddhant asks the villagers how it’s possible that no one saw the three students, an old man replies, “We are alive because we are blind.”

Pratap is all too familiar with the caste-based politics that separated him from his former flame, Geeta (Bipasha Basu), many years earlier. Geeta is now married to the corrupt and uncooperative police chief, played with sleazy aplomb by Paresh Rawal. Unhappy Geeta knows better than to let her violent husband see her talking to the feds.

Siddhant and Pratap finally get a break in the case through sheer luck, since no one will help them. Their lives become more imperiled as they get closer to the truth about the missing young men. Siddhant is slow to admit that his by-the-book approach won’t work, and that Pratap’s method of hardball may be the only way to get justice.

The atmosphere in Aakrosh is intense. Siddhant and Pratap are surrounded by enemies, always under surveillance. Even those who aren’t their enemies won’t risk their lives for two outsiders, giving the movie a feeling that’s simultaneously lonely and claustrophobic.

Action scenes are refreshingly low-tech, relying more on parkour-style chases and fistfights than CGI special effects. The absence of cell phones and high-tech weaponry is appropriate for the remote setting. We’ve grown so accustomed to seeing slick gunmen in movies that a machete-wielding mob somehow seems much scarier.

Aakrosh, while both modern and foreign, will feel familiar to fans of old Hollywood thrillers. Siddhant’s feeling of futility in the face of a corrupt social order will appeal to fans of the TV series The Wire. It’s also a good chance to catch lovely Bipasha Basu before she makes her Hollywood debut in Roland Joffé’s Singularity next year.

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Opening July 16: Lamhaa

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One new Hindi movie opens in the Chicago area the weekend beginning July 16, 2010. Lamhaa stars Sanjay Dutt as a soldier in Kashmir and costars Bipasha Basu, Kunal Kapoor and Anupam Kher. Lamhaa opens on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles.

Two Bollywood romantic comedies are also carrying over in area theaters. Milenge Milenge continues its run at the Golf Glen 5 and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, while I Hate Luv Storys gets a third week at the South Barrington 30 and AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4 in Chicago.

Other Indian movies showing around Chicago include the Telugu films Em Pillo Em Pillado, Sneha Geetham and Subhupradam, all at the Golf Glen 5.

Movie Review: All The Best (2009)

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allthebest1 Star (out of 4)

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For the first two hours, All The Best is a tolerable if uninspired slapstick comedy. But, due to the movie’s racist final scene, it’s not worth watching.

The movie focuses on aspiring rock star Vir (Fardeen Khan), who lives off of the largess of his globe-trotting step-brother, Dharam (Sanjay Dutt). In order to get a larger monthly allowance from Dharam, Vir tells his brother that his girlfriend, Vidya (Mugdha Godse), is actually his wife.

Since the two brothers rarely see each other, the lie goes unchallenged until Dharam lands in town for a layover on his way to the small African country of Lesotho. The layover turns into an extended stay when the country experiences a military coup.

Vir turns to his best friend, Prem (Ajay Devgan), for help. Since this is a comedy, all of Prem’s ideas to deceive Dharam make things worse, especially when Dharam mistakes Prem’s wife, Jhanvi (Bipasha Basu), for Vir’s pretend wife, Vidya.

The bulk of the humor centers on mistaken identities and the friends’ attempts to keep the truth from hot-tempered Dharam. Basu and Ashwini Kalsekar, who plays Vir’s maid, Mary, are the most successful at generating laughs.

But All The Best falls back on the same cliche seen in many recent Bollywood comedies: gangsters. If one were to form an impression of modern India based solely on Hindi cinema, India would seem as overrun with gangsters as Chicago was in the 1920s, only with the gangsters more inept and less threatening than their American predecessors.

The most pathetically unfunny of the bunch is Topu (Johny Lever), the mute gang leader. He communicates with his lackeys by banging a spoon against a glass, as though he were trying to get a newly-married couple to kiss at their wedding reception. It’s the stupidest gimmick since the mute villain in Karzzzz, who communicated via a musical keypad on his wrist.

Such lame gimmicks might be forgivable, if not for the movie’s final scene, involving several characters from Lesotho. They speak in something that’s supposed to sound like Swahili, even though Swahili isn’t an official language of Lesotho. I can’t prove it, but I’m guessing the filmmakers didn’t spring to hire an actual Swahili translator, and that the words are just gibberish that’s supposed to sound “African.” [Update: A kind Access Bollywood reader, Samuel, let me know that the language is in fact Swahili.]

If that weren’t insulting enough, three of the characters are Indian actors — including Bipasha Basu — in blackface make up. Coming just a few weeks after American musician Harry Connick Jr. took an Australian comedy troupe to task for the same offense, All The Best‘s racist attempt at humor comes off as particularly crude.

For Indian cinema to be taken seriously in the rest of the world, it needs to drop these outdated, racist jokes. Bollywood’s top stars need to lead the way. Bipasha Basu should have refused to perform the scene in blackface, just as Akshay Kumar should’ve said no to his blackface scene in Kambakkht Ishq.

Movie Review: Aa Dekhen Zara (2009)

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Aa Dekhen Zara2 Stars (out of 4)

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“A man inherits a magical camera” doesn’t sound like a promising movie premise. But Aa Dekhen Zara is, at its core, an action movie that uses the magical camera as a catalyst to jump start the plot.

Struggling photographer Ray (Neil Nitin Mukesh) inherits a camera from his inventor grandfather. The camera has the ability to photograph the future. By setting the camera’s date dial to a future date, Ray can see what the subject of the photo will be doing on that future date at the same time of day that the photo was originally taken. A date and time stamp in the corner of each photo helps Ray keep track of future events.

Once Ray figures out the mystery of the camera, he does what any reasonable person would do: he uses it to win the lottery. Things go reasonably well until other people figure out what the camera is capable of. Eventually, one of Ray’s photographs shows an image of a death he must prevent — as seems to happen in every script where the main character can see the future.

Though the major plot points of the movie’s first few acts are completely predictable, the way Ray ultimately tries to change fate is clever, adding an element of originality to a tired premise.

Mukesh and Bipasha Basu — who plays Ray’s girlfriend, Simi — give believable performances that make it easy to accept the magical camera’s existence in a world that is otherwise totally normal. Aa Dekhen Zara is fairly violent, so it may not be appropriate for children. But, with a run time of only two hours (short by Hindi-film standards), you’ll save some money on hiring a babysitter.