Tag Archives: Rajpal Yadav

Movie Review: Apurva (2023)

1 Star (out of 4)

A kidnapped woman fights for her life in the survival thriller Apurva, which is nowhere near as exciting as that summary makes it sound.

Apurva opens not with the title character — played by Tara Sutaria in what is clearly supposed to be her breakout, solo-heroine role — but with her kidnappers: a dull quartet of crude, violent thieves lead by Jugnu (Rajpal Yadav). Sukkha (Abhishek Banerjee) is second in command, with Balli (Sumit Gulati) and Chhota (Aaditya Gupta) rounding out the group. They beat people to death and have literal pissing contests out in the bleak Chambal desert. They’re too cliched to be scary, even though composer Ketan Sodha tries his best to make them seem so with some threatening background music.

After spending too much time with these dullards, we finally meet Apurva. She’s on a bus to Agra to surprise her fiance Sid (Dhairya Karwa) for his birthday. En route, Jugnu & Co kill the bus driver and rob the passengers. Sid calls during the robbery, and Sukkha answers, telling him they’re taking beautiful Apurva with them.

Just in case we doubted whether a man engaged to a woman who cares enough to surprise him for his birthday would actually want her back, we get a flashback and song montage detailing Apurva’s introduction to Sid and their bubbly courtship. With their mutual affection confirmed, we can rest assured that Apurva has a reason to live and that Sid will try to save her.

Thus Apurva endures one of the least-interesting movie kidnappings ever. She spends a good chunk of time knocked out after Chhota slaps her. At one point, an astrologer (Rakesh Chaturvedi Om) randomly wanders into the ruins of the village where they’re holding her, despite it being well off the road and miles from anyplace inhabited.

Things get even sillier when writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat — the filmmaker responsible for last year’s awful movie Hurdang — tries to tie the astrologer’s presence into the plot via a flashback with Sid that only highlights just how illogical his involvement is. Then again, that kind of fits in a movie where I repeatedly yelled at the main character to “just run!” when she was sitting there, waiting for her captors to find her.

Apurva is so insubstantial that there’s little chance for Sutaria to show off any heretofore unseen acting chops. She spends much of the film slowly moving barefoot through the ruins or yelling while lifting heavy objects, despite the fact that there’s nothing around to muffle sounds and her captors would obviously hear her. The thieves are a bunch of hapless jackasses, and Sid isn’t present enough for Karwa to have an impact. If you want to watch a “woman in trouble” film, watch Anushka Sharma in NH10 instead.

Links

Movie Review: Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery (2023)

1 Reply

2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Kathal on Netflix

A young police inspector in a small town navigates challenges in her professional and personal life in the comedy Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery. Writer-director Yashowardhan Mishra gets a lot right in his feature debut, even though the story loses focus as it goes on.

Sanya Malhotra plays Mahima Basor, a police inspector in the small town of Moba. She’s achieved a lot in her short career and her superiors are pleased with her work, but some of the male constables who work under her quietly resent taking orders from a woman.

Further complicating matters is that one of those constables is her boyfriend, Saurabh Dwivedi (Anant Joshi). He supports Mahima’s career success, but his dad refuses to let them marry until Saurabh is promoted to inspector, too.

Fresh off Mahima’s arrest of a notorious gangster, she is assigned an even more important case — find the thief who stole two jackfruits off the tree in politician Munnalal Pateria’s (Vijay Raaz) garden. These aren’t just any jackfruits. They’re a special Uncle Hong variety that pickles exceptionally well.

Everyone except Pateria realizes what a ridiculous misuse of police resources this endeavor is. It’s funny to watch Mahima roll her eyes in the background as the investigation stirs up lingering resentments between Pateria and his son-in-law, which gets everyone else in the family involved.

This is when the story is at its best — as an interpersonal comedy that happens at an intimate scale, in a town small enough where everyone knows each other’s business. For example, no detail of the theft is too small for enthusiastic local reporter Anuj (Rajpal Yadav), who has little other news to cover.

Kathal loses its way when it expands the story beyond Moba’s borders into other villages, and the investigation uncovers more serious crimes. Pateria’s family recedes in importance, which is a shame because the characters and their influence over the town make the movie a lot of fun.

The plot gets diluted as the scope broadens. While the crime at the heart of the jackfruit case is trivial, what it reveals about power and police accountability is not. Same goes for the conflict that arises within Mahima’s relationship with Saurabh.

The introduction of weightier material doesn’t make Kathal any more important of a film. It was important already. Kathal is very close to being a very good movie. But the escalation in its latter stages overextends the runtime and distracts from the characters and a location that made up such an enjoyable, well-defined world.

Links

Movie Review: Dirty Politics (2015)

6 Replies

Zero Stars (out of 4)

Buy/rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon

About three-quarters of the way through the movie, my hands grip my head as if trying to contain an imminent explosion. I scream, “What is happening?!” and tear at my hair. That sums up the entire experience of watching Dirty Politics.

The movie’s problems are immediately apparent, most obviously so in the way the film looks. The camera never stops moving. It doesn’t matter if the movement obscures the faces of the characters who are speaking: camera movement is paramount! The action can be dramatic, such as a crane shot from directly overhead that swoops down to ground level then back up again. It can be more subtle, such as persistent zoom-ins on actors’ faces.

In one shot, the camera rapidly zooms in to closeup and pulls back twice in the span of about three seconds. A judge says, “Court is adjourned,” and the camera pans from the judge up to a clock above his chair, even though there’s no significance to the clock or the time of day. Then the same shot is repeated a few minutes later, again for no reason.

I don’t blame cinematographer Panveer Selvam for this travesty of technique as much as I do director K.C. Bokadia, who also wrote this farce. Bokadia’s vision for Dirty Politics is obviously shaped by a fundamental misunderstanding of how to make movies.

The story opens in the middle of a search for missing dancer-turned-politician Anokhi Devi (Mallika Sherawat). We know this because the characters say the name “Anokhi Devi” about a hundred times in the first ten minutes. Characters are introduced in quick succession without a sense of where they fit into the larger story, and an absence of backstory is keenly felt.

Anokhi Devi’s appearance via flashback more than twenty minutes into the runtime doesn’t really clear things up. Her dancing grabs the attention of political party leader Dinanath (Om Puri). In exchange for sex, Dinanath promises to make her the party’s candidate in the next election. Naturally.

There’s a hullabaloo because a gangster named Mukhtiar (Jackie Shroff) wants the same candidacy. He gets a great introduction from Anokhi Devi’s secretary, Banaram (Rajpal Yadav), who announces his arrival at her house: “He’s Mukhtiar. A well-known goon of our area.”

Dirty Politics is full of hilariously ponderous lines. When Anupam Kher’s character Mishra — who is a CBI officer and a lawyer who’s sixty days away from retirement(!) — presents his case in court, the defense attorney responds: “He is very cleverly trying to make his points strong.” Eloquently said, man who doesn’t realize that he’s describing the very nature of his own job.

One can only imagine how Bokadia managed to rope so many talented actors into this doomed project. In addition to vets like Kher, Shroff, and Puri, Naseeruddin Shah his a role as an activist who steals the movie’s absurd closing scene. Govind Namdeo’s overacting is the height of comedy. Atul Kulkarni and Sushant Singh remind us why they are rarely called upon to play action heroes.

Shah’s character has a daughter whose sole narrative purpose is to be raped in order to blackmail him. There are only three women in the whole movie, and all of them are brutalized: two in order to intimidate their relatives, and Anokhi Devi for aspiring to a more meaningful purpose than that of Dinanath’s mistress.

Puri and Sherawat deserve some modest praise for fumbling through the most awkward sex scenes in cinema history. If Bokadia was counting on sex to sell Dirty Politics, he obviously didn’t watch any footage of his movie as it was being shot.

One can only fathom the sheer terror racing through the mind of editor Prakash Jha as he received each batch of footage. “How am I supposed to make a movie from this?” he asks himself. “There’s nothing to work with!” Hence how we end up with the exact same reaction shot of Jackie Shroff staring at a desk — his jaw muscles twitching — four times in succession.

Bonus: Everything you need to know about the lack of craft that went into making Dirty Politics, in just twelve seconds!

Links

Dirty Politics at Wikipedia
Dirty Politics at IMDb

Movie Review: Bhopal — A Prayer for Rain (2014)

11 Replies

3 Stars (out of 4)

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

The 1984 industrial disaster at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, isn’t a common reference in the United States the way that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is, but it’s an event Americans should be aware of. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain depicts a catastrophe of almost unbelievable proportions.

In 1969, American company Union Carbide builds a plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal to produce agricultural chemicals. By 1984, the decrepit plant situated in the middle of a slum struggles to make ends meet, as a drought decreases the market for the company’s products. One night in December of that year, a gas leak from the plant exposes a half-million Bhopal residents to toxic fumes.

The story of the tragedy is told from several perspectives, including those of Motwani (Kal Penn), a journalist desperate to warn the city of impending danger, and Roy (Joy Sengupta), a plant safety officer trying to prevent a disaster in the face of unsympathetic management, failing equipment, and unqualified staff.

At the film’s heart is Dilip (Rajpal Yadav), a rickshaw driver who quickly ascends from plant janitor to equipment safety monitor. He’s as unqualified for the job as everyone else at the plant, but he’s a devoted employee.

Dilip personifies the conundrum of the plant’s existence. There aren’t enough trained engineers available to operate the equipment, especially for the wages Carbide can pay in an unprofitable market. But Dilip’s meager paycheck is enough to lift his family out of dire poverty. Closing the plant permanently would economically devastate the city.

In the film, the events of the disaster coincide with the wedding of Dilip’s younger sister, an event made possible by the same company ultimately responsible for killing thousands and injuring scores of thousands more.

Though the filmmakers take sides regarding the cause of the disaster — citing corporate negligence as opposed to Carbide’s official attribution to sabotage by a disgruntled worker — the portrayal of the key figures is nuanced. Carbide’s CEO, Warren Anderson (Martin Sheen), expresses his desire to continue the social progress made possible by the Green Revolution of the 1960s. He’s proud of the economic opportunity the plant provides for the citizens of Bhopal.

Yet it takes a special kind of callousness to enable the circumstances that lead to the disaster. Anderson and Carbide refuse to admit that the chemical being manufactured in Bhopal — MIC — is dangerous to humans. Who would work there if it was? This denial leaves the ramshackle local hospital unequipped to handle an industrial disaster and gives most of the employees an unwarranted sense of security. If they were in danger, surely someone would tell them, right?

Perhaps the most chilling aspects of the story are the mechanisms are already in place to shield Carbide from corporate responsibility. The plant is technically run by an Indian subsidiary, so it’s the subsidiary’s fault for hiring untrained workers and letting the machines fall apart. It’s the subsidiary’s fault for failing to prepare for an accident that Carbide said couldn’t happen.

Scenes showing the night of the disaster are haunting not just because of the human suffering but because of the context in which it takes place. A deadly cloud blows through a shanty town of nearly half a million people going about their daily lives. As wedding guests start to fall ill, the expression in Dilip’s sister’s eyes is not fear of imminent doom but frustration: “Why is this happening on my special day?”

Performances in the film are generally good, especially Sheen’s role as Anderson. Mischa Barton’s turn as an American journalist is awkward and poorly integrated into the story. Though only the Hindi dialogue is subtitled, there are enough strong accents — including Kal Penn’s Indian accent and that of a European Carbide executive — that perhaps the English dialogue should’ve been subtitled as well.

Thirty years after the Bhopal disaster, industrial accidents caused by corporate irresponsibility are still too common all over the world. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain implores us to (paraphrasing George Santayana) remember the past, so that we may stop repeating it.

Links

Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain official website
Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain at Wikipedia
Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain at IMDb
Bhopal disaster at Wikipedia

Movie Review: Main Tera Hero (2014)

14 Replies

3 Stars (out of 4)

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

Ever since the traumatizing experiences of watching Do Knot Disturb and Rascals, director David Dhawan’s name has struck fear in my heart. But after last year’s cute comedy Chashme Baddoor and now Main Tera Hero (“I’m Your Hero“), I have less reason to fear.

Main Tera Hero infuses the romantic comedy genre with action to accompany some impressive dance numbers. The hero at the center is played by Varun Dhawan (David’s son), whose substantial charisma hints at a long career ahead for a young actor in only his second film.

Varun plays Seenu, a worthless trickster so loathed in his hometown of Ooty that all the residents wave a gleeful farewell to him when he boards the train to Bangalore. He arrives at university and begs a statue of Krishna — who talks back — to help him focus on his studies. Seenu turns to see beautiful Sunaina (Ileana D’Cruz), hair streaming in the breeze, and he interprets her appearance as a sign from God. Seenu doesn’t linger to hear Krishna bemoan having a devotee dim enough to mistake a gust of wind for divine intervention.

Seenu’s pursuit of Sunaina is complicated by the fact that Angad (Arunoday Singh) — a burly police officer with anger issues — already has his eyes on her. Seenu turns the mischievous nature that made him so loathed in Ooty into an asset, and he tricks Angad into letting him court Sunaina.

D’Cruz rocks some great facial expressions throughout the movie, but she’s at her best during this courtship phase. Seenu tries to win Sunaina with the song “Palat Tera Hero Idhar Hai,” but Sunaina spends most of the song being startled by him. It’s hilarious to watch her jump as a horn plays behind her or Seenu surprises her at a movie theater.

Seenu’s pursuit is derailed at the movie’s halfway point when a secret admirer of his — Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri), a gangster’s daughter — tricks Seenu into coming to Bangkok to rescue Sunaina. This twist isn’t set up well, but it provides an excuse to get Varun, D’Cruz, and Fakhri into swimsuits and chilling poolside at a Bangkok mansion. That’s the whole point of the movie, right?

There’s plenty of skin on display, as well as an overabundance of pelvic thrusts. David Dhawan repeatedly positions the camera on the ground and points it up at Varun’s crotch. Thanks for pointing out exactly where Varun’s penis is, David, since we couldn’t see it through his pants.

More than just a thrusting pelvis, Varun does some good work in Main Tera Hero. He’s always engaged, throwing in subtle gestures and glances that maintain interest while Seenu does utilitarian things like walk from Point A to Point B. He’s also a tremendous dancer, and the movie’s several dance numbers allow him to show off.

Main Tera Hero has a really strong supporting cast, from Rajpal Yadav as Angad’s much abused sidekick, Peter, to Saurab Shukla as Ayesha’s father’s much abused sidekick, Balli. Ayesha’s father (played by Anupam Kher in an awesome wig) speaks with an echo, a tic that resulted from him being born in a valley. The “echo” is just Kher saying the same word three or four times at the end of a sentence, making the joke that much funnier.

The echo bit fits nicely with other surreal elements — like talking statues and balloons that wink — that help make sense of the random sound effects of which director Dhawan is fond.

The weak link in the cast is Fakhri. Though she speaks more Hindi dialogue in Main Tera Hero than she has in her previous films, she still sounds like she’s reading a cue card for the first time when she delivers lines in her native English.

There are also gender-bias flaws inherent in this kind of male-hero-centered film. Seenu falls in love with Sunaina on first sight, and uses his love to justify his pursuit of her despite her repeated objections. Later, Seenu fails to see the hypocrisy in his condescending dismissal of Ayesha’s love-at-first-sight for him. That kind of love, he claims, is mutual, even though it took several days for Sunaina to fall for him.

Accepting those flaws, Main Tera Hero is nevertheless pretty harmless. It has some laughs, energetic dance numbers, and an attractive cast. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.

Links

Main Tera Hero at Wikipedia
Main Tera Hero at IMDb
My review of Chashme Baddoor
My review of Rascals
My review of Do Knot Disturb

Opening November 2: Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and Ata Pata Laapata

Access Bollywood

Hindi movie reviews and streaming video news

Tag Archives: Rajpal Yadav

Movie Review: Apurva (2023)

Like this:

Movie Review: Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery (2023)

Like this:

Movie Review: Dirty Politics (2015)

Like this:

Movie Review: Bhopal — A Prayer for Rain (2014)

Like this:

Movie Review: Main Tera Hero (2014)

Like this:

Opening November 2: Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and Ata Pata Laapata

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: