Tag Archives: Shahrukh Khan

In Theaters December 30, 2011

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2011 comes to a close with Don 2 the only Hindi film showing in Chicago area theaters. The Shahrukh Khan caper opened last weekend with an amazing haul of $2,023,071 in just four days in U.S. theaters. It carries over in 3D and 2D at the AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. The Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles is carrying the 2D version only.

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

Opening December 23: Don 2

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Don returns, this time in 3D! The sequel to 2006’s Don: The Chase Begins Again — technically titled Don 2: The King is Back — reunites Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri and Boman Irani from the original cast. Director Farhan Akhtar returns as well.

Don 2 opens in both 2D and 3D on Friday, December 23, at the Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington (which has a couple of preview showings of the movie on Thursday night). The Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles is carrying Don 2 in 2D only.

For a complete list of U.S. theaters showing Don 2, click here (thanks to Gitesh at Box Office Guru for the link). The movie has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 25 min.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 over the Christmas holiday weekend include Rajanna (Telugu), Rajapattai (Tamil), Rajendra (Telugu) and Venicile Vyapari (Malayalam).

* – Because of family commitments, I won’t be able to see Don 2 until Tuesday at the earliest. If you’ve seen the film and would like to comment on it, please do so at the bottom of this post. I hope the movie lives up to its exciting trailer.

Movie Review: Ra.One (2011)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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After heavily promoting the most expensive movie in Indian cinematic history, the makers of Ra.One created high expectations for their film. Even if it’s not the instant classic it aspired to be, Ra.One is exactly what it should be: a fun action flick with some great special effects.

The film stars Shahrukh Khan as a nerdy programmer named Shekhar. He lives in London with his wife, Sonia (Kareena Kapoor), and their son, Prateek (Armaan Verma), a preteen fascinated by the dark side. In order to improve his image in his son’s eyes, goody-two-shoes Shekhar creates a video game in which the villain is all but indestructible.

The virtual villain, Ra.One — whose name is a play on Raavan, the demon in the Ramayana — is programmed with an artificial intelligence that takes umbrage at being beaten by young Prateek, who plays under the gamer handle “Lucifer.” Ra.One accesses a prototype technology created by Shekhar’s company that imbues holograms with physical substance, allowing Ra.One to materialize in the real world and hunt Lucifer.

When Prateek figures out what has happened, he realizes his only hope is to make the game’s hero, G.One (a play on the Hindi word for “life”), corporeal as well. G.One looks exactly like Shekhar, only buffer and cooler. Will G.One be able to protect Prateek from the world’s ultimate villain?

$40 million — a monstrous budget for a Hindi movie — pales next to the hundreds of millions spent on Hollywood action films. But director Anubhav Sinha uses his resources wisely and gets great results. A chase through the streets of London is heart-stopping, as is a thrilling showdown between Ra.One and G.One in a junkyard.

It’s only when Sinha relies too much on computer-generated images do the limits of the budget show. G.One fights a gang of thugs with a CGI soccer ball that looks phony and insubstantial.

3-D is deployed in a satisfying way throughout, adding depth to scenes rather than projecting images out into the audience. It enhances the movie’s pleasing aesthetic. An early dream sequence and the final battle are stunning, with a high-contrast style reminiscent of director Tarsem Singh.

The film’s dance numbers are well-executed and full of energy. Khan and Kapoor genuinely look like they enjoy dancing together; they have a nice rapport off the dance floor as well. Shahana Goswami and Tom Wu round out the likeable cast of heroes as Shekhar’s coworkers, Jenny and Akashi.

At times, the movie’s ultimate message — that one should always, as my mom says, “do good and avoid evil” — gets muddled. Prateek isn’t just a moody preteen; he’s also somewhat of a bully, making jokes at the expense of an overweight classmate. I’m not sure he’d be so quick join the good guys if his life weren’t in danger, and Verma’s bland performance didn’t convince me otherwise.

Prateek’s not the only one with a nasty streak. Jokes that depict gays as uncontrollable sex addicts and make fun of Akashi for being Chinese (everyone calls him “Jackie Chan”) are, if not mean-spirited, then ill-considered.

Based on the number of prints distributed internationally and the inclusion of American rapper Akon on the soundtrack, the makers of Ra.One clearly hoped to expand the reach of the film beyond India. By that metric, were they successfully in creating a globally appealing action film?

Almost. Ra.One is undoubtedly entertaining, visually appealing and easy to understand for viewers who must rely on subtitles. But, at 155 minutes, it’s just too long. It’s hard to sustain an appropriate level of tension for that much time, and Ra.One falters during a dull 25-minute-long section in the middle in which nothing much happens besides the newly corporeal G.One clumsily navigating his surroundings.

Eliminate that 25-minute interlude and some of the insider Indian movie references, and Ra.One becomes a taut, 2-hour thriller with universal appeal. In that format, there’s no reason why it — or future Indian event films — can’t compete with East Asian martial arts flicks for fans of action films made outside of Hollywood.

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Opening October 26: RA.One

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As far as Bollywood movies are concerned, there’s only one game in town this week: RA.One. Shahrukh Khan’s 3D superhero epic — the most expensive Indian movie yet, with a price tag of nearly US$40 million — opens in the Chicago area on October 26, 2011.

RA.One opens on Wednesday in both 2D and 3D at the AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. If you just can’t wait to see it, the South Barrington 30 is holding a midnight showing late Tuesday night.

The Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles doesn’t specify if it will carry the 3D version of RA.One, but it will be showing the film in its original Hindi, plus versions dubbed into Tamil and Telugu, all starting on Wednesday as well. The AMC Ford City 14 and AMC Loews 600 North Michigan 9 — both in Chicago — are carrying the 2D version of RA.One, which has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 36 min. Click here for a partial list of U.S. theaters showing RA.One, or check Now Running for showtimes by state.

If you’re not interested in RA.One, the Golf Glen 5 is also carrying, as of Wednesday, Velayutham (Tamil), 7aum Arivu (Tamil), and the latter’s Telugu-dubbed version, The 7th Sense.

In Theaters October 21, 2011

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Bollywood seems to be taking the weekend off in anticipation of the release of Shahrukh Khan’s massive 3D superhero epic Ra.One next Wednesday. Rascals is the only Hindi movie showing in Chicago area theaters the weekend beginning Friday, October 21. The comedy — which has earned $261,156 in U.S. theaters so far — carries over at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include the Telugu films Dookudu, Oosaravelli and Pillai Zamindar and the Malayalam movie Indian Rupee (though the Golf Glen 5’s print may be dubbed in English).

Movie Review: Always Kabhi Kabhi (2011)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Always Kabhi Kabhi (“Always Sometimes Sometimes”) is one of the rare Hindi movies that specifically targets a teenage audience. Perhaps that rarity has something to do with the fact that most teen movies are pretty much the same, and Always Kabhi Kabhi is no different.

The many similarities in teen movies have to do with the similarities in the lives of teenagers — particularly middle-class teens — across the globe. Academic pressures, tested friendships, budding romances and family friction are universal.

Those are precisely the problems afflicting the students at St. Mark’s High School, a private school in Delhi. Slacker Sam (Ali Fazal) has the hots for the pretty new girl, Aishwarya (Giselli Monteiro), who’s threatening to steal the spotlight from stubborn Nandy (Zoa Morani). This interpersonal drama plays out to the amusement of Sam’s best bud and Nandy’s nemesis, nerdy Tariq (Satyajeet Dubey).

St. Mark’s hosts a Shakespeare festival, and Sam and Aishwarya land the lead roles in Romeo and Juliet. The whole setup is very High School Musical, complete with several song-and-dance routines. (Producer Shahrukh Khan adds his star power to a number during the closing credits.)

The young lead actors are generally competent, though none stands out as Bollywood’s next big star. Monteiro moved to India from Brazil to play Harleen Kaur in 2009’s Love Aaj Kal, a role with minimal dialog. She gets a few more lines as Ash, but her acting lacks conviction. Perhaps language is still an obstacle for Monteiro.

For American audiences, Always Kabhi Kabhi has some novel cultural differences that could make it more interesting than other teen fare. At a dance club, Sam smokes his first joint. Almost as if the joint were alarmed, the cops immediately swarm the club, and Sam gets busted. The cops bribe him in order to keep the matter from his parents. If only American teens had such an option.

Also, Ash’s mother pushes her to shoot some modeling photos wearing — gasp! — a bikini. Ash looks as though her mother has just sold her in to prostitution. Her reaction is understandable within its cultural context and seems positively quaint compared to the antics of the kids on Jersey Shore.

Every once in a while, it’s refreshing to see a movie that is truly friendly for all audiences. The characters aren’t especially wild (or realistic, for that matter), but their harmlessness shouldn’t be held against them. Always Kabhi Kabhi isn’t profound, but nothing says it has to be.

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Movie Review: Chak De India (2007)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

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My niece isn’t old enough for movies with subtitles yet, but I want Chak De India to be the first foreign film she sees. It’s a touching parable about the virtues of tolerance, set within a familiar sports movie format. A second viewing on Netflix streaming confirmed that it’s just as good as I thought it was when I first saw it in the theater.

Shahrukh Khan stars as Kabir Khan, the former captain of India’s national men’s field hockey team. He left the sport in disgrace after missing a penalty shot that awarded victory to Pakistan, India’s archrival on and off the pitch. In a gesture of sportsmanship, Khan shook the hand of a Pakistani player, leading the media to accuse him of having thrown the match.

After seven years in exile, Khan returns to coach the Indian national women’s field hockey team, a team which exists only to fulfill federal gender equality requirements. No one else wants the job, but Khan sees it has his last chance to participate in the game he loves and prove his loyalty to his country.

The team comprises young women from most of India’s 28 states. All of the women are used to being the biggest fish in their comparatively small ponds, and none are willing to accept less than a starring role on the team. Before Khan can even contemplate getting the girls to the world championships, he must find a way to get them to work together.

First and foremost, Chak De India is a really well-executed sports movie. The first hour of the film follows the team through training, and the second covers the international tournament. In-game shots from the tournament are exciting and beautifully filmed, giving a sense of the speed and ferocity of the game. Shots from the training sessions give a sense of the physical demands placed on players, which is helpful for viewers unfamiliar with the sport.

What elevates Chak De India is its depiction of diversity. The actresses in the cast represent the wide array of Indian women: big and small, dark-skinned and light-skinned, urban and rural. Two team members from states bordering Myanmar (on India’s far-eastern border) are mistaken for Chinese or Nepalese and lament being treated like foreigners in their own country.

Chak De India also asserts the fundamental equality of women. The team not only has to fight to be taken seriously, but individual players have to fight for the right to play. Little Komal (Chitrashi Rawat) defies her father to join the team, and goalkeeper Vidya (Vidya  Malvade) joins against the wishes of her husband and his family. Goalscorer Preeti’s (Sagarika Ghatge) fiance, himself a captain on the men’s national cricket team, doesn’t see the irony in asking her to quit the team because “it’s just a game.”

Throughout, Khan encourages his players to focus their frustration with a society that considers them inferior to men into success on the pitch. He knows from experience that nothing is more satisfying than proving one’s detractors wrong.

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Retro Review: Dil Se (1998)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

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Over the years, several people have recommended Dil Se to me. Based on the DVD cover, I expected a good but fairly typical romantic drama. Boy, was I wrong. Dil Se takes the genre in unexpected directions, enhancing a well-told story with surreal dance numbers.

The couple on the DVD cover meet on a train platform on a cold night during a downpour. Amar (Shahrukh Khan) assumes that a figure huddled under a blanket is a man and asks him for a match to light his cigarette. A gust of wind blows the blanket away to reveal a lovely woman named Meghna (Manisha Koirala).

Amar flirts clumsily with the taciturn beauty, until she finally asks him to buy her a hot cup of tea. While he’s helping the sleepy tea vendor prepare the chai, a train pulls into the station. Amar arrives on the platform, cups of tea in hand, to see Meghna seated on the train with some rough-looking guys. She gives him one last look as the train pulls away.

They meet again a short time later in Northeast India, where Amar is covering the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence from Britain, for the national radio station. What should be a happy time is marred by ongoing clashes between the army and groups of separatists. Amar interviews the revolutionaries to better understand their goals.

When, in the course of his work, Amar comes across Meghna, she pretends not to recognize him at first, which only intensifies his pursuit. Amar’s pursuit is aggressive, almost as though he feels entitled to her. Still, she doesn’t reject him as forcefully as she has grounds to. She eventually tells him that she’s married. Amar’s attempt to apologize results in him being beaten up and left in a ditch by the men who were on the train with Meghna the first night they met.

Amar is understandably confused, as is the audience. Who is this girl? Is she interested in Amar, or not? Is she telling the truth? It’s no wonder why he finds her so alluring, despite the danger to his personal safety.

There’s an aura of danger surrounding Amar as he files his reports. He’s in essentially foreign territory; he doesn’t speak the language or understand the people. His bravado masks the fact that he’s out of his element, whether talking with terrorists or walking through the desert after his bus breaks down. The only thing he understands is how he feels for Meghna.

Enhancing that feeling of disorientation are the movie’s musical numbers, arguably the best part of the movie. It’s easy to incorporate a song-and-dance number by having the characters join in a parade that just happens to be passing by. It takes guts to make the romantic leads run from soldiers as the city explodes around them during a love song.

The numbers are symbolic rather than literal. This is the ideal way to include musical performances in a movie, as it provides a visual representation of a character’s mindset. It elevates the performances beyond mere devices for selling soundtrack CDs, especially since A. R. Rahman’s amazing songwriting sells itself.

I’m not qualified to say if the choreography in Dil Se is the best ever, but I’m confident that it is some of the most challenging and well-executed. Choreographer Farah Khan demands that actors throw themselves into her dances whole-heartedly. There is no way to half-ass her moves.

The most impressive dance number in the movie, “Chaiyya Chaiyya,” takes place on top of a moving train, traveling through tunnels and over bridges. It’s nearly seven minutes long. The dance is so technically stunning and the setting so precarious, thinking about the practicalities of its filming temporarily brought me out of the movie. Still, it’s so cool that it’s impossible not to enjoy it.

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Movie Review: My Name Is Khan (2010)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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The message of My Name Is Khan is a laudable one: good and bad people are identifiable by their actions, not by characteristics like race or religion. But a laudable message can’t excuse the fact that My Name Is Khan just doesn’t work.

MNIK‘s protagonist is Rizvan Khan (Shahrukh Khan), an Indian Muslim with Asperger syndrome. Asperger’s is an autism spectrum disorder usually characterized by physical awkwardness and trouble forming emotional connections with other people. As a child,  Rizvan’s special needs demand almost constant attention from his mother, alienating his younger brother, Zakir.

As an adult, Rizvan is forced to move to San Francisco to live with Zakir (Jimmy Shergill) after their mother dies. Zakir makes Rizvan work as a traveling cosmetics salesman, an odd assignment for a guy who doesn’t make eye contact and who’s frightened by loud noises and the color yellow. Rizvan is capable of navigating San Francisco, but he’s better at following instructions than he is at improvising.

Rizvan develops a crush on Mandira (Kajol), a divorced hairdresser with a young son named Sameer. Rizvan eventually wins over Mandira with his persistence, and they marry. They live happily for several years until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Tragedy strikes the family, and Mandira — a Hindu — tells Rizvan that she regrets marrying a Muslim man. She tells him to go away until he can convince the President of The United States that he’s not a terrorist just because his last name is Khan. Rizvan takes Mandira’s command literally and sets off to find the president.

For a number of reasons, MNIK just doesn’t work. American filmgoers won’t be able to ignore the things the movie gets wrong about America. While the non-Indian American actors in the movie are actually pretty good (most Hindi films hire terrible American actors), characters don’t speak in proper American colloquialisms. Phrases like “piss off” and “bloody Paki” are British insults, not American insults.

The movie shows footage of a turban-wearing Sikh man targeted by thugs who mistake him for an Arab, establishing correctly that many Americans can’t differentiate between people of Indian, Middle Eastern and northern African origin. But the movie later attributes a beating to the fact that the character’s last name is Khan, a Muslim surname. This defies the movie’s own conclusions about American worldliness. Most Americans don’t associate the name Khan with Islam; they associate it with Star Trek.

MNIK‘s weakest element is the romance between Rizvan and Mandira. The movie spends a long time establishing that Rizvan, despite certain competencies, isn’t able to live independently. He’s not able to be a full partner to Mandira, and she often treats him the same as she does her son. It’s hard to understand why she agreed to marry him.

But, given that they are married, it’s incomprehensible that Mandira would be so cruel as to send Rizvan on a fool’s errand by himself. That she doesn’t feel bad about it makes her heartless, and the excuses the film offers on her behalf don’t hold water.

The movie tries to explain how Rizvan is able to execute a cross-country trek that spans years, but I don’t buy it. The movie doesn’t make it clear exactly how long Rizvan’s journey takes, but it would be almost impossible for anyone to execute, let alone someone coping with Asperger’s.

My Name Is Khan is watchable, but it ultimately fails by overreaching. It might have worked as a story about a couple dealing with the challenges of one partner’s Asperger syndrome. It might have worked as a story about a man who wants to show America that not all Muslims are terrorists. But compressing both stories into one movie is an impossible task, even for superstars like SRK and Kajol.

*AMC theaters list the movie’s runtime as 2 hrs. 25 min. It’s closer to 2 hrs. 35 min., plus 10 minutes of previews. Also, the movie has an MPAA rating of PG-13, though there’s nothing in the film’s content to warrant a rating stronger than PG.

Opening February 12: My Name Is Khan

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The first major Bollywood release of 2010 is upon us. My Name Is Khan features Shahrukh Khan as Rizvan Khan, an Indian immigrant with Asperger syndrome living in San Fransisco. Kajol plays Rizvan’s love interest, Mandira. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 jeopardize their happiness, and Rizvan undertakes a cross-country journey to prove his love for Mandira.

I’m always interested in perspectives on 9/11 from filmmakers outside of the U.S., as in the 2009 Hindi films New York and Kurbaan. I’m a bit concerned about MNIK‘s surface similarities to Forrest Gump (a guy with social problems on a cross-country journey), a movie I wasn’t crazy about. But I have faith in SRK and Kajol to give spectacular performances that will win me over.

My Name Is Khan opens in the Chicago area on Friday, February 12 at the AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4 in Chicago, Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and AMC Cantera 30 in Warrenville. MNIK has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 25 min. Based on the amount of time the AMC theaters are allowing between showings (usually a reliable indicator), I suspect the movie’s actual runtime is longer than that.

The only other Hindi movie showing in the Chicago area this weekend is 3 Idiots, which continues for its eighth week at the South Barrington 30. The movie has earned $6,463,622 in U.S. theaters thus far.

Striker departs theaters after one week. I don’t have figures on how much it earned in U.S. theaters, but American YouTube viewers have rented the movie just 1,283 times since its worldwide release last Friday. I hope Striker gets more attention when it releases on DVD, because it’s terrific.

Other Indian films playing in the Chicago area this weekend include Body Guard (Malayalam), Kedi (Telugu) and Thamizh Padam (Tamil) at the Golf Glen 5. Kedi is also showing at Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove.