Home Tags Posts tagged with "OTT Movie Review"
Tag:

OTT Movie Review

Cinemaah

The Archies – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Star Spangled Nostalgia:

It took a lot of jumping through cultural hoops to fit the very American Archies comics ethos into India. The comics about the antics of the pimpled redhead Archie Andrews and his mates at Riverdale High were very popular back in the day, though now it all seems very outdated.
In The Archies, her movie version (on Netflix), Zoya Akhtar has retained the retro look by setting it in the 1960s in Riverdale town populated by Anglo-Indians. So the costumes of that period can be retained, even if the Hindi-Urdu spoken by the Anglo-Indians sounds incongruous.
The comics did not have a plot as such, the characters were given quirks and a lot of the humour grew out of that, Jughead’s gluttony for instance, Moose’s “duh” stupidity, Veronica’s vanity, Reggie’s nastiness towards Archie. There was the running gag of the principal Mr Weatherbee’s grumbles about the school cook, Beazley’s awful cooking and the janitor Svenson’s wry comments. Many of the characters are to be found in the film, but without their recognizable traits.
Archie (Agastya Nanda) is torn between rich Veronica (Suhana Khan) and sweet Betty (Khushi Kapoor), but the young women are best friends and put the philandering Archie in his place. The sharp-tongued Reggie (Vedang Raina) is (godhelpus!) a kind and socially aware aspiring comic. And Dalton (Yuvraj Menda) is a closeted gay. Without his distinctive headgear and and compulsive face-stuffing, Jughead (Mihir Ahuja) loses his spark.
Since the backdrop is Anglo-Indian, the references are British as opposed to the Americanness of the original. Archie aspires to go to London unlike his patriotic father who stayed back after Independence and considers India his “mulk”.
To give a 141-minute a direction, the Riverdale gang needs a purpose, which is saving their town’s centre, Green Park, from developers—unfortunately a very hackneyed plot device. Veronica’s father Hiram Lodge (Alyy Khan) is the heartless businessman behind the scheme.
Overlook the lack of imagination here, because it is used in spades in the energetically choreographed dance numbers, that are utilized to make a point, rather than just punctuate the action, in the best tradition of the Hollywood musical. Akhtar has modernized the film in subtle ways– like having her young bunch sing “everything is political” and have the intelligence to push their agenda to save their town.
The three lead actors, nepo babies to use the current term, have been groomed and buffed to perfection, and launched in film that makes no great demands on their acting talent.  Also, since this film was made for Netflix, they did not even have to go through the box-office litmus test. How they fare in their next film will decide if they have what it takes.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Apurva – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Beware Of Girlpower:

This woman-on-rampage film seems to have been made to fulfill a year-end quota or something like that, because Apurva written and directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat (streaming on Disney+Hotstar), looks rushed and half-baked.
It starts with a scene of gratuitous violence, when a group of unwashed lowlifes attack a car, and kill the occupants– kicking one of them to death.  The most vicious is a juvenile, Chhota (Aaditya Gupta). The other three of the gang are the gruff Jugnu (Rajpal Yadav), nasty Sukha (Abhishek Banerjee) and nastier Balli (Sumit Gulati), all bandits for hire, who follow up on tips to loot vehicles on lonely roads.
Just because a bus driver does not give their car right of way, they rob the passengers, and kidnap Gwalior-resident Apurva (Tara Sutaria), who is on her way to surprise her Agra-based fiancé Siddharth (Dhairya Karwa) on his birthday. Their arranged-turned-love match is hurriedly introduced, but no other small details that might give some idea of who they are, or what makes them click, so in this very low rent version of NH10 (2015, Navdeep Singh), the lead pair remains uninteresting. Similarly, the villains are cardboard cut outs. The plot exists in a void, without any sense of place — it is supposed to be the Chambal valley, but instead of the ravines, most of the action takes place in what looks like a dig site– a maze of stone walls and red soil, that could be anywhere.
It is also observed that a film, supposedly “based on true events,” that purports to be opposed to violence against women has endless shots of Apurva being dragged, manhandled and slapped. When she falls unconscious, Sukha tells Chhota that he won’t enjoy raping her unless she screams. Then, in the most distasteful scene, the four literally have a pissing contest to determine who gets the first turn.
Inexplicably, an astrologer turns up in the desolate spot, with no houses or people for miles around. And he does not serve any purpose– Apurva escapes into the wilderness and faces the ordeal with great courage.  Siddharth lands up at some point, and tries, in vain,  to goad an apathetic cop into action.
The film’s relatively short running time is welcome, but it also means there is no build up of tension, or the unfolding of  Apurva’s emotions, from desperation turning to rage and then fearlessness. All of this simply portrayed by her running around or hiding, and, at some point, miraculously finding a sickle that just gives the film a dramatic poster image.
If at all, the film does anything, it is to offer Tara Sutaria a role that allows her to act, rather than just dress up and play pretty love interest to the leading man. With no other stand-out performance or impressive scene, Apurva just falls by the wayside, where other quickly made-quickly forgotten films end up.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Pippa – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

That Floating Tank:

This is, says the narrator of the film, “my love story with Pippa.”  It’s not a woman but a battle tank, the PT-76 that is the object of fascination for Balram Singh Mehta aka Balli. Pippa (on Amazon Prime Video), directed by Raja Krishna Menon, is based on a true story, inspired by the book titled The Burning Chaffees by Brigadier Mehta, who is played in the film by Ishaan Khattar.

Balli’s father was a military man, as is his staid brother Ram (Priyanshu Painyuli) and he joined the family tradition without giving it much thought. He is a happy-go-lucky bloke, who has trouble with discipline and authority, and this trait is anathema to the army. Right at the start, he disobeys orders when the testing of the Russian-made PT-76 tank is on, and is put on desk duty. This is soon after he has flirted and danced with a Russian interpreter (who does not make another appearance in the film) and it’s a surprise to learn that the tepid music is by AR Rahman.

Balli annoys his sister Radha (Mrunal Thakur) by being rude to her fiancé, and quarrels with his brother who rebukes him for his lax attitude.Their mother (Soni Razdan) ends up trying to keep the peace. When the trouble starts brewing between West and East Pakistan, Ram is sent to the front. Radha, who is good with code-breaking is recruited at the secret Communications and Analysis Wing, and eventually Balli proves his worth by modifying the Pippa Tank and being sent back to active duty.

It is not clear how and why Balli learns all about the tank and starts to “love” it, but when India intercedes to stop the genocide in East Pakistan, he and his beloved Pippa play a crucial role. Again, it is not explained why the non-Bengali speaking Ram is sent undercover to meet with the revolutionary Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan, where he is easily identified as an outsider and taken prisoner by the Pakistani army.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (Flora David Jacob) and Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw (Kamal Sadanah) decide to provoke Pakistani General Yahya Khan, and before the actual 13-day was between the two countries takes place, there is a pitched tank battle in Garibpur, which Balli ends up leading when the Chief of 45 Cavalry is killed.

There is talk of the US 7th Fleet heading towards India’s east coast, but there is no dramatic build up there. The battle scenes are mostly Balli shouting “Left Fire”, “Right Fire,” “Traverse Fire” and a Pakistani tank going up in flames!

The significance of the Garibpur Battle is mentioned before the end credits, but while it is on, there is very little tension built up. The relationship between members of the unit is also very cursorily dealt with. Indian involvement in the East Pakistani freedom struggle and the formation of Bangladesh has been the subject of many recent films and web series. Pippa picked a very interesting chapter of history, but a feature film requires much more—character development, emotional grip and a much better delineation of the circumstances that led to this War. The Bangladeshis, except for a few Mukti Bahini fighters, look particularly inert.

The crossing of the River Kabodak, by a fleet of amphibious Pippas (named thus for the Punjabi word for a ghee tin that floats in the water) is a thrilling sequence, but the rest is probably curtailed by budget restrictions. The same director’s Airlift, backed by Akshay Kumar’s star power and generous funding, made for an epic rescue drama. Pippa is on OTT, so worth a watch, but it does not live up to the potential of the story.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Khufiya – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Whacking Moles:

It’s good to note that the genre of the espionage thriller is catching on with OTT platforms, even though most of the stories belong to the past. Are spies hibernating now, when the world is more fractured than ever? Indian spy stories have not yet reached the finesse of the books by John Le Carre, Daniel Silva and Mick Herron, but then they have a wider canvas to work with. We are still stuck with Pakistan!

Vishal Bhardwaj’s Khufiya, based on the book Escape To Nowhere, by Amar Bhushan former RAW insider, who wrote a true account of a hunt for a mole in the department, is about the hard-working staff of the intelligence agency, who often have to sacrifice their personal lives because of their risky and never-ending work.

One such agent with the counter espionage unit is Krishna Mehra (Tabu), always grim and alert, she takes on the mission of exposing the traitor who caused the death of her asset and lover, Heena (Azmeri Haque Badhon), in Dhaka.  Her marriage to an understanding man (Atul Kulkarni) has cracked under the pressure of her unpredictable  schedules and her son resents this, especially since he is not aware of  what his mother does. Her ex husband knows that if she gives up her job she will die, and supports her

The mole passing defence secrets to the CIA is Ravi (Ali Fazal), and it is shocking for the RAW agents, like Krishna’s immediate superior Jeev (Ashish Vidyarthi) to realise that their on ground work that requires back-breaking surveillance and subterfuge, is often undermined by the deal-making at top levels of power. An asset of two being sacrificed does not bother the politicians.

A grieving and angry Krishna keeps an eye on Ravi and his family, but is also humane enough to jeopardize the mission when Ravi’s wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi) has a fall in the house they have bugged, and needs to be taken to hospital.  Ravi and his former spy mother Lalita (Navnindra Behl) are extracted to the US just before being arrested, leaving Charu dying in their home, shot by the mother-in-law.

The excitement built up so far, with chases, close shaves and surveillance footage, is dissipated from here on, as Charu recovers and goes to hunt for her husband and son in an obscure US town, following the trail of Yaaraji (Raghu Ram) a singer-godman her mother-in-law worships. Lalita overrules Ravi’s objections to bringing Charu home, because she is tired of doing the housework and could do with a free maid.

Krishna and her team want to entrap Ravi, but also reach Bangladeshi Brigadier Mirza (Shataf Figar) because of his involvement with Pakistan’s ISI and the attempt to rig elections in his country.  The tension drops as Charu tries to collect intel for Charu by ingratiating herself before Ravi and her mother-in-law. The CIA more or less ignore Ravi after getting him into the US. All the back and forth leads to a very insipid climax that starts at the dining table in Ravi’s home with Mirza and the CIA handler (Alexx O’ Nell) as guests.

More than the expert and ruthless spy games, the dead drops, betrayals and complicated plots, what is more interesting about Khufiya is the empathy that develops between Krishna and Charu. The happy housewife, captured by surveillance cameras dancing to Bollywood songs in her Delhi home, is now a trained asset planting bugs in the US home to nab Ravi. Even the otherwise granite-faced Krishna softens enough to go out of her way to protect Charu’s cover.

Bhardwaj gets fine performances from both the actresses; Ali Fazal looks uncomfortable and no other actor gets too much screen time. Khufiya is worth a watch, though not as slick an espionage flick as others on streaming platforms.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Tumse Na Ho Payega – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Rise Of The Loser:

Mainstream Hindi cinema may be slow to catch on to the complexities of a rapidly changing Indian society, but does understand easy slogans like ‘Follow Your Dreams’ or ‘Get Out Of The Rat Race.’  Self help and inspirational books are current best sellers, so somebody must have picked up Varun Agarwal’s Chetan Bhagat-ish novel, How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded a Million Dollar Company and thought it would make a perfect film for Gen Z, that understands the gig economy, social media marketing, apps and the power of the smartphone.

So, after Nandita Das’s sombre Zwigato, comes the cheery Tumse Na Ho Payega, in which a soulless corporate lifestyle is contrasted with the joys of being your own boss, directed by debut-making Abhishek Sinha, from a script by Nitesh Tiwari and Nikhil Mehrotra.

Using the lazy narrative device of voiceovers and directly addressing the audience, the sad story of Gaurav (Ishwak Singh) is revealed — he is disgruntled because of his dead-end job, though to many, the decent salary and a partying lifestyle would be living the dream!

His bigger problem is Anu Aunty (Meghna Malik), whose over achieving son Arjun (Karan Jotwani) is zooming up the ladder, and her boasts to Gaurav’s mother (Amala Akkineni), are meant to denigrate Gaurav as an unambitious loser. Arjun has also got by his side, Devika (Mahima Makwana), whom Gaurav has crushed on since school. His coping mechanism is venting to his two friends Mal (Gaurav Pandey) and Vaghela (Gurpreet Salini) at the bar or the chai tapri.

An ill-timed remark, overheard by his boss, gets him fired; grumbling from his buddy about bad canteen food gives Gaurav the idea of supplying home-made tiffins to “bhukkad bachelors” working in Mumbai’s corporate hubs. Pre-pandemic this would have been a great start-up plan, but now that anyone who can hold a ladle is a home chef, it’s a saturated market surely, and this plot is late to the party?

As if going into any detail would bore an attention-deficit target audience for the film, Sinha races through the predictable struggle-success-conflict-loss-recovery graph this kind of story would draw, because where else could it go? The greedy, profit-grubbing investor (Parmeet Sethi) is the villain, the cooking moms (the food shots are delectable) are the angels, and Gaurav and Gang are given a lesson in sidestepping the mirage of too much too soon. When a tech nerd Gaurav has hired to do the coding for his Maa’s Magic app quotes his own lines about boredom to him, Gaurav knows a reset is in order, but getting back is tougher than starting—on the bottom rung, even the friendly chaiwala (Omkar Das Manikpuri) offers free tea and seed money.

The mix of a few chuckles and more sermons on How Not to be an Arjun is saved by the energy of its young cast—though Ishwak Singh has done better in past projects– and its relatively short runtime. The character of Devika, who has a very ‘today’ job of a social media manager for celebs is interesting, because she is as aggressive as the guys, and even treats a relationship with an upwardly mobile guy as a goal to be checked on the achievements’ list. And of course, to that chilled out chaiwala, who already knows what they teach you at Harvard (of course that name has to be dropped) Business School, full  respect!

(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Bawaal – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Couple Wars:

The idea is as audacious as it is preposterous, which is what makes Bawaal worth a look. The promo had intrigued viewers– what is the World War II connection with a family drama?

Nitesh Tiwari working with a story by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, equates a man’s coming of age with lessons learnt (or maybe not) from history.  Ajay (Varun Dhawan), popularly known as Ajju Bhaiyya is a history teacher in a Lucknow school, popular not for his teaching (abysmal), but for the flamboyant image he has created for himself. He may not know much about the Nazi era, but he has inadvertently absorbed the Goebbelian dictum about a lie repeated often enough becoming the truth. So, all the self-aggrandizing yarns he has told about himself have made him a hero in his mohalla. Only his parents (Manoj Pahwa-Anjuman Saxena) know what a good-for-nothing wastrel he really is.

To enhance is image further, he marries the rich and pretty Nisha (Jahnvi Kapoor), but she has a health condition, which makes him treat her with deplorable indifference. There is no reason for Nisha to put up with his mistreatment, but the hope that he will change. Or perhaps she believes herself to be “defected goods” as he calls her.

In danger of being suspended for slapping a legislator’s son, Ajay comes up with the crazy idea of going on a WW-II pilgrimage and showing students, via video, what happened back then. He actually spends about five years’ worth of his salary to save a job! And because there was a big budget available to make the film, the history portion is WW-ll, which takes the estranged couple to Europe, instead of, say, the Partition Museum in Punjab, for some national history.

Ignorant and out of his depth away from his usual playing ground, Ajay has to depend on the well-travelled and better educated Nisha for everything from information to food.  His learning to appreciate her is understandable; her not rejecting him for the selfish boor that he is, remains puzzling. The film, at its core, is traditional, believing it to be the woman’s duty to reform the man, at the cost of her own self respect.

The WW-ll tourism takes Ajay and Nisha to Paris, Normandy, Amsterdam, Berlin and Poland, and Tiwari recreates in black-and-white some scenes from that era, though the information he imparts to his eager students back home could have been managed by screening a few well-made Hollywood movies. And what he learns about decency and responsibility, from any ‘sanskari‘ Bollywood social film.

A weird concept without the added attraction of memorable music, Bawaal has to depend on the two stars on whom the entire film is focussed, and they do their bit adequately– if they lack chemistry, it works for this plot. Luckily for them the film is released on OTT (Amazon Prime), so viewers will be more accepting of such an experiment than they might have been in a moviehall.

(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Trial Period – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Dad On Rent:

Some of the most macho leading men of Hollywood have done a film in which they had to cope with kids; the idea was comic; little tykes felling a muscular hero with their cuteness. Also, maybe a bit outdated, since urban men are now routinely expected to share parenting duties. Aleya Sen’s Trial Period, trying to blend romcom with daddy issues, is not funny or dramatic enough, and the romance remains tepid at best.

Ana (Genelia Deshmukh) is a divorcee and working woman (though what she does is unclear) with a kid, Romi (Zidane Braz), who gets by without any childminding—the only support system being the older couple next door (Shakti Kapoor-Sheeba Chaddha), in the Delhi colony. However, because he is fatherless, he gets bullied at school and is unable to make friends. Though he is old enough to know better, influenced by the neighbour’s penchant for watching a teleshopping TV show, Romi demands a dad for a month-long trial period. And, instead of talking sense into him, Ana seriously considers it—meeting a large number of weirdos in the process.

Meanwhile, Prajapati Dwivedi or ‘PD’ (Manav Kaul), lands up from Indore at the employment agency of his uncle (Gajraj Rao), hoping to get a teaching job in Delhi. To solve his lodging problem temporarily, the uncle sends him to take up the rent-a-dad position for a month. Ana approves of him, and lets him stay in the bungalow’s barsati, in return for looking after Romi. It looks like she actually needs a housekeeper and babysitter, because how many Indian dads stay at home, cook, pack their kids’ tiffins? Ana wants him to botch the job, so that Romi gets over his father fixation, but PD is a natural-born papa.

Romi mistakenly believes that dads are supposed to be superheroes, and initially finds PD boring, but the man’s a marvel— apart from cooking, he know yoga, music, astronomy, wrestling, swimming and a whole lot of other skills that dads supposedly have;  he is also capable of transforming from village bumpkin to suave suited dude in a jiffy. He wins over Romi easily, Ana is a tougher nut to crack.The arrangement raises no eyebrows, because in the Delhi colony, Ana knows just one neigbouring couple and has no domestic help or visiting handyman. But it does not need much thought to predict which way the story will go.

If Trial Period (on JioCinema) was not such a slight piece of filmmaking, it would have some problematic messaging. A huge number of households today are run by single women, but the film seems to suggest that women are inadequate at parenting on their own. Ana, who does not date or go out, presumably because of the kid, does not even notice signs of bruising on his body, or wonder why he is unhappy and insisting on a father.  Also, in today’s world, which sensible mother would leave her child in the care of a male stranger?

Genelia Deshmukh and Manav Kaul belong to different schools of performance, so while she goes into full Bollywood overacting mode, he takes the role much too seriously. At least the child knows that ‘dimpled moppet’ is expected of him, and delivers. Trial Period is a letdown mainly because it does not utilize the opposites attract potential for comedy, nor does it look at the urban nuclear family and changing parenting roles with fresh eyes. PD just seems to be mansplaining all the time, like those irritating men in ads smugly telling women which detergent or cooking oil to use.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Tiku Weds Sheru – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Damp Squib:

There are bad films and there are boring films and then there’s a Tiku Weds Sheru (on Amazon Prime), the kind that leads to a rise in the sale of aspirin and anti-depressants for those who dared to sit through it –reviewers and insomniacs probably, others have control over the remote).

Kangana Ranaut has appointed herself as arbiter of what’s wrong with Bollywood  how did she end up producing this mess? Was it vanity or nostalgia for her own Tanu Weds Manu movies?  The leading lady of this film, written and directed by Sai Kabir  (responsible for the Kangana dud Revolver Rani), does fall into the Tanu pool of nutcases, but without the somewhat appealing zaniness that small-town rebel managed to convey.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui needs a long, hard look at his recent movie picks and realise he is wasting his talent trying to play romcom heroes. Plus, pink suits are not his style– leave those for Ranveer Singh. He is Shiraz aka Sheru, a movie junior artiste and pimp, who, for some unfathomable reason receives a proposal from the family of young Tasneem aka Tiku (Avneet Kaur) from Bhopal. He falls in love with her photo!

Sheru pretends to be of royal descent, gets the bride and a fat dowry, that helps pay off his debts. Her family are so eager to get rid of her, they don’t bother to check on him. TIku agrees to marry him just to escape her family and go to Mumbai, where a boyfriend (Rahoul) has promised to make her a “superstar.”   A sister (Khushi Bhardwaj) is sent along to keep an eye on Tiku.

Sheru is quick to present a fictitious account of his grand life, though he lives in one room of a dilapidated chawl. The boyfriend, of course, vanishes when Tiku reveals her pregnancy. Sheru is willing to accept the child, and Tiku finds herself warming to the man.

There was scope for funny or tender love story between two people who marry for the wrong reasons, are dragged through hell, and find true love in the end. But strange characters flit through the film, gangsters and politicians, who have no business to be there; the seedy casting agents, procurers and shady producers, do belong to that sordid B-movie milieu (judging by the films being shot), but are portrayed very superficially.

The film is just a collection of cringe-y scenes. In one, Sheru gifts Tiku an “Italian” dress, and she parades around the city, quite comfortable in tiny, low-cut lap dancer bling, and nobody even turns to look at that ghastly apparition. The absolute nadir is Sheru in drag.

There is no redeeming feature in Tiku Weds Sheru, and that is also rare. Even the worst movies have a song, a scene, or a performance that makes all the effort of that went into the film worthwhile. This one should have been scrapped at script stage, if there was such thing on the table.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Kandahar – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

Desert Storms:

For Indian viewers Kandahar would evoke memories of the terrible airplane hijack episode in which passengers were held hostage for a week to get terrorists released. For an American film, shot in Saudi Arabia passing off as Afghanistan, it just lends a dash of the exotic.
Ric Roman Waugh’s Kandahar (on Amazon Prime) stars Gerard Butler, as the scruffy, glum action hero for what seems like the hundredth time, who goes undercover in Iran to blow up a nuclear facility. The arrogance of the Americans is such that they can cause death and destruction anywhere in the world; because to them bearded brown Muslim men with guns are not even human
After exiting from Afghanistan, leaving it in a Taliban-controlled mess, the Americans– read CIA– still carry out covert operations there. When Tom (Butler) is on his way home, picking duty-free shop gifts for his daughter, he is pulled in by his handler Roman (Travis Fimmel) to do one more job in Herat, Afghanistan, for loads of cash.
Tom’s cover is blown, however, and he has to escape with his translator Mohammad Doud (Navid Negahban), to make his way across the desert to the extraction point in Kandahar. The Iranians want to capture him for obvious reasons, but there is a Pakistani ISI agent Kahil Nasir (Ali Fazal) zipping around on motorbike, hoping to catch and sell Tom to the highest bidder.  As a character says, present-day Afghanistan is teeming with spies, like Cold War era Berlin. Incidentally, Kahil gets to take off his helmet and glare into the middle distance several times, like a macho model for leather jackets, aftershave or cigarettes. Good to see an Indian actor in a major role. The film also casts other Irani or Arab actors in an admirable show of inclusivity. Not much for women to do here, though  Nina Touissant-White gets a couple of scenes as an investigative journalist stationed in Iran.
The 400 miles from Herat to Kandahar is fraught with danger and a lot of briskly shot action sequences are laid out every few miles.  However, like the progressive dialogue-spouting Kahil, who is sick of the desert, the film has one ambush too many, with jeep convoys kicking up clouds of sand.
Overlook the jingoism and the white male superiority that dictates that the brown man will have to change a punctured tyre,  Kandahar is a slick actioner in which the hero is shot at, bombed and beaten, but comes out none the worse for the wear. Quite like Gerald Butler’s Hollywood career.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Cinemaah

Bloody Daddy – OTT Movie Review

by Deepa Gahlot
written by Deepa Gahlot

One Night Of Mayhem:

This seems to be one of those films that got made just because a star was available and so a decent budget could be drummed up—not too high, because most of it is shot at one location. No time to write a script, most of the American and Korean films are taken, so, hey, here’s this 2011 French film that will work.  How to update? Throw in Covid references. Genius!  So Ali Abbas Zafar’s Bloody Daddy is a remake of  Frederic Jardin’s Sleepless Night, which the Tamil industry reached first and made Thoongaa Vanam in 2015, but who’d remember?

It’s the tail end of the pandemic, so Delhi streets are plausibly empty when two guys race a car, ram into it, and lift a bag containing 50 crores worth of cocaine. During the shooting melee, the mask of one of them drops and his face is revealed. Sumair (Shahid Kapoor) is a narcotics cop, who worked this heist with his cohort, Jaggi (Zeishan Quadri); before he can figure out how to proceed, he has to first deal with sulky son Atharv (Sartaaj Kakkar), who is supposed to be spending quality time with him, and is given an earful by his ex-wife for being an irresponsible father. Then, the kid is kidnapped by Sikander (Ronit Roy), the furious owner of the bag, as well as a seven-star hotel in Gurugram.

Sumair must return the bag and rescue his son, so the action shifts to the blindingly garish hotel, which is in the midst of a big, fat wedding, with the nonstop chaos and noise it entails. Of course, the bag goes missing, two other cops Sameer (Rajeev Khandewal) and Aditi (Diana Penty) are sniffing around looking for the drugs and for the elusive Sumair. Sikander’s buyer (Sanjay Kapoor) is sitting in his suite, getting impatient. And a straightforward transaction turns into a maze of deception, murder and chases through the crowds, the kitchen and the labyrinthine corridors of the hotel.

What could have been a dreary progression to a foregone end, is saved by the humour of Sameer’s street-smart jugaad at every step.  The way he co-opts the help of two Nepali cooks and an eager to please newbie bartender, is funny.  Strange, though, that in a seven-star hotel, security is conspicuous by its absence and they haven’t heard of lactose-free milk that their victim demands.

Despite his desperation and love for the brat which he struggles to demonstrate, Sameer is not a likeable or sympathetic character. In a burst of Kabir Singh-like petulance, he kicks over the banquet of the newly-weds, for no reason. Sikander and his henchmen do not seem menacing enough for the viewer to believe that Atharv is in any real danger.  What Zafar does capture well, is the vulgarity of the Delhi nouveau riche and the frenzied live-it-up attitude of people getting out of post-pandemic claustrophobia. With tongue firmly in cheek, a brutal shootout is orchestrated as Badshah prances on stage singing Survive.

The performances are serviceable, Shahid Kapoor (too stylish and distinctive a hair style for a Delhi cop!) keeps up the tension on his face; Rohit Roy gets the hang of his character of a jumped up thug, who cannot quite believe the opulence of the surroundings he created, and does not like the idea of anyone getting the better of him, not the cop, not the other gangster.

With its slick cinematography (Marcin Laskawiec) and breathless pace, Bloody Daddy is not really made for OTT, but that’s where it ends up, on Jio Cinema.

(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Newer Posts
Older Posts