REVIEW 198: ANKUR ARORA MURDER CASE

Release date:	June 14, 2013
Director:	Suhail Tatari
Cast: Language:	Arjun Mathur, Kay Kay Menon, Vishakha Singh, Tisca Chopra, Sachin Khurana, Paoli Dam, Manish Chaudhari, Harsh Chhaya, Vishesh Tiwari Hindi

Arjun Mathur plays a medical intern in Ankur Arora Murder Case

Ankur Arora Murder Case is such an opportunity lost! Director Suhail Tatari’s take on a medical negligence case in an Indian hospital – produced and written by Vikram Bhatt – sets itself up well in the first half with a straightforward, brisk storytelling style. I admit it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept that a hospital’s seniormost doctor would be the one conducting a simple appendectomy with no foreseeable complications, but let’s grant the team this much as cinematic licence. Brevity is the hallmark of the film until that appendicitis patient Ankur Arora goes under Dr Asthana’s knife. Unlike most Hindi film doctors, these medicos actually look convincing on the job, handling instruments and rattling off medical jargon with a comfort level that’s obviously come to them from the workshops they reportedly attended in preparation for the film. In fact, I can pinpoint the precise moment when the film begins to fall apart: it’s that moment when Ankur is lying in a coma and a looooong song suddenly bursts out in the background while the camera languorously strolls through the hospital, around the little boy’s room where his unhappy mother sits by his bedside, into the homes of the two medical interns involved in the case, showing us close-ups of their faces, long shots of them standing or sitting around… in short, wasting time, slowing down the narrative and giving us a sign of things to come in the rest of the film.

It’s downhill from then on. What follows is contrived melodrama which was completely unnecessary since there is so much tension and emotion intrinsic to the story of a young medical intern taking on an arrogant, ruthless, influential doctor whose carelessness kills the only child of a single mother. This could and should have been that rare, efficient medical thriller that Bollywood does not make. Could have been but is not because Tatari and Bhatt keep most of their characters one-dimensional while throwing into the blend songs, needless plot twists and unnecessary asides (like that affair between the film’s two lawyers). By the time the climax comes around, boredom has set in, thus dampening the surprise it throws up. Besides, in contrast with the authenticity of the hospital proceedings, the film’s courtroom scenes look plastic and defy law & logic.

Maybe I’m spoilt because right now I’m simultaneously watching re-runs of that beautiful American legal drama The Practice on TV along with the hospital-based series Grey’s Anatomy which may occasionally overdose us with romance and sex among its doctors but has not once so far – I repeat, not once – faltered in the coverage of the medical cases it brings us. Maybe I’m spoilt because just recently the Arshad Warsi-starrer Jolly LLB showed us that Bollywood is capable of portraying real courtrooms with real characters that could actually exist off screen. Actually, you know what, it’s none of the above… The truth is that I’m angry and disappointed because Suhail Tatari made his directorial debut with a lovely (though poorly publicised) film called Summer 2007 starring Sikander Kher, Gul Panag, Yuvika Chaudhary and Arjan Bajwa. AAMC marks many qualitative steps down from that film which was about a group of carefree, city-bred medical interns getting unwittingly involved in a series of farmers’ suicides while on a rural posting. Summer 2007 spoke in a consistent voice from start to finish. AAMC, on the other hand, seems to have compromised on a potentially hard-hitting story in the interests of what old-fashioned film folk describe as “commercial” demands.

Sad, because the film’s young leads Arjun Mathur and Vishakha Singh deserve so much better than this. Mathur and Singh play lovers Romesh and Riya, medical interns on opposing sides in Ankur Arora’s case. The writing of Riya’s character is definitely more nuanced than Romesh’s – she struggles with her conscience, he seems to face no internal battles whatsoever when he decides to risk his career to fight Dr Asthana – but with all the limitations imposed on them, they actually manage to appear credible right till the end. So does Tisca Chopra as Ankur’s grieving mother. Vishesh Tiwari – who we’ve earlier seen in Chillar Party and Ek Thi Daayan – is convincing in a brief appearance as Ankur. The role of Mrs Arora’s lawyer though required a better actress than Paoli Dam (the Bengali actress who made her Bollywood debut with Hate Story in 2012).

For proof that even the best actors are limited by the material at hand though, you need to watch the usually wonderful Kay Kay Menon as Dr Asthana. He’s fine through most of the film but his “Yes I am god” bhaashan towards the end is an embarrassing piece of writing and direction that good acting fails to save. Menon will no doubt get many chances to redeem himself. This industry that is tough on actors is far tougher on directors. For the sake of good cinema one can only hope that Suhail Tatari gets back on his feet, brushes himself off and finds a great script in which he invests sincerity and conviction, to make a film that’s worthy of his talent. Ankur Arora Murder Case is not that film.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	129 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: Raindrop Media 

REVIEW 197: FUKREY

Release date:	June 14, 2013
Director:	Mrighdeep Singh Lamba
Cast: Language:	Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma, Manjot Singh, Ali Fazal, Priya Anand, Vishakha Singh, Richa Chadda, Pankaj Tripathi Hindi

Mrighdeep Singh Lamba’s Fukrey is so enjoyable that I feel bad to admit to the second part of my review: that the film needs just a little more depth, just a bit more flesh, that I wish I’d got to know the characters just that little bit more. It’s hard to shrug off the niggling feeling that there’s something missing in Fukrey, but it’s endearing and entertaining all the same.

The title of this film set in Delhi is a reference to its four good-for-nothing protagonists. Honey (pronounced Hunnny) and Chuchcha (believe it or not, that's his name!) are friends and habitual lottery-ticket buyers who’ve been flunking school together for years but have now found a way to beat the system and possibly finally make it to college. Laali – a correspondence course student of B.Com (Pass) first year and son of a dhaba-cum-sweet-shop owner – dreams of doing the second year of his course in the college where his sweetheart now studies and is drifting away from him. Zafar is an aspiring musician who’s gradually losing his spirit as he discovers how tough it is to break into the music industry. When the four get involved in a get-rich-quick scheme hatched by Hunnny and Chuchcha, one thing leads to another and everything spirals out of control. Before the situation is resolved, they get involved with the pimp-cum-drug-dealer Bholi Punjaban. They also end up dragging Hunnny’s new girlfriend Priya and Zafar’s fiancée Neetu into the mess. The situations they get themselves into are bizarre, partly because Fukrey is determined to entertain us with over-the-top irreverence; and partly because the boys are guileless, harmless creatures even though they’re layabouts.

The screenplay doesn’t satisfactorily flesh out the characters, but the situations are so true to life and hilarious, the dialogues so rooted in the soil of Delhi, that it’s impossible not to get drawn in. Half the battle was won for Fukrey by casting director Honey Trehan. TV actor Pulkit Samrat is perfect as the smooth-talking Hunnny and has shown remarkable versatility over a career spanning just two films (although I’ve seen his debut film Bittoo Boss, I had to re-watch the trailer thrice to be sure he’s the same guy). Bonus: he’s cute as a button. Manjot Singh hits the bull’s eye here too as he did in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Ali Fazal’s Zafar is the least well written of the four characters but he acquits himself reasonably well. The live wire of the lot is Varun Sharma playing Chuchcha. He’s been given fantastic lines that he delivers with impeccable timing. What an incredible performance!

Bringing up the rear are two very attractive and dependable actresses who we need to see more of in Bollywood: playing Hunnny’s Priya is Priya Anand who was Sridevi’s niece in English Vinglish; Neetu is Vishakha Singh who was Deepika Padukone’s fellow rebel in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey and also stars in this week’s other release, The Ankur Arora Murder Case. Pankaj Tripathi too is wonderful as the college-security-guard-cum-mini-power-centre-on-campus. If there is a marginal disappointment here it’s Richa Chadda’s Bholi Punjaban… Perhaps the build-up to the first appearance of her character in the film is too much. The writing of Bholi has a trying-too-hard-to-be-cool feel to it. The result: a character and a performance that don’t live up to expectations.

The nicest touches in this film come from its very naturally portrayed boy-girl relationships. Hunnny is a typical Delhi roadside Romeo – other Hindi film makers could learn a lesson or two from the writing here which delivers a true-to-life, raffish character without once offensively glorifying misbehaviour. Laali’s assumptions about his teacher’s feelings for him are also heart-stoppingly, ridiculously real. Thankfully, the girls are not shortchanged in terms of space or significance though the boys are the focus of Fukrey. It’s also nice that the film does not make a big deal of the fact that the quartet includes one Muslim and one Sikh. The camerawork too merits a mention, particularly one intriguing overhead shot of Hunnny and Chuchcha lazing about.

Lamba has evolved dramatically since his first film Teen Thay Bhai in 2011. The loudness and crudeness of that film have been thrown out of the window and what we have in Fukrey is genuine, gentle, intelligent humour. The music (Ram Sampath) and lyrics (multiple credits) beautifully complement the dialogue writers. When a voice in the background chants “no ladki, no hope… no ladki, no scope”, you feel the heat and dust of Delhi in the writers’ veins. Those veins throb with life when Chuchcha mistakes a guitar for a “vyolin” and Hunnny mentions a “Pomerian” dog, harking back to the utterly natural fashion in which Bittoo and Shruti conducted their “binness” in Band Baaja Baaraat. BBB had amazing depth, Fukrey unfortunately does not. But if you’re in the binness of not analysing your entertainment too much, Fukrey’s the way to go!

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	137 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/FukreyOfficial  
After watching Fukrey, check out the trailer of Pulkit Samrat’s first film Bittoo Boss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CCA3reNOOY

REVIEW 196: MAN OF STEEL (3D)

Release date:	June 14, 2013
Director:	Zack Snyder
Cast: Language:	Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Ayelet Zurer, Kevin Costner English

In the first half hour, Man of Steel seems dangerously poised to attract lazy, obvious jibes derived from its title… you know, such as “it’s cold as steel”. Everything at that point looks suitably grand and inter-planetary and inter-galactic and inter-whatever-you-wish, yet it feels distant and frigid. Then somewhere along the way, the film begins to throw around a few jibes of its own at the audience, and all at once the going gets good.

Directed by Zack Snyder (best known in India for 300), Man of Steel is co-produced by Christopher Nolan who also shares credit for the story with David S. Goyer. The film takes us to the origins of Superman on the planet Krypton and the circumstances that drove the baby Kal-El’s parents to send him to Earth where he grows up to be Clark Kent. The fulcrum of the film is the point made by Clark’s human foster parent when the boy finds that a child he saved from an accident using his superpowers is scared of him instead of simply being grateful. “People are scared of what they don’t understand,” Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) explains. With enough such lovely moments and many sub-texts (Potterheads, look out for the parallels between the final Horcrux and the home of Krypton’s Codex), it’s easier to forgive some of the silliness, the inexplicable sci-fi mumbo jumbo and loopholes. Where did Clark come from? The question is well answered. Why the heck must Superman wear a costume? No idea (though it doesn’t matter much since Henry Cavill looks h-h-hot in bodysuit, boots and cape).

That’s the upshot of this review: Man of Steel is fun and makes a lot of sense a lot of the time but is also dull and senseless some of the time; it’s good but well short of very good. Cavill doesn’t yet have the charisma of Christopher Reeve from the original celluloid series, but he’s so good-looking that I’m willing to wait for him to evolve through the new series that’s now bound to follow. The versatile Amy Adams as Superman’s girlfriend Lois Lane makes this role as believable as she did the part of a fairytale princess transported to New York in Enchanted. The rest of the cast comprises veterans with so many Oscar and Golden Globe awards and noms between them that there’s a lesson there for Indian film-goers who get upset whenever a major star takes on a supporting role. Russell Crowe as Kal/Clark’s Kryptonian father Jor-El has the dreariest of the four parental roles but manages to pull it off, partly redeeming himself for 2012’s monstrously boring Les Miserables. The pick of the supporting cast though is the lovely Diane Lane as Clark’s supportive earthly mother.  

This is where a grouse surfaces though. Why is this film so emphatically about father-to-son? The mothers in Man of Steel are loving, protective creatures but the legacy and wisdom that Clark carries forward comes from his dads. Except for one of the Kryptonian elders, every leader in this film is a man. A pity that Messrs Nolan and Goyer felt free to play around with Clark’s story from DC Comics but didn’t play down the patriarchy.

Though there were places where I longed for real meadows and mountains instead of CG scenery, for the most part the film’s special effects are awe-inspiring. There’s also enough action throughout to make it worth the effort of wearing 3D glasses. Man of Steel is a tad too long though – the final face-off between Superman and the Kryptonian General Zod took place after a point where I thought the film had ended. Sadly missing too are the humour and inventiveness of those memorable concept pieces from the series with Reeve… such as Superman putting out a fire by freezing a lake with his breath, flying over to the site of the fire with the body of ice and allowing it to melt over the blaze. Man of Steel has none of that.

What it has are plenty of underlying messages, some of which Barack Obama ought to read in his current you-can’t-have-100%-privacy mood justifying US surveillance of innocent private citizens worldwide; and others to other despots and xenophobes everywhere. In the end, for me at least, this film is about Zod saying to Clark: Every action of mine, however cruel, is for the good of my people… as if that justifies it all. It’s about an alien telling Superman, “The fact that you possess a sense of morality and we do not gives us an evolutionary advantage. And if history has shown us anything, it is that evolution always wins,” right before an annihilation Her Arrogance was too egoistic to foresee. It’s about interference in nature. It’s about realising you squandered a chance that nature gave you and bowing out when your time is up. It’s also about parents who refuse to fit their child into a role pre-determined by society. It’s a call against genocide. It’s about the present US discomfort with – and absurd definition of – outsiders (as relevant to India’s Sangh Parivar as to the white supremacist who shot Sikh worshippers in a Wisconsin gurudwara). At one point in Man of Steel, after he has saved Earth from an alien invasion with the knowledge of the US government, Superman finds himself still being monitored by the authorities. A US General explains: “How do I know one day you won’t act against America’s interests?” Comes the reply: “I grew up in Kansas, General. I’m about as American as it gets.” Man of Steel isn’t all that I hoped for, but it’s still a helluva lot.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	148 minutes (as per rottentomatoes.com) PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, action and destruction, and for some language)
Release date in the US:	June 14, 2013

Photograph courtesy: http://manofsteel.warnerbros.com/‎