Saturday, May 24, 2014

REVIEW 265: HEROPANTI

Release date:
May 23, 2014
Director:
Sabbir Khan
Cast:

Language:

Tiger Shroff, Kriti Sanon, Prakash Raj, Vikram Singh
Hindi

When was the last time you watched a film in which the heroine’s toughest competition in the looks department was the hero? Tiger Shroff can take off his shirt and display that ripped torso all he wants, but he can’t alter the fact that his over-muscled body is a complete mismatch with the smooth, almost hairless face and effeminate dancing. There’s also a mismatch with his partly Caucasian features when he lip synchs all-out-desi song lyrics like O gal na kar tu chhad ne di / Plan hai ghodi chadhne di / Paas mein aa zara hotth mila aur / Mere naal tu whistle baja”.

On debut, Tiger romances a girl, dances to choreographed moves, single-handedly bashes up groups of goons, has a catchline he repeats throughout and, like all aspiring Salman/Akshay clones, even has his shirt torn off by a bad guy towards the end of the film so that he gets to stay topless for an entire sequence. If acting is his strength he does not tap into it though, instead spending large parts of the film trying to look intensely in love by staring into the distance.

Therein lies the difference between him and his female co-star. Kriti Sanon made her big-screen debut earlier this year in the Telugu film 1: Nenokkadine opposite Mahesh Babu. In her first Bollywood role, in a film clearly designed as a showcase for Tiger, son of Jackie Shroff, she stands out all the same because she happens to be more than just a pretty face: her looks are complemented by a screen presence and the fact that she can act. 

Heropanti’s story is as half-baked as the means Tiger uses to attract attention to himself. A young Jat girl in Haryana (played by Sandeepa Dhar) runs away with her lover on her wedding day. Her father (Choudhary, played by Prakash Raj) rounds up all the boy’s friends, convinced that one of them would have aided and abetted the elopement. Among them is Bablu (Tiger) who has fallen for local girl Dimpy (Kriti), having been smitten by her on sight on a street one day. Don’t ask. That’s the way love still happens in many Hindi films.

Dimpy turns out to be the runaway bride’s younger sister, which means we already know Dad does not approve of lowwe marriages. There’s a lot of yelling and flying limbs through Choudhary’s enraged pursuit of his elder girl across cities. The noise can be excused. What is unforgivable are the mixed messages being sent out, including an oblique justification of a father’s violence towards a daughter who picks her own husband.

On the one hand Bablu fights hard to help the couple. On the other hand he says at one point in the same context, “Baap hamesha galat nahin hota hai (A father is not always wrong).” In one scene he tells Dimpy, “Women are kept like cattle in your family,” while exhorting her to assert herself, dream dreams and take her life into her own hands. Yet elsewhere he tells Choudhary, “I don’t want to take away your right (haq) to choose your daughter’s husband for her.” Yes he said “haq”! Seriously! This film is set in 2014! And decisions in this matter are all his and Choudhary’s, not hers. This is DDLJ’s populist philosophy revisited, except that it’s 10 times more regressive, dangerous and irresponsible, knowing what we know about honour killings. Writer Sanjeev Dutta and director Sabbir Khan seem anxious to tread a fine line between projecting themselves as progressive without antagonising conservatives in the audience.   

When some goondas are about to gangrape Dimpy, Bablu enters the scene and tells them: “Hindi mein nahin, English mein no. And no, means no.” At a time when the issue of consent in sexual relations is being hotly debated in India, this is an important point to emerge from a mainstream film. But consent is an extension of a woman’s autonomy over all aspects of her life, including decisions about marriage. Clearly Dutta and Khan are not committed to anything they are saying.

This is unsurprising considering that Khan debuted as a director with 2009’s Akshay Kumar-Kareena Kapoor-starrer Kambakkht Ishq in which casually and repeatedly referring to a woman as “bitch” was deemed acceptable for a man. This is not a director who respects women.

When a film transgresses in this fashion, nothing else seems worth commenting on, but a job’s a job so here goes… Senior southern Indian character actor Prakash Raj has so far been restricted to playing over-the-top serio-comic villains in Bollywood. This role and performance are a refreshing change. Equally interesting is Heropanti’s music. That lovely flute piece played by Jackie Shroff’s Jackie Dada and his father (Bharat Bhushan) in Hero in 1983 have been woven into the background score of this film and into the song Whistle baja for which Tiger even plays the flute on screen. Nice touch. Sajid-Wajid have composed a bunch of pleasant songs for Heropanti, with Tabah and Aa raat bhar standing out.

Whenever anyone asks Bablu if he’s about to do heropanti, he replies: “Kya kare. Doosron ko aati nahin aur meri jaati nahin.” Giving a hero one such punchline was a popular formula in Hindi films of the 1980s, the decade in which Tiger’s dad reigned in Bollywood along with Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol, while Amitabh Bachchan loomed in the background. Salman carries forward that tradition even into this decade of this century. Tiger has a decent voice. What he needs is the pizzazz to carry off such claptrap. He doesn’t have it, not yet. You see, pizzazz is not a quality easily found in factory-made, assembly-line products.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
152 minutes

Poster and trailers courtesy: Everymedia PR


REVIEW 264: X-MEN – DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (3D)

Release date:
May 23, 2014
Director:
Bryan Singer
Cast:




Language:
Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Evan Peters, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry
English



Here’s a sci-fi franchise taking its fan base for granted. Why bother with novelty and intensity when you know Wolverine and Mystique have just to turn up to drive audiences wild? X-Men: Days of Future Past brings us the older and younger versions of most of the characters that have inhabited the series from the start, in a story about time travel and altering the course of history. One murder committed by Mystique/Raven in 1973 set ‘normal’ humankind on a collision course with mutants, which has led to a present-day war that will destroy all the X people. Wolverine is sent back in time to stop her. Resting on a wafer-thin story are shootouts and human-mutant clashes throughout, but little that we’ve not already seen.

The strength of the earlier X-Men films was that the special effects complemented the characters’ emotional turmoil and moral quandaries. Here, it’s SFX all the way with little by way of human drama. Plus the premise is so puerile that a suspension of disbelief – so essential in fantasy films – becomes tough to achieve as a viewer. Changing one historical wrong won’t ensure world peace forever. I’m sure even Miss World contestants know that. Yet in the universe created by writers Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, time travel is given the most simplistic treatment and straightforward interpretation you can imagine.

Also, a majority of the heavyweight cast are given so little to do that frankly, they end up looking like over-qualified recruits. Hugh Jackman has his moments – just a few – when he relives 1970s America with barely disguised amusement. That he can bring a light touch even to the job of being the tragic Logan/Wolverine is a measure of his formidable talent. Jennifer Lawrence looks lovely and has a flawless figure, but brings little else to her expressionless rendition of Mystique who happens to be the central character of this film (even though those MCPs persist in calling it X-Men).

Halle Berry has even less to do here as Storm than she did in her over-hyped role right after her Oscar win, as the Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give her close competition for the least screen time in the film, though their characters are far more significant to the plot.

The best of the writing comes out in the early back-to-the-past interactions between Charles Xavier/Professor X (James McAvoy) and his one-time bête noir, the young Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) before he became Magneto. In the dilemmas of Xavier we get a glimpse of what has made some of the other X-Men films such a delight. Should he accept a loss of his mutant powers as a side effect of the serum that gives him use of his legs, or should he willingly adopt a wheelchair to hold on to that other strength? Now this is the stuff that good X-Men films are made of. There’s also some fun to be had noticing the uncanny similarity between actor Mark Camacho and US President Richard Nixon.

The stand-out character and performance in this film is Evan Peters Quicksilver, the mutant with the ability to move at unimaginable speeds. Peters lends an air of mischief plus an uneasy energy and restlessness to his character, even when he’s sitting still. For his efforts, he’s rewarded with the best, most entertaining, funniest, most well-executed scene in Days of Future Past, involving flying dishes and diverted bullets.

The top-of-the-line special effects in that scene are matched by another involving the White House. Honestly, that latter scene is SFX for the heck of SFX, if you think about the fact that Magneto’s reasoning for his behaviour at that point is somewhat indecipherable. Still, the thought of the US President’s home with an essential part lopped off and the entire complex encircled by an I-won’t-say-what is cause for some chuckles.

The rest of the special effects are of high quality, but lack imagination. In short, X-Men: Days of Future Past is rather flat. “Humanity has always feared that which is different,” says a character during the course of the film. Yeah yeah, we’ve heard it said in different ways in a ton of superhero films; if you don’t take that forward it’s just cliched, intellectually pretentious blah blah. Superficial writing, predictable background score, under-used actors and a downright silly ending … we deserve better than that.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):
U/A
Running time:
MPAA Rating (US):
122 minutes
PG (for sequences of intense sci-fi violence and action, some suggestive material, nudity and language)
Release date in the US:
May 23, 2014


Friday, May 23, 2014

REVIEW 263: KOCHADAIIYAAN THE LEGEND (3D PERFORMANCE CAPTURE)


Release date:
May 23, 2014
Director:
Soundarya Rajinikanth Ashwin
Cast:


Language:

Rajinikanth, Deepika Padukone, Nasser, Jackie Shroff, R. Sarathkumar, Shobhana
Released in multiple languages including Tamil, Telugu, Hindi. This is a review of the Hindi version.


Kochadaiiyaan is lazy. You can’t assume that a film will be effective merely because it crosses a new frontier in technology and stars an acting legend. That, unfortunately, is what debutant director Soundarya Rajinikanth Ashwin has done in her wannabe epic featuring a 3D animated version of her superstar father.  

The film’s problems begin with its weak, unimaginative writing by K.S. Ravikumar. His story is narrated to such confusing effect, that I need to pause a moment before recounting it here... Kochadaiiyaan is about Rana Rannvijay (Rajinikanth), the young army chief of the kingdom of Kottaipatinam, who avenges the killing of his father Kochadaiiyaan (also Rajini) at the hands of the king (Nasser). There is a back story about how Kochadaiiyaan had been compelled to leave his troops in the care of the rival King Mahendra (Jackie Shroff) of Kalingpuri; and an opening half about how Rana grew up and freed those enslaved soldiers by duping Mahendra. This rather unexciting tale could have been told in a linear fashion, but instead goes back and forth in time, possibly to build up an artificial air of mystery, complexity and depth.

Somewhere in between is a romance between Rana and Kottaipatinam’s Princess Vadhana (Deepika Padukone) on the one hand, while the prince and Rana’s sister too are in love with each other. Rana also has a brother (Rajini again). Frankly, the whole thing feels like an insipid potpourri drawn from many sources with not a single engaging character to its credit.

Much of this could have been forgiven if the performance capture had been top notch. Sadly, it’s not. As you know, performance capture is used to replicate the movements of live actors to create animated characters. James Cameron resorted to this technology to generate the Na’vi people of planet Pandora in his pathbreaking 2009 film Avatar. Steven Spielberg used it in 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn to bring alive the young Belgian detective, Captain Haddock, Thomson, Thompson and others exactly as they’d been visualised by the artist Herge in his comics series. Here in India, the first reported use of performance capture in a full-length feature was in the 2012 Tamil action thriller Maattran which required the technology to, in a sense, clone Suriya since he was playing conjoined twins. Kochadaiiyaan is the first Indian film to be entirely in 3D performance capture. Like Tintin, it’s fully animated.

The films I listed above all had specific reasons for turning to this technology. For instance, it would have been impossible to find live actors who look precisely like Herge’s drawings of the characters in his iconic comic books. Likewise, the Na’vi were figments of human imagination. Nothing in the story of Kochadaiiyaan particularly cries out for the use of performance capture though – unless you count the need to make Rajinikanth look decades younger than his real age, but then isn’t that something Rajini works towards in every one of his films these days? So why use performance capture when live actors would do just as well?

If the replication had been successful and visually enriching, it could have been argued that this still-evolving technology was used simply to push the envelope. That argument doesn’t hold since most of the characters in Kochadaiiyaan appear stiff, strained and far less attractive than their live avatars. The dialogue delivery is okay but the lip synching to songs is terrible.

This is not to say that Hollywood’s use of performance capture has been a smooth ride. The Adventures of Tintin, for instance, was a spectacular eye-full and Captain Haddock looked delightfully real but Tintin himself was rather flat. Soundarya’s film has hardly any redeeming factors though. Kochadaiiyaan himself does a nice taandav at one point and Rajini’s characters do mirror the actor’s trademark swagger to amusing effect, but all three are slow on their feet and left me longing for the real Superstar who can flip sunglasses and cigarettes, walk on walls and ceilings, and race atop trains. When Vadhana dances at one point, she looks so awkward that I found myself longing for the natural grace of the real live Deepika Padukone. So why use performance capture when live actors would have served the purpose better? 

Shobhana as the late Kochadaiiyaan’s wife and Jackie Shroff as King Mahendra are the only bright spots in this rather dreary picture. In fact, when Shobhana dances in the film (the camera angles are most flattering in this scene), I felt a different kind of longing; a longing to see her more often in substantial roles, of the kind that are rarely offered to gorgeous 40-plus women in Indian cinema.

On the other hand, when in one brief scene Vadhana is shown kissing Rana, I was glad that this was an animated film using the likenesses of Deepika and Rajinikanth. Imagine a live action film featuring a real smooch between the 28-year-old actress and her 63-year-old co-star! Erm…

This is a review of the Hindi Kochadaiiyaan with an introductory narration by Amitabh Bachchan. If the Tamil version – also released here in Delhi – had subtitles, I’d have preferred to watch that because even the worst Rajini film is worth watching in a hall filled with crazed Rajini fans cheering, repeating dialogues and serving up more entertainment than what’s on screen. No such luck with Hindi film buffs who’re not that into Rajini – two rows of them in an otherwise empty hall watched in cold silence with me. Kochadaiiyaan is a dull film. The direction is lackadaisical, the editing shoddy and abrupt in places. Even the usually reliable A.R. Rahman’s music is uninspiring. Besides, when the real Rajini is available, why on earth should I settle for three stodgy animated duplicates?

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):

U
Running time:
119 minutes 

Poster courtesy: Everymedia PR