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Anupama Chopra's review: Blood Money
Direction: Vishal Mahadkar
Actors: Kunal Khemu, Amrita Puri
Rating: **
At one point in Blood Money, the nasty boss of a diamond company gifts his protégé, Kunal, an expansive new office and a buxom secretary, with the instruction: Cabin aur Pauline, dono ka maza lo. It was my favourite of many unintentionally hilarious moments in the film.
Blood Money, like a few other Vishesh films (the Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt banner) before it, notably the match-fixing saga Jannat, is a morality tale about the dangers of conspicuous consumption. Kunal, played by Kunal Khemu, is a middle-class MBA student who gets a job at the Trinity Diamond Company in Cape Town. We are told that it's the first time he's been on an airplane.
The company boss and his brother don't have much time to chat with him, but the newbie is given a furnished mansion to live in and cash to spend. Cut to: shopping, sightseeing and snazzy new car. Only his wife, Arzoo, played by Amrita Puri, wonders why the house reminds her of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, in which the nice old woman turns out to be a witch.
'Witch' is an understatement for Kunal's boss, 'Zaveri Sir', played by Manish Chaudhari, who is involved in all sorts of nefarious activities and is introduced to us as he drills a hole into his executive's leg. This is the first scene of the film, so I'm not spoiling any mystery here. After Kunal clinches a big deal, Zaveri Sir takes him under his wing, which means a life of pool parties, private planes and a tryst on the conference room table with a sexy co-worker. Of course, Kunal soon finds out that he has made a deal with the devil or, as he so originally puts it at interval point, "I sold my soul."
This standard issue plot worked far better in Jannat because the protagonist was edgier and the backdrop of match-fixing more intriguing. The world of blood diamonds, as created by debutant director Vishal S Mahadkar here, is largely comic-book. The screenplay is bogged down by songs and the couple's love story, which of course takes a beating once Kunal starts to party with the boss. Kunal Khemu works hard to make his character's dangerous dilemma real but the situations he is put in are ludicrous. In the climax, he sprints through Cape Town with a profusely bleeding stab wound and beats up some burly men for good measure. Funnier still are the villains. Zaveri Sir wears long coats, chomps on cigars and likes to say "superb" with a cruel curl of his lips, while his brother, played by Sandip Sikand, looks comically angry the whole time. Zaveri Sir is also fond of pronouncements such as "Imaandari aadmi ko mahal mein nahin, footpath pe le jaati hai."
Blood Money finds some traction in the climax but it's too little, too late. By then, you are disengaged and debating dinner choices.
Anupama Chopra's review: Chaurahen
Actors: Kunal Khemu, Amrita Puri
Rating: **
At one point in Blood Money, the nasty boss of a diamond company gifts his protégé, Kunal, an expansive new office and a buxom secretary, with the instruction: Cabin aur Pauline, dono ka maza lo. It was my favourite of many unintentionally hilarious moments in the film.
Blood Money, like a few other Vishesh films (the Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt banner) before it, notably the match-fixing saga Jannat, is a morality tale about the dangers of conspicuous consumption. Kunal, played by Kunal Khemu, is a middle-class MBA student who gets a job at the Trinity Diamond Company in Cape Town. We are told that it's the first time he's been on an airplane.
The company boss and his brother don't have much time to chat with him, but the newbie is given a furnished mansion to live in and cash to spend. Cut to: shopping, sightseeing and snazzy new car. Only his wife, Arzoo, played by Amrita Puri, wonders why the house reminds her of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, in which the nice old woman turns out to be a witch.
'Witch' is an understatement for Kunal's boss, 'Zaveri Sir', played by Manish Chaudhari, who is involved in all sorts of nefarious activities and is introduced to us as he drills a hole into his executive's leg. This is the first scene of the film, so I'm not spoiling any mystery here. After Kunal clinches a big deal, Zaveri Sir takes him under his wing, which means a life of pool parties, private planes and a tryst on the conference room table with a sexy co-worker. Of course, Kunal soon finds out that he has made a deal with the devil or, as he so originally puts it at interval point, "I sold my soul."
This standard issue plot worked far better in Jannat because the protagonist was edgier and the backdrop of match-fixing more intriguing. The world of blood diamonds, as created by debutant director Vishal S Mahadkar here, is largely comic-book. The screenplay is bogged down by songs and the couple's love story, which of course takes a beating once Kunal starts to party with the boss. Kunal Khemu works hard to make his character's dangerous dilemma real but the situations he is put in are ludicrous. In the climax, he sprints through Cape Town with a profusely bleeding stab wound and beats up some burly men for good measure. Funnier still are the villains. Zaveri Sir wears long coats, chomps on cigars and likes to say "superb" with a cruel curl of his lips, while his brother, played by Sandip Sikand, looks comically angry the whole time. Zaveri Sir is also fond of pronouncements such as "Imaandari aadmi ko mahal mein nahin, footpath pe le jaati hai."
Blood Money finds some traction in the climax but it's too little, too late. By then, you are disengaged and debating dinner choices.
Anupama Chopra's review: Chaurahen
Aisha, Rajshree Ojha’s reworking of Jane Austen’s Emma, was released first, but Chaurahen is the director’s debut film. It lay in the cans for almost five years before PVR’s Director’s Rare banner, a great initiative to bring independent cinema to theatres, picked it up.
Chaurahen has good intentions but erratic execution and few insights. Ojha has gathered some wonderful actors here -- from Victor Banerjee, who plays an aging man in an adulterous relationship with a girl young enough to be his daughter, to Arundhati Nag and Nedumudi Venu, who play grieving parents who have lost their son in war. But then, these actors are saddled with dialogue that strains to be poignant and piercingly deep. So in one bed, a couple has the following discussion: “Games, it keeps things balanced.” “What things?” “Games of relationships, love, power.” While in another bed across the country, the post-coital conversation goes like this: “What is the closest you have ever come to dying?” “One dies a little every day.”
There is death in each story but the only one with genuine emotion is the Kochi episode. Ojha handles tricky scenes well, including one in which the protagonist, played by Karthik Kumar, reveals a difficult secret. Nag, Venu and Kumar imbue their grief with a quiet grace. Their anguish is palpable.
But Ojha’s good work here is undone by the Mumbai saga, in which Ankur Khanna plays a writer holding on to his dead parents – and by that I mean literally. He still keeps his father’s dentures in the house, for instance. The writer and his partner, played by Soha Ali Khan, wander around Mumbai saying things like “Happiness does not exist. It is only remembered in times of agony” and “D minor is the saddest of all chords.” Kiera Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter, makes a largely forgettable appearance in the Kolkata chapter as an object of desire. Zeenat Aman also drops in, playing a mysterious woman at a bar. I’m sure there is a sub-text here but it eluded me.
Chaurahen brims with tortured souls, pensive silences, meaningful looks and meals left unfinished. Not surprisingly, it’s a slog of a film.
Vidya’s Kahaani going strong
Actor Vidya Balan’s film Kahaani seems to have a struck a chord with the audiences in a big way. The gripping thriller has entered its third week and is still proving to be a crowd-puller. The film not only defies the new box office mantra of “focus on first three days’ box office collection”, but also proves that the actor has a long way to go.
The film earned Rs 43.05 crore since its release on March 9. Director Sujoy Ghosh made the film at a budget of Rs 8 crore and the collections show that it’s a bumper hit of the first quarter of the year. “Generally, most films register a 50% to 70% decline in the second week, but the decline in this case was around 25%, which is remarkable,” tweeted analyst Taran Adarsh.
Kahaani has also proved those wrong who said that Vidya ’s The Dirty Picture triumphed because it was full of skin show. Despite no skin show and no glamour, Kahaani has rocked the box office
Anupama Chopra's review: London Paris New York
Towards the end of London Paris New York, there is a moment of unvarnished truth. Nikhil Chopra, a fledgling film director played by Ali Zafar, rails against the woman he loves – Lalitha Krishnan played by Aditi Rao Hydari. Among other things, he calls her a tease (preceded by a word that cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper). He wipes away tears and spews hurt and hate. It’s a tough scene but Zafar doesn’t falter. His rage rings true.
I wish the rest of London Paris New York were as well pitched. Written and directed by debutante Anu Menon, the film follows the crisscrossing paths of Nikhil and Lalitha over eight years. They meet, for one night only, in three different cities. What begins as a hesitant friendship evolves into passion and eventually a more mature love. The story echoes One Day, the Lone Scherfig film based on a best-selling novel, in which the man and woman meet on July 15 over twenty years.
Nikhil and Lalitha aren’t very different from Dexter and Emma in that film. Like Dexter, Nikhil is rich and somewhat spoilt and aimless. Like Emma, Lalitha is middle class and focused. But Lalitha, who stridently proclaims that she is a feminist and does work with an NGO, is slightly more annoying.
When an entire film is based on the meeting and parting of two individuals (who are thereby in every frame), it puts enormous pressure on the actors and writer. Both need to sparkle consistently. Even first-rate performers find it a tough act. One Day, which stars the Oscar-nominated Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, is a big bore. I admire producers Goldie Behl and ShrishtiArya for eschewing the star route and casting fresh faces; the choice of Hydari, who till now has been relegated to supporting roles, is particularly brave.
But then the leads are made to fit into that over-familiar glam styling and foreign locations. In the Paris segment, Hydari struts around in mini-skirts, boots and an intriguingly bad wig. The look of course reflects her state of mind but it feels false. Hydari has a luminous presence – even as the bua in Delhi-6, she made an impact. But here she seems to be working too hard to get the right mix of fluttering eyelashes, steeliness and vulnerability. Meanwhile Zafar relies too much on The Smolder – that smugly sexy look that the robber Flynn Rider gives Rapunzel in the Disney film Tangled.
The actors are also bogged down by the writing, which ranges from inspired (the climactic outburst mentioned above) to insipid. Too often, Menon resorts to formulaic character traits, so if Nikhil is a pretentious film school student, he must have a goatee and refer to Andrei Tarkovsky. London Paris New York has sufficiently seductive visuals of all three cities. In Paris, Lalitha, wearing only a sheet, has breakfast on a balcony with the Eiffel Tower looming large. It’s postcard perfect but also a little plastic. As is the film.
Starting today, Anupama Chopra becomes Hindustan Times’ film critic. Chopra has written on the Hindi film industry since 1993. Her work has been published in India Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety and Sight & Sound. She presented and scripted a weekly film review show, Picture This, on NDTV 24/7. She is the author of four successful books on cinema, including the internationally acclaimed Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, and Sholay: the Making of a Classic, which won a National Award.
Mayank Shekhar's review: Jodi Breakers
A wife who’s a “vasna ki pujaran” (worshipper of lust; horny, in other words) tires out her boxing champ husband every night in bed. This seems to be affecting his sporting career. Low on energy, the boxer gets knocked out each time he hits the ring. This is why he wants a divorce. One Baba Kamdev is brought in to calm the woman down.
Baba Kamdev’s the god-man of sex. As against a certain yogi with a similar name, who, I suppose, practices abstinence. At his first session with his devotees, the fake baba’s written speech gets mixed up with a bar menu. Quite obviously he doesn’t know what to preach anymore, goes: “An Old Monk once said you must keep the Black Dog within you under control, or you’ll get a Black Label on your forehead…”
This, by the way, is the highest point of this film’s humour. The lowest one concerns a conversation about the top half of the heart that resembles a bum. “Only potty comes out of there,” says the hero. His buddy’s diarrheic, we hear gassy, farty sounds for background score. Sorry. That was just to let you know. Because there’s more to come. So you take it, on the rocks, or bang your head against one.
A movie can either make sense or money. So some filmmakers strongly suspect. Why did we expect anything better here? We always do.
The film’s National Award winning director made his Hindi debut with Dhoop (2003), a touching story of a Kargil war veteran’s family that goes through bureaucratic hell trying to claim promised compensation from the government. The picture remains politically relevant even now. The same director made something called Good Boy, Bad Boy later! This is his fourth.
Leading man Madhavan starred in a satisfying, sleeper rom-com hit Tanu Weds Manu just last year. Here, he’s the podgy, hammy hero with an odd accent and strange goatee that distract you from both his visible discomforts and double chin. In a divorce settlement, he lost his gaadi, back balance, bangla. But now he’s a kunwara (a bachelor), hence surrounded by white women in bras and beachwear.
Omi Vaidya plays his sidekick. He first made his presence felt as a Ugandan born IIT exchange student in 3 Idiots. He's done quite a few Bollywood films by now (Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji etc). None have tried to explain his weird twang since. No one I know locally speaks Hindi like that; the script could easily justify it. Okay, I take it back; did I just mention script here?
Bipasha: the screen flashes in bold letters. A dance track, on the lines of Sheela Ki Jawani, starring Bipasha Basu of course starts, “Jadu hai tu Bipasha… Ooh aah sha Bipasha!” You know the routine. Madhavan is the DJ. A Jat gent is the bartender. You want to know what these guys are smoking. We’re at the opening night of a club in Greece!
The said hero, heroine run a break-up agency that specialises in helping philandering married people get a divorce. They split up a couple that never wanted to. They spend the rest of the film trying to get them back together.
In walks the mistress to the party, “Mein tumhare bachche ki maa banne wali hoon!” Sure, you’ve heard that one before. But wait. A doctor enters then, producing the husband’s blood test, “But he is HIV positive.” “Oh, I never slept with him the,” the mistress says. This is the climax. Don’t worry. Relax. This too shall passé!
