sen city

The good thing about casting Tiger Shroff as a superhero is that, thanks to his fluidly lithe movements, it does sometimes become hard to spot where the actual moves stop and the wire-work begins. Watching Shroff, an endearing, almost unbearably earnest performer, reminds me of those early Salman Khan days when he was a lanky guy with long hair who pluckily tried to act, which is a great start — but alas, this poor lad has all the dialogue skills of Hrithik Roshan. Which is to say: perhaps his martial arts movies need to be watched only when dubbed into another language.

(Also deserving of earplugs: leading lady Jacqueline Fernandez, sounding like a chihuahua who loves swallowing saxophones.)

This is a shame, for A Flying Jatt isn’t bad. It ends poorly, sure, and has some catastrophically clumsy moments on the way, but as a children’s film it goes a helluva lot further than those Krrish things. It is a film, in fact, more about a superhero’s Punjabi mother than it is the hero himself, and that goes a long way in setting up the humour. Amrita Singh as the thrilled mom looking at Superman Returns tapes to educate her son on flight-pose decorum (“aise toh full speed mein udte hain”) is priceless, as is the moment when, after appropriately epic heroic buildup, Tiger fatefully wears the costume only to flop into bed and pick up the television remote.

I don’t think I’ve watched a superhero movie where the hero’s mother has enthusiastically sown him a costume, and given the apoplectic way the genre is now exploding, finding a new, authentically Hindi filmi angle is commendable. The problem with A Flying Jatt is its lack of faith in its own originality, which is why director Remo D’Souza ends up — like Amrita Singh — cribbing from superhero films we already know and love. There’s the already classic Quicksilver sequence from Days Of Future Past (link to review), there’s a Sam Raimi trolley shot straight out of Spider-Man 2, and when the big villain — Nathan Jones from no less than bloody Mad Max: Fury Road — says that he wants a better costume, evil sponsor Kay Kay Menon basically orders him a Thor suit.

D’Souza, as a director, isn’t one. The film is put together sloppily, with several comedic sequences well-intentioned but not making sense. There is, for example, a scene with Tiger taking on a tennis ball machine with nunchuks. Obvious slapstick, but it can be done amusingly and, while Shroff himself tries hard, the scene itself is staged bizarrely: it starts off with everyone wowed by the grace with which he strikes slower balls, even though the whole point of using the machine was to see if he could stop something as fast as a bullet. Still, the way this boy hits an enzuigiri to a tennis ball is something special.

And that’s before he has powers. After they kick in, and he — apparently hard of hearing — takes the shrill Fernandez for a joyride in the skies, she gasps more at seeing fireflies and a big moon than at her superpowered man.

The climax is painful and — as with all films that yearn to be really big films without having the budget — it looks more and more pathetic. The film is riddled with issues from the start — Tiger is given far too many superpowers and we never quite understand their limitations — but it is, for the most part, an amusing diversion with a leading man hard not to like. He might whimper too much, but I’ll take A Flying Jatt as a potentially decent franchise-starter even if the guy  himself isn’t always in on the joke. (Though I do wish the film didn’t preachily go on and on about how amazing Sikhs are. Who didn’t know?)

As he begins to fly around — not too high because he’s afraid of heights — two women watch The Flying Jatt go viral on news channels and one wonders if he’s an alien. “Jo bhi hai apna hai,” says the other smugly, the line — meaning ‘whatever he is, he’s ours’ — can be a dig at imported superheroes, sure, but also a line loaded with pride and one that holds more truth than all of Zack Snyder’s superhero attempts put together. Superheroes are about hope, not fear. Unless, that is, you’re afraid to show your kids a superhero movie that focusses on twerking.

Rating: 2.5 stars

~

First published Rediff, August 26, 2016

There are some filmmakers who make feature-length trailers. They think they’re making an action movie, of course, but the fact is that everything — from an overabundance of slow-motion, to the way words like “one day ago” fly across the screen in the Dhoom font, and the way the film starts and ends with music videos— is for effect. Done well, this often obvious style can be rather rollicking, and there are times when Rohit Dhawan’s Dishoom is actually fun. The first half is breezy and snappy, and the increasingly irrepressible Varun Dhawan is on point.

The setup is dynamite. It isn’t particularly groundbreaking dynamite, but it is a potentially crackling premise: India’s top cricketer is kidnapped ahead of an India-Pakistan final in the UAE. There is much room for hilarity in a setup like this, and the film taps into a fair bit of it, even as the setpieces get bloated and the background score thuds with relentless urgency and repetition. (To me, there were times when it feels like watching a music video version of 99, a cricket/match-fixing film I once worked on.)

This cricketer — Viraj, a combination of Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh, if you will — is played by Saqib Saleem, and the youngster obviously knows how to hit full-tosses all over the place. Saleem is a fine performer and the cricketing bits seem as authentic as they need to be in a film like this, and the initial mystery of who kidnapped Viraj is an intriguing one. On the trail are Kabir, an Indian supercop flown in to hunt him down, and Junaid, a Dubai-based Indian cop itching for action. It is all Buddy Comedy 101, but as can be said justifying 90% of all movies starring The Rock, we all know the genre works besides its predictability because of the way the actors play off each other. Into each Murtaugh a little Riggs must fall.

The big problem here is with the heavy. John Abraham here plays Kabir, the douchey tough-cop who smokes in elevators and speaks to his girlfriend like a bully, but Abraham — who, at one point several films ago, was at least attempting to act — has turned into a top-heavy slab with all the expressions of granite. He weighs Dishoom down considerably. Even his half-winking smirk now appears leery, as if he’s been bench-pressing with his cheeks and can’t smile a human smile any more.

This is depressing because of just how frothy Varun Dhawan keeps things. With the natural, cocky charm of a young Will Smith — a fact alluded to when Dishoom references Men In Black with its heroes calling themselves K and J — Dhawan is spontaneous and funny but, most importantly, sincere. He hits the emotional beats lightly but firmly — like when he tears up after having finally found a dog — and these are what sell his character, the way he can establish earnestness in a second and go back to being goofy right after.

Still, like I said, the first half is a lark. Varun is in form, Saqib’s realistic, and there is an entertaining cameo by Akshay Kumar who puts the man in ‘man-bun.’ It is after the interval, when the shenanigans have been left to an exhausting Akshaye Khanna, the villain of the piece, that tedium really sets in. The film keeps trying to concentrate on the plot, which is weak, and because the action scenes and chases are long and repetitive, merely changing backgrounds don’t help things as much. Jacqueline Fernandez joins the action, running in and unable to keep a straight face, but there is a priceless, awestruck moment when the shoe drops and she finally realises who these two cops are looking for.

There is much more that could have been done here. It should be snappier and the jokes sharper, and the plot could so, so easily have been made water-tight. There are even times, unforgivably enough,  when it begins to feel immaterial that the kidnapped quarry is a cricketer; it could be just anyone held up for ransom. But ah, the film is clearly aiming for laughs, and even when it gets lost along the way, blindsided by some unnecessarily elaborate action moment or by a bicepped un-actor, it still provides a fair bit of corny fun. The film’s best parts are Dhawan asking a helicopter pilot to pull over “side mein,” or Satish Kaushik trolling people on the phone. If Dishoom does well, however, I do hope they’ll avoid John in the sequels. All this film needed was a cop out.

Rating: 3 stars

~

First published Rediff, July 29, 2016

There’s an old joke about how two smack-heads score their fix in an unfamiliar new city. They stand on opposite sides of the road, and one tosses an imaginary length of rope while the other grabs and fastens it. The first person to duck under the rope as he walks by is the man to ask. Going by Udta Punjab, the entire land-of-five-rivers is full of people tripping over non-existent lines. (As well as, of course, lines that are all too real.)

Despite the three disclaimers forced onto this movie, the backdrop really isn’t fiction. The shockingly dismal drug problems in Punjab are well-documented, but it is only with Abhishek Chaubey’s new film that we are confronted with the state’s sickly addiction issues in mainstream fashion, and it doesn’t make for comfortable viewing. This is a stirring film, one that is concerned (and besotted) with Punjab and one with a solid anti-drug message, a message delivered so single-mindedly that it even gets in the way of the storytelling. The film’s four protagonists, however, are impossible to impede.

Meet Tommy Singh. He has the words ‘Momma Da Boy’ tattooed under his clavicle, and a sticker saying ‘my guitar’ on, well, his guitar: he’s a labelled-rebel, a work of successful branding in a land where pop-music is not merely alive but routinely mainlined by famished audiences, and clueless kids look to him as a messiah. In the real world there exists a Punjabi pop genre devoted to triumphant songs celebrating getting drunk and fighting, and this celebration of rolled-up sleeves makes for a land where Tommy, an utter wannabe, struts around like the cock of the walk.

He’s a nut with winged boots and a sycophantic entourage, but closing time looms ahead. Investors aren’t impressed by his innuendo, and politicians eager to take action about the drug situation are only too glad to point at such a moronically shiny target — even as Tommy hops from foot to foot like a sniffling prizefighter before Hulk-Hogan-ing it on stage, raising a hand to his ears in order to get cheering fans to cheer even louder.

The man who arrests Tommy, and finds much catharsis in walloping him, is Sartaj Singh, a mere one-star policeman who almost lost his Tommy-loving kid brother to cheap drugs available freely and lethally at local pharmacies. Sartaj is a quiet cop, one mostly content to let things roll on with the drug mafia as per arrangement, but a nearly-dead brother changes things.

He’s on a mission now, and pointing him in the right direction is Preet Sahni, a sharp and bold doctor who calls it like she sees it. And, given that she rehabilitates addicts, she sees the worst: junkies unable to distinguish right from wrong, families living in denial about the zombies in their midst, corruption and easy access to drugs spread all across the state. She wants something to be done about it, and she’s willing to take things into her own hands. Somebody has to.

Meanwhile, there’s a hockey-playing migrant labourer from Bihar, a petite girl who finds a gigantic packet of heroin and thinks it could be key to a new life. It does lead her places, but nothing in this girl’s life works out as expected. But go see her instead of reading about her.

Chaubey’s film starts off slick but choppy, the narrative hopping across these compelling characters in a wild, whimsical manner reminiscent of early Guy Ritchie. Unfortunately, the irreverence and narrative bravado is often sidelined by heavy-handed Public Service Announcement style handling. The film is trying to open our eyes to the drug menace, but the first half of the film seems confused about where it is pitched — dark comedy or preachy drama — and, as a result, feels a bit long in the tooth. It doesn’t help that the editing appears too abrupt: we cut from scene to scene (from a packet of brown sugar tossed in the air to a cleaver coming down to chop meat for a quirkily named dog) too rapidly, almost as if the filmmakers self-consciously want to rush through these uneven bits.

It is in the second half, after the preachiness has made way for plot, that Chaubey’s finesse comes to the fore and the film gleams with originality. The leaps forward are unexpected, the narrative choices brave, and the detailing exquisite. We hear about a good-for-nothing Tommy having gone to the UK to study, and near the start of the film there appears a giant sign proudly advertising ‘Without IELTS,’ promising the chance to study in Britain without clearing the basic English language hurdles. Preet has a GMAT book by her desk, showing that even the crusading doctor wanted escape. There is a brilliant moment as Sartaj embraces the anonymity offered by a pagri, and there’s something magical about the way he keeps saying ‘sissdi’ because for him the word café means a branch of Cafe Coffee Day.

Shahid Kapoor is spectacular as Tommy, a coke-addled fool who wins us over with slack-jawed grace and makes the songs credibly appear his own. His shots are glamorously composed, with him the focal center of most frames, but even without this help, he’d readily command the screen. The way his voice gets squawkily high when he’s desperate, the way he says mojo with a few ‘j’s too many, the way he throws a microphone stand and makes that action look impulsive, effete and effective all at once… Wow. This is the actor at his best, and he must be lauded for embracing the lunacy so wholeheartedly.

While Kapoor’s is the showy part, Diljeet Dosanjh absolutely shines as he grounds the film with the more straight, more simmering role. Playing Sartaj, there is a touch of young Sunny Deol to his angry intensity but, man, the no-nonsense realism he brings to the part is striking. I want to watch a half-dozen films he’s acted in before, the man is clearly a star.

Kareena Kapoor is well cast as Preet but not quite given as much to do, save for looking so perfect she eats up the words in the mouths of those around her. Alia Bhatt, as the hockey-girl, commits to her accent and deals with the film’s most unsavoury section, and is stunning during an incendiary speech that elevates the entire film to a whole other level. This is an impressive role for a starlet like Bhatt to choose, and to her I doff my hat. As I do to many across this fine ensemble cast, like Manav Vij, who plays the formidably bearded senior cop, Satish Kaushik and Suhail Nayyar.

Contrary to what you might expect, this isn’t a greatly political film, focussing instead on the problem, the characters and their internal conflicts. And it makes room for a few references. Chaubey borrows the sublime toilet sequence from Trainspotting, includes a stray Pulp Fiction nod with the way a line is said, and steals a villain reluctant to kill his relatives from his own Ishqiya films — and, in what must be an in-joke, names of Bollywood writers and directors (and buddies of Chaubey and writer Sudip Sharma) like Akshat Verma and Navdeep Singh show up on a list of suspects. But Udta Punjab truly soars when being its own madcap beast, profane and powerful and preening.

Oh, and a word about that music: Woof. Amit Trivedi is a master, Chaubey has a gift for placing music and adding context to moments, and the decision to use Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s dazzling poem Ikk Kudi as a literal part of the narrative is a marvellous one. Naturally, this call — like that of sculpting his idiocy across the side of his own head — is made by the mad musician. Good on you, Tommy. Rock a doodle doo.

Rating: 4 stars

~

First published Rediff, June 17, 2016