171: SPECIAL 26

Release date:	February 8, 2013
Director:	Neeraj Pandey
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpayee, Jimmy Sheirgill, Rajesh Sharma, Kajal Aggarwal, Divya Dutta, Deepraj Rana Hindi

When the word “interval” flashed on screen halfway through Special 26, I remember being taken aback. Hadn’t the Censor certificate indicated a much longer film? How come the interval had arrived so fast? A glance at my watch indicated that approximately 1 hour 15 minutes of the film had already rolled by! Whaaaaaaaaat?!

When a nearly two-and-a-half-hour film feels like it’s short, you know it’s special. Special 26 is about a quartet of con men in 1987 who pose as CBI officials and conduct fake raids on black-money-laden politicians and businesspersons. The story is as basic as that. But with the treatment of the cons, the audacity of the players in this game and the cool-headedness that helps them get away with their crimes, writer-director Neeraj Pandey ends up giving us a thoroughly enjoyable suspense drama – based partly on real-life events – that also serves as a stinging indictment of our loophole-ridden criminal investigation system without tomtomming the message, all while examining the psychology of the corrupt. It is, as a certain lady from another film might have said: entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.

A neatly understated Akshay Kumar as the leader of the gang and Anupam Kher as his loyal cohort play off each other very well to deliver engaging performances. With OMG Oh My God and now this film, it’s clear that Akshay is trying to take his career in a whole new direction, which is a relief because this is an actor who has grown tremendously since we first saw him on screen and he really does owe it to himself to do more than gaudy comedies like Rowdy Rathore and Khiladi 786 that are indistinguishable from each other. In a role that unfairly gives him far less scope to display his acting skills, Rajesh Sharma as Joginder proves that great actors often rise above lack of screen time and dialogues. That one look of desperation he throws at Ajay when a particular raid seems to be flopping is a lovely reminder of the actor who played the corrupt-yet-good-hearted cop in No One Killed Jessica and that scintillating scene where he casually mentions to Sabrina Lal that he took a bribe to not beat up her sister’s killer in custody. The entire cast (Jimmy Sheirgill, Divya Dutta in a small role and Deepraj Rana) acquit themselves well. But the stellar performance in Special 26 comes from Manoj Bajpayee whose turn as the straight-talking CBI official Wasim Khan is his best in years (yes, I say that despite the accolades that have come his way for Gangs of Wasseypur 1). And when did this man become so thin? Did he lose weight for this role? Must say the extra lean look suits Mr Bajpayee!

It’s also nice that Akshay does not hog screen space in Special 26 although he’s the superstar of the bunch. But then the question arises: why does the film feel the need to assign a mandatory “love interest” to Ajay although he is not a stereotypical Bollywood hero? That romantic track unnecessarily slows down the film especially since every appearance by the girlfriend (played by Kaajal Aggarwal who looks too young for Akshay) is accompanied by a loud, tuneless, superfluous song. That brings me to the music by M.M. Kreem whose Tu miley dil khiley from Criminal still haunts me. In Special 26, his work is a huge disappointment.

The pointless love angle notwithstanding, the screenplay is taut and crisp for the most part, peppered with cheeky dialogues epitomised by the honest official who asks his boss straight to his face: will you give me a promotion or should I start taking bribes? For a change, the cops actually look and behave like real cops instead of actors-playing-cops-and-robbers. The art direction, costumes and styling are impeccably 1987, right down to the ancient Maruti 800s and a relatively empty Connaught Place in Delhi (empty! imagine that!) through which we witness one of the most exciting chases seen in a Hindi film in recent times. Though we are told next to nothing of the four crooks’ backgrounds and barely anything about Wasim Khan either, the brief shots of their home spaces – the elderly man with lots of children and the pregnant wife in Chandigarh, the doting middle-class dad who orders a woman to cover up her cleavage when in public, an overhead shot of an Old Delhi home – are deliciously telling. We didn’t really need to know anything more, which is why we could have done without the passing reference to Ajay’s motivations for forming his gang … half-baked, unconvincing, quite like the attempt to explain the title by one of the characters. And it’s rather inexplicable that despite the stashes of cash they’ve looted, the gang don’t seem to have much money. Still, the execution of the heists is so entertaining that these flaws somewhat fade into the background by the end of the film.

Neeraj Pandey’s earlier film A Wednesday was an equally well-produced, entertaining film though its populist political stance was disturbing: in its indirect call to the general public to take the law into their own hands, the film unabashedly and irresponsibly played to the gallery in an angry, terror-ridden India. Special 26 taps into the prevailing frustration with corruption and the “system” but stops short of glorifying the con men, simply telling it like it is.

Bollywood rarely does thrillers, and the few it takes up are rarely well done. That’s why Special 26 is such a very pleasant surprise.

 

Rating (out of five): ***1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	143 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_26    

 

170: DAVID

Release date:	February 1, 2013
Director:	Bejoy Nambiar
Cast: Language:	Neil Nitin Mukesh, Vinay Virmani, Vikram, Monica Dogra, Neil Bhoopalam, Milind Soman, Anupama Kumar, Nassar, Lara Dutta, Rohini Hattangadi, Tabu, Isha Sharvani, Prahlad Kakkar, Nishan Nanaiah  Hindi

David is based on potentially explosive material that proves to be a damp squib. Director Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan – released in 2011 – was beautiful in its slickness but most unfortunately opted for style over substance. David, on the other hand, has the makings of great style and great substance, but fails to go the whole hog on either front. Still, the content is unusual enough to be worth discussing.

This is the story of 3 men with the same name in 3 different cities of the world, whose lives we enter in 3 different years. London, 1975: David played by Neil Nitin Mukesh is the loyal lieutenant of a gangster. Mumbai, 1999: David played by Vinay Virmani is an aspiring musician who can’t get along with his father, the pious priest Fr Noel, though his sisters dote on dad. Goa, 2010: David played by Vikram is a drunken layabout in a Goan village whose bride left him at the altar on his wedding day.

The London episode is about family politics and an international political game involving a government and gangsters, with an interesting twist at the end. The Mumbai episode most unexpectedly leads to charges of “forced conversion” against Fr Noel by a dangerously opportunistic and violence-prone Maharashtra politician in a chilling scene that’s the most well executed part of this film. The Goan story leads … well … it leads nowhere in particular.

The film’s problems begin right at the beginning with the tiresome inter-weaving of 3 tales and the constant, confusing back-and-forth between 3 decades. Too much time is spent on introducing us to too many characters – particularly in the London episode – and by the time the actual action takes off, it’s the interval and already too late to salvage the film. Still, the slick production values are definitely worth noting as is the interesting decision to present London 1975 in black and white. The retro look of that episode – costumes, hairstyles et al – are very well done. And the three main players are supported by some excellent performances, especially Nassar as Fr Noel and Rohini Hattagandi as the Maharashtra neta Malti Tai.

Of the three leads, the handsome National Award-winning actor Vikram is dealt the poorest hand by this film. Anyone who has seen his work in Tamil knows his brilliance. Hindi film buffs may also recall how his small role as Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s husband in the Hindi version of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan outshone Abhishek Bachchan’s central performance. But the best actors in the world are helpless in the face of limited material, which is what Vikram suffers in David. The Goa episode featuring him meanders too much and has the most awkward ending of the three. Neil is effective in the London saga and makes a very interesting physical transformation post-interval of which I can’t give you details since that would involve spoilers. And the events unfolding in Mumbai 1999 give us Vinay Virmani, a talented young Canadian actor of Indian origin who we in India earlier saw in the Canadian-Indian co-production Speedy Singhs aka Breakaway in 2011.

As it happens, the Mumbai saga is the most memorable of the three not just because of the good acting all around but also because it’s handled most effectively, the subject is one that Bollywood has not touched before and even the mainstream news media avoids. Christians in Hindi cinema up to the 1990s were almost always portrayed as drunkards and gangsters, cabaret dancers and gangsters’ molls, quasi-foreigners who barely spoke Hindi and only wore western clothes. From the 1990s onwards, the community virtually disappeared from Hindi films which is how it remains even today, apart from rare exceptions like Homi Adajania’s Cocktail in 2012 in which the overtly Christian name Veronica was sneakily given to Deepika Padukone’s heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking, drug-taking, sexually promiscuous character to be contrasted with the overtly Hindu Meera (played by Diana Penty) who does not drink, does not smoke, does not take drugs and does not have sex. Genuine concerns of India’s Christians have almost always been ignored by Bollywood. What makes David unusual is that it takes a position on the canard of “forced conversions” that has been spread against Indian Christians by communal propagandists, and the violence and intimidation the community has faced in several states that is rarely covered by the national media.  

This crucial issue merited a separate film. The London episode in David too could have been another film. Why Bejoy Nambiar chose to force all three stories into one celluloid venture is a mystery. Their intersection in the end feels contrived; the common name for the three men, as it turns out, has no particular significance; and the editing, especially of the Goa story, is surprisingly lax considering that the man on the job is the highly respected Sreekar Prasad. The result: David is so tedious that it’s hard to focus on its very unusual pluses. This is a film that does not seem to know where it’s going.

 

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	159 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(2013_Hindi_film)