REVIEW 346: HERO

Release date:	September 11, 2015
Director:	Nikhil Advani
Cast: Language:	Sooraj Pancholi, Athiya Shetty, Sharad Kelkar, Aditya Pancholi, Tigmanshu Dhulia Hindi

Within the first 10 minutes of the film, he bashes up a bad guy, dances in a nightclub, then bashes up a villain in the club. About 30 minutes into the film, we see him shirtless, pummelling a punching bag in a snow-laden setting.

Fighting skills displayed: check.

Dancing skills displayed: check.

Muscular body displayed: check.

Acting skills displayed? Ah now, there arises the problem.

Hero is very clearly intended primarily as a showcase for Sooraj Pancholi, son of actors Zarina Wahab and Aditya Pancholi, but someone appears to have forgotten that what counts most for a film actor are screen presence and/or acting abilities. No gym can compensate for a lack of those. Dance institutes and acting schools can give you moves and techniques, but they cannot teach you talent or charisma. Sooraj shows no signs of possessing either – well at least not in this film.

It’s possible that Master Pancholi is cute. He does show a glimmer of what might be a sweet smile in a couple of scenes. But at no point does that glimmer become a full-fledged grin because he appears to have been advised to ‘do intensity’ by staying unsmiling and expressionless here. Can he act? Who knows? What we do know is that in Hero, he barely twitches a facial muscle.

His co-star Athiya Shetty, actor Sunil Shetty’s daughter, is not one of those sparklers that goes pop, crackle and fizz at first sight, but let us not brush her aside. Her heavy bone structure takes some getting used to, but at least she looks different from the assembly-line women playing pretty props in film after film these days. When she’s not pouting and ‘doing cute’, she appears like she could potentially be interesting in an interesting film. In this one though, she is not.

Guess you’ve gathered by now that Hero is dull dull dull. As you may know, this is a remake of Subhash Ghai’s 1983 hit of the same name starring Jackie Shroff and Meenakshi Sheshadri. That Hero was not great, but it was fun, had likeable leads, Jackie really could act and the music was memorable, especially that lovely flute piece which was revisited exceptionally well in 2014’s Heropanti, which marked Jackie’s son Tiger’s acting debut. If you must remake a not-so-great film, at least contemporise the story and/or the treatment. This one does neither of the above.

Subhash G’s post-2000 films (except for 2008’s Black and White) have been disasters because he keeps using the same story tropés, the same camera angles, the same sweeping shots. It’s as if he is stuck in a time warp. Frankly, you could be forgiven for assuming that this Hero too is ghost directed by the veteran director. That’s how tired Nikhil Advani’s remake feels.

The story is about a hooligan called Sooraj Kaushik (Sooraj) in Mumbai who is commissioned by gangster Suryakanth Pasha (Aditya Pancholi) to kidnap Radha Mathur (Athiya), daughter of IGP Shrikanth Mathur (Tigmanshu Dhulia). Sooraj and his gang take Radha to a secluded place by pretending to be policemen and convincing her that her dad sent them to protect her from Pasha. True love follows. Though he insists that “Ek IG ki beti kabhi ek goondey se pyaar nahin kar sakti”, they decide to give their relationship a shot even after she discovers the truth. Their path is strewn with obstacles: her father’s opposition, Pasha’s anger and one laughably executed twist involving a prince called Rannvijay Shekhawat (Vivan Bhathena).

Actually, I did not mind that last stupid plot point too much because at least Vivan is good looking in a naturally sexy model-like way (FYI he is a former Mr India) and even though he is required to mostly over-act here, it’s still evident that he’s a far far far better actor than Sooraj.

The other cast member who rises above this limpid film is Sharad Kelkar as Radha’s brother Dheeraj. On the other hand, it’s sad to see a fine actor like Tigmanshu reduced to mouthing cliched lines in cliched settings that are amusing though they’re intended to be sorrowful.

Even the music is just so-so. Main hoon hero tera sung by Salman Khan – who is also the film’s producer – is not a bad melody I guess, but the only reason I was relieved to see Salman appearing in the end to sing it with the end credits was because that meant the credits would not be accompanied by an ‘item’ song featuring Sooraj and Athiya. Whew!

It’s time Bollywood films moved beyond trite build-ups to romances that involve the heroine being inexplicably mean to someone, thus providing an excuse for the hero to put her in her place with a touch of roughing up, seconds after which she falls in love with him. It’s time directors stopped getting well-built male stars to rip off their own shirts or have their clothes blown away by the wind in the middle of a climactic fight to flaunt their ripped torsos – for god’s sake, that worked in Dabangg because Salman’s confrontation with Sonu Sood was executed in a part-serious-part-comic tone. It’s time they stopped getting comedians to speak in rhymes. In Hero, a gori woman tells her obese lover: “You are my Mr Right, but I want your body tight.”

Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	132 minutes

Poster courtesy: Salman Khan Films

REVIEW 32: DUM MAARO DUM

Release date:	April 22, 2011
Director:	Rohan Sippy
Cast:	Abhishek Bachchan, Rana Daggubati, Bipasha Basu, Aditya Pancholi, Prateik Babbar

Yeh Michael Barbosa kaun hai? 

It’s a question that occupies the mind and life of ACP Vishnu Kamath who has been hand-picked by the Union Home Minister to clean up drug-ravaged Goa. The state has been enslaved by dealers. But the kingpin is an ephemeral creature who no one seems to have ever met. Is he young or old, Indian or foreign, is he in fact a she? But the real question is, does Dum Maaro Dum have what it takes to keep us glued to our seats till we get the answer to that first question?

The story of DMD is told through three parallel tracks: Lorry (Prateik Babbar) aspires to study in the US with his girlfriend but doesn’t have the money to make it there without a scholarship; Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) is a man battling the ghosts of his past along with the spectre of Michael Barbosa; musician/DJ Joki (Rana Daggubati) is desperate to redeem himself for his earlier failure to stand up for his girlfriend Zoe (Bipasha Basu). Tying them all together is the evil drug lord Lorsa Biscuta (Aditya Pancholi).

The film establishes each character firmly and succinctly. The actors are good; the background score by Midival Punditz is evocative of the sadness underlying the loveliness all around; and Amit Roy’s camera thankfully goes beyond the clichéd images of Goa’s beaches and churches, beyond even those traditional Portuguese homes and the roadways flanked by fields, and travels all the way up to atmospheric graveyards and the lonely patches of green in the countryside where anything could happen when no one’s watching. Till the interval comes around, director Rohan Sippy takes us along on the ride with his hands very firmly on the wheel. But his grip slackens post-interval, so does the pace, and the run-up to the climax followed by an overly elongated epilogue left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction.

Directors of crime thrillers are all manipulating us; the trick is to keep us unaware of those manipulations so that they don’t get irritating. In DMD a couple of annoying red herrings are thrown our way while we try to figure out who Michael Barbosa is. There’s a voice threatening Lorry in whispers. It was just not disembodied enough and if I could spot the actor behind that voice, so could anyone. Then there’s the pointed look that sultry item girl Deepika Padukone throws at ACP Kamath before she disappears into a crowd. What was that about, huh Missy?

Making matters worse is Pritam’s insipid music. And I’m not just talking about one of the best-remembered songs in Hindi film history that he’s reworked into a pale shadow of itself. To be fair to Jaideep Sahni, his cheeky lyrics “Oonche se ooncha banda, potty pe baithe nanga …,” may actually have been fine IF they weren’t being imposed on a dull remix of RD’s classic.

But there’s also much to like in DMD. The characters are all well-rounded, especially ACP Kamath and Zoe. Kamath’s transformation from bribe-taker to upright policeman comes through a painful journey so well described by Lorsa Biscuta at one point. There’s one particularly deftly handled scene in which Kamath’s dead wife seems to speak to him. It’s touching, yet not maudlin. Abhishek pitches in a neat performance as the broodingly intense drug-buster, though a lot of the impact is diluted by repeated visitations by that same dead spouse which become tacky and silly after a point. There’s a scene in which Lorry angrily asks Kamath, “What would you know about family?!” We know by then that Kamath does know. But I guess because it’s assumed that we are dense, the sound of the car crash that killed his wife plays out in the background at that point.

While those irritants should be attributed to the director along with the pointless references to Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic films, Abhishek must share the blame for an entire interrogation scene he does which is woven around dad’s Khaike paan Banaraswala. Why was it necessary? Why why why?!

The character that worked best for me in this film is Zoe who, in a sense, personifies a physically beautiful yet internally scarred Goa. It’s not a large role, but it’s one that goes beyond the sexy body and endless legs that Bipasha has come to signify in the public eye. The actress shines as Zoe who makes the journey from youthful zest to bitterness and ultimate despair.

The rest of the characters too are well played. They fit well into the Goan milieu without caricaturing Goans in the stereotypical “Hum God se church mein jaake prayer karenga” Bollywood manner. But there is a strange and inexplicable disconnect between Rana Daggubati’s personality in the film and his voice/dialogue delivery. Rana is the grandson of legendary producer D. Rama Naidu and hero of the Telugu hit Leader. The handsome star makes his Hindi film debut playing Joki in DMD. At first I assumed that someone else had dubbed for him. Then I read news reports that he has dubbed for himself. Perhaps then he was too pre-occupied with camouflaging his borderline Telugu accent (which, by the way, I find quite alluring Mr Daggubati). Either way, something’s not quite right here. If anyone felt that Rana didn’t sound Goan enough for DMD, surely an explanation for the uncommon style of speaking could have been gently worked into the script! I mean c’mon, this is a Bollywood where a Katrina Kaif has made a career for herself while playing an NRI or a phoren-returned heroine in film after film just to justify that twang! More’s the pity considering that Rana is a tall, strapping hottie and he certainly looks this part!

So Dum Maaro Dum is a stark tale of what lies beneath a picture postcard setting. It’s violent without being self-indulgently gruesome. I liked the film very much as it unspooled in the first hour. But the inconsistent treatment has ensured that it ends up as a nice film in which the second half doesn’t live up to the promise of the first.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating:                       A (The producer’s rep explains that while the Censor Board didn’t ask for cuts, the I&B Ministry asked for the deletion of the dialogue: “Yahan sharaab sasti, ladkiyan usse bhi sasti aur zindagi toh muft mein hi bik jaati hai.” It has been removed.)

Running time:                        135 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/DumMaaroDum