REVIEW 734: WAR

Release date:	October 2, 2019
Director:	Siddharth Anand
Cast: Language:	Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Vaani Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Anupriya Goenka, Soni Razdan, Arif Zakaria Hindi

It is a good time to be a woman Bollywood viewer. No, revise that to woman, man and anyone else who likes hot-looking dudes. Because we live in an era when we know without question that if a film stars Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff, then irrespective of how the screenplay pans out, it will deliver pay-off in the form of dance jugalbandis between these two, thrilling physical stunts and at least one of them shedding his shirt to flash a perfectly worked out torso. 

And so it is with War helmed by Siddharth Anand whose directorial credits include Salaam Namaste, Ta Ra Rum Pum, Bachna Ae Haseeno, Anjaana Anjaani and Bang Bang. 

Dance duet in War featuring the male leads: check. To the song Jai Jai Shivshankar.

Thrilling stunts: check. From start to finish. 

Shirt removal: check. At 11.38 a.m. on my watch, during a 9 a.m. show. Yes, I measured the wait. Plus, if women are your preferred sex, then FYI the first shot of Vaani Kapoor in the film has her in a two-piece swimsuit. And throughout the young lady’s scenes, the tailoring department is sparing in its use of fabric for her.

Don’t judge me. When you invest time and money in a film, and it turns out to be deeply problematic, a viewer is compelled to eke out a return on investment. And if you are going, “Hawww, how can you call yourself a feminist and talk like that?”, may I request you to click on this hyperlink? 

War is in some ways an exciting action thriller starring Tiger Shroff as Khalid Rahmani, an Army officer assigned to nab his former mentor, Kabir (Hrithik Roshan), who has now inexplicably gone rogue. On the road to their final confrontation, there are high-speed chases, bloody fisticuffs, impossible acrobatics, impressive gadgets, pretty men and women, stunning locales in Italy, Portugal, Australia, India and elsewhere, and some well-conceived twists. One twist can be seen coming from a distance, but the rest are admittedly unpredictable. One character’s questionable actions seem to have been completely forgotten in the end, but for the most part the screenplay remains consistent. Despite War’s evidently large budget, at least three sequences look plastic and pretending to have been shot on location, but even this is forgivable because the overall visual content is breathtaking. My pick of cinematographer Benjamin Jasper’s frames is a night-time view of a Delhi Metro train whizzing past this city’s famed giant Hanuman statue – the Metro is now a Bollywood staple but no one has shot it quite like this yet. 

The overall excitement in the screenplay compensates for these flaws and the inordinately loud background score, especially if you are in an indulgent mood having accepted that in most departments War is conventional Bollywood. This is the sort of film in which Vaani Kapoor’s introduction comes in a stereotypical song and dance passage highlighting her looks while Kabir gazes at her, because what else is a heroine for but to be looked at, loved and provide a motivation for the hero’s actions rather than being herself in the thick of things? This is the sort of film in which a rambunctious, colourful song and dance routine on elaborate sets follows right after an emotionally intense scene because a certain kind of Bollywood cinema wants to be in a position to tell the viewer that isme action hai, drama hai, comedy hai, emoshun hai, naach-gaana hai aur romance bhi, and narrative rationale be damned. War is the sort of film in which, right in the middle of a bone-crunching battle amidst ruins in Tikrit, Kabir and Khalid pause for a spot of dialoguebaazi, which is of course silly but also amusing in the way commercial Indian films of any language tend to be when they pointedly ask viewers not to take them seriously. 

All in all then, War could have been a suspenseful, eyecatching, entertaining ride. But for its politics. Behind the guns, gloss and glamour, what this film is is a painfully condescending ode to Muslim loyalty to our vatan, an ode that is particularly cynical and offensive considering that the past five years have been marked by unprecedented Islamophobia in India.

There was a time when Hindi cinema was replete with positive stereotypes of Muslims, and liberal commentators (Muslim and non-Muslim) should be held to account for not pointing out that excessively syrupy portrayals of a particular community – the golden-hearted fakir, the golden-hearted tawaif, the golden-hearted all-sacrificing friend or stranger – was also a form of othering that needed to be called out. They failed to recognise that glowing stereotypes are very likely to have been over-compensation for closeted prejudice. The turn of the century brought in a steady trickle of films in which Muslims were thankfully portrayed as regular people, good, bad and ugly. But in the past five years, as open expressions of hatred have become increasingly socially acceptable, Bollywood has cashed in on prevailing Islamophobia with an equally steady trickle of tacky, historically dishonest films such as Padmaavat, Kesari and Kalank, or even the more polished but just as insidious Batla House. War does not fall into the same category as these four aforementioned films. Weirdly enough, the team of War seems to mean well. But the writing (story by producer Aditya Chopra and Anand himself, screenplay by Shridhar Raghavan and Anand) operates on the “unn logon ke beech bhi kuchh achhe log hotey hai” (there are some good people among them too) attitude that one gets from fence-sitting majoritarian bigots in the real world. 

Messrs Chopra, Anand and Raghavan, if you think you were doing India’s already beleaguered Muslim community a good turn with War, please step back for a moment, take a deep breath, give yourself some distance from it and maybe, just maybe, you may realise how patronising your film is.

Khalid Rahmani is the character being put through an agni pariksha in the film. Some may argue that the denouement serves the purpose of holding a mirror up to a cynical audience, reminding viewers of their own prejudice. It does not work that way though because the film itself reeks of a loyalty test. 

Hrithik Roshan is the film’s greatest asset. He is gorgeous, the salt and pepper look suits his gracefully aging face beautifully, and despite occasional over-wrought emotional histrionics he does a decent acting job. But the nasal, throaty dialogue delivery that has been his signature so far is so overdone here that it is sometimes hard to decipher the lines he speaks. 

Tiger Shroff is an excellent dancer, has a fabulous body and an overall likeable screen presence, but acting is not his talent. In a film where he spends most of his time bashing up people, that might have been tolerable if it were not for his laboured attempt at pronouncing Urdu words. What was the diction coach doing?  

Vaani Kapoor has a limited role but her Naina gets one of the film’s most promising lines. Words to this effect: “Not every Indian is a soldier, not every Indian is out to save the country. Some of us are just fighting to give our little child a simple, good life. These are the battles being fought by ordinary Indians.” Kapoor is effective to the extent that she can be in a small role, but Naina’s proposition remains unexplored. 

All the film’s pluses and minuses fade into the background though in the face of its (unwittingly?) troubling politics. Khalid is a metaphor for India’s Muslim community, and when one person at one point offers what he sees as proof of the young man’s patriotism followed by “Isse bada saboot kya ho sakta hai uski vatanparasti ka?” (What greater proof can there be of his devotion to the nation?), the condescension just shoots through the roof. 

“The war is still on,” says a character in the closing moments. Take his word for it: there will be a sequel. Next time, Team War, stick with the mindlessness and skip the misplaced, poorly thought out profundities, please?

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	156 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/war-movie-review-hrithik-tiger-starrer-runs-a-loyalty-test-for-muslims-under-cover-of-an-exciting-action-drama-7440501.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(2019_film)

REVIEW 203: LOOTERA

Release date:	July 5, 2013
Director:	Vikramaditya Motwane
Cast: Language:	Sonakshi Sinha, Ranveer Singh, Vikrant Massey, Adil Hussain, Divya Dutta, Arif Zakaria Hindi

As I sit down to write this review, there’s a feeling of warmth and happiness and sadness wafting around the heart, the urge to cry a bit and smile a bit more. It’s all the effect of Vikramaditya Motwane’s little love poem, Lootera. The story is very loosely inspired by (and duly credited to) American writer O. Henry’s beautiful short The Last Leaf, familiar to many Indians since it’s been part of English literature textbooks in schools. That’s only an element in the tale at hand though. Lootera takes us to 1953 West Bengal where Pakhi Roychoudhury lives with her zamindar father. One day they are visited by a government archaeologist called Varun Srivastav who wishes to excavate around the family temple. Pakhi and Varun are drawn to each other but he cannot make a commitment to her for reasons he can’t reveal. Separated by cruel compulsions, they come back into each other’s lives under circumstances that would test even long-time lovers.

Frankly, if I’d read the screenplay, Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha would not have automatically come to mind to play a tortured couple from the 1950s. He, after all, is best-known as Band Baaja Baaraat’s wonderfully OTT Bittoo, and in Ladies vs Ricky Bahl was just a more urbane extension of BBB’s binness-man. Could he possibly be subdued? She has so far played a pretty appendage to male stars in a string of big films riding on the hero’s name. Could she possibly be an equal partner? It takes a director with vision to know the answer to those questions could be yes, and both actors live up to the faith reposed in them. Sonakshi pulls off a Pakhi who is spirited yet vulnerable, educated yet sheltered enough to naively ask what the government will do with her family’s lands, without the crutch of loudness that has characterised her films so far. Ranveer faces a tougher challenge. Despite his shorter filmography, he has played more impactful characters than Sonakshi so far. To put Bittoo and Ricky out of our minds is not easy, but he manages that with his Varun. At first it feels like he’s using an old actors’ ploy, just staring into space and allowing us to read whatever we wish in his eyes… then you realise, that’s the nature of Varun: stoic, with yearning simmering below the impassive surface, that fire-below-the-ice flashing forth in scenes like the one in which he wrestles with her to give her an injection she so desperately needs but does not want from his hands. There’s an intense chemistry between them that finds subtle expression until they consummate the relationship. And though in 2013 it’s slightly irritating to see sex scenes in which either star seems to have stipulated that they won’t kiss, or at least kiss much, their old-world romance until then is enchanting.

Lootera’s strong supporting cast is led by Bengali actor Barun Chanda who brings alive the confusion of a kindly old man unable to understand the need for an end to the zamindari system. TV star Vikrant Massey makes his big screen debut with an excellent performance as Varun’s close friend and an incorrigible Dev Anand fan-cum-mimic. Dear directors of Johnny Lever films, THIS is how it’s done!

Elevating their work to a different level altogether is Lootera’s technical finesse. The colour and fire of Manikpur in the first half and the bleaker beauty of Dalhousie, where Lootera later travels, are stunning. Cinematographer Mahendra Shetty’s loving frames never once dwarf the film’s characters or their emotions… whether it’s a forlorn Varun walking down a desolate road as snow falls, or Pakhi seated alone on a bench while the yellow-red-and-orange leaves on a tree blaze in the background. The production design team recreates aristocratic households that are tranquil, even reclusive, but not in visible financial decline, with an eye for detail that enriches the film (I so want that ceiling pankha in the haveli in Manikpur!). All this would have been nothing though without the film’s startlingly detailed sound design (conversations in whispers, a grating asthmatic cough), and the breathtaking jugalbandi between musician Amit Trivedi and lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya supplemented by a handful of classic film songs playing on the radio.

With Motwane at the helm, what this adds up to is a simple-yet-complex story well told. Motwane debuted with Udaan, which was about a troubled teenager and his abusive father. Lovely though it was, there were portions of Udaan where it felt like it was being needlessly slowed down to achieve a pre-determined pace. No such complaints about Lootera. The director juxtaposes the languorous lifestyle of a rich and much-loved daughter of a doting – and very obviously liberal – parent against the quiet desperation of a boy who has always known struggle both financially and emotionally. There’s neither over-statement nor under-statement here, just a resounding matter-of-factness.

The screenplay is filled with references to folklore, cinema, history. There’s even an edge-of-the-seat chase unpredictably thrown in. The atmospherics are marvellous. If I have a grievance, it is against the element drawn directly from O. Henry. Behrman in the original story was a failed artist who had yet to paint anything close to the masterpiece he kept claiming he would. Varun’s association with paint-and-canvas though is tenuous, which makes this film’s climax seem slightly contrived in contrast with the very poignant source material. This though does not alter the fact that Lootera is a masterful film. Zest and verve of the kind we get in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani are what Bollywood romances usually aim for these days. Lootera is different. It’s reflective, gentle, lyrical and reads like a letter to our hearts.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	142 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

FOOTNOTES:

(1) For the benefit of those who’ve not read it yet, I managed to locate O. Henry’s The Last Leaf  online: http://www.online-literature.com/donne/1303/

(2) Since the film’s trailer was released, Amit Trivedi has faced accusations from some quarters that the background music in the teaser is copied from the 2011 Hollywood film One Day. When you hear the two trailers, the charge does seem valid, but having now heard the portion of the OST in Lootera from which those bars have been drawn for the teaser, I’m not so sure any more. In the meantime, reacting to the charge on the film blog moifightclub in March, Motwane wrote: “Ok, to clarify – The music of the Lootera teaser trailer hasn’t been copied from One Day. The theme is sourced from a small musical bit composed by Amit Trivedi for a song that’s in the film, which we decided to expand and turn into a full fledged theme for the trailer. Unfortunately it ends up sounding a lot like One Day but I assure you that it’s coincidental.
When you (eventually) hear the song you will understand and see where the theme was born… I’m hoping this clarifies things somewhat, at least from my end…”

Like I said, I’m posting youtube links here to both the musical compositions in question and leaving you to decide. Let me know what you think:
(a) We Had Today by Rachel Portman from the OST of One Day starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZNwIxHiA1M
(b) The Lootera trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaNoRbUabzg

Lootera poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/looteraofficialpage  

REVIEW 133: JANNAT 2

Release date:	May 4, 2012
Director:	Kunal Deshmukh
Cast:	Emraan Hashmi, Randeep Hooda, Esha Gupta, Manish Chaudhary, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Arif Zakaria

A friend mentioned the other day that she’d just realised she has so far not seen an Emraan Hashmi film. Not surprisingly though, many of her favourite Hindi film songs from the past few years have featured this least acknowledged of Bollywood’s reigning stars.

It’s a given then, but it merits a mention … as in the case of every Emraan Hashmi-starrer, there’s plenty of hummable music to be had in Jannat 2, a film about the nation’s flourishing illegal arms trade. Emraan plays a small-time gun runner in Delhi who ends up becoming a police informer. Somewhere along the way, he falls in love with a woman and decides he wants to clean up his act. Let it be stated for the record that this film is not a sequel to Jannat which was released in 2008.

Jannat 2 starts off in quite an entertaining fashion but fizzles out through the second half. Some of this has to do with the fact that it’s too obvious in its effort to be clever, possibly aiming at the style of the 2010 gangster film Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai starring Emraan and Ajay Devgn that hit the jackpot at the box office with its 1970s-Bollywood-style dialoguebaazi. We get an early indicator of Jannat 2’s pretensions with the name of its hero: Sonu Dilli KKC (kutti kameeni cheez). Such subtlety!

Still, there’s interesting chemistry between Emraan and Randeep Hooda playing ACP Pratap Raghuvanshi who virtually blackmails the small-time crook into becoming a police informer. Their love-hate relationship could have carried this film through, if it weren’t for the under-written, under-acted asides in Jannat 2 that fail to draw us in.

So there’s Manish Chaudhary playing the big gun in the gun trade who remains nothing more than a trying-too-hard-to-be-menacing presence with really strange motivations. His is a small role that could be excused, but there’s no overlooking Dr Jhanvi who is running away from her past even as she runs a charitable clinic where Sonu first meets her. The lack of sparks between the two and the utter predictability of their relationship graph make the film’s romantic track decidedly dull. It’s also hard to empathise with this woman when the writer/director’s treatment of the character and actress Esha Gupta’s acting limitations reduce Jhanvi to nothing more than a showpiece. Yeah, so we know that she has flawless skin, a fabulous figure and (don’t hate me for saying this but) she looks like Angelina Jolie … So what?! Making matters worse is the placement of the love songs in the story and the completely unimaginative settings of these songs. The ending may have been heart-wrenching if Esha could act, but since she just about gets by in that department, the final portion comes across as overly stretched in a desperate attempt to wring tears out of the audience.

But Jannat 2 is not a hopeless case either. It features some action and chase scenes that made me sit up and take notice. It’s also nice to see a deserving actor like Randeep Hooda being given substantial roles in two mainstream films in quick succession (last year he had Sahib Biwi aur Gangster). Emraan too is convincing as the rascal with a heart. In fact, the two leading men are so good together that I found myself wishing Sonu Dilli had fallen in love with ACP Pratap instead of Dr Jhanvi! When these gentlemen are not sharing screen space, one of Jannat 2’s more moving moments comes from Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub in a small but impactful role. Ayyub had earlier played Jessica Lal’s killer in No One Killed Jessica and the hero’s friend in Mere Brother ki Dulhan.

I don’t see myself ever making the effort to watch this film a second time, but despite its many flaws, it’s only fair to say that Jannat 2 is a mildly entertaining even if unmemorable film.

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

CBFC Rating:                       A

Running Time:                      133 minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Jannat2OfficialMovie