REVIEW 725: SAAHO

Release date:	August 30, 2019
Director:	Sujeeth
Cast: Language:	Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi, Prakash Belawadi, Arun Vijay, Chunky Panday, Mahesh Manjrekar, Lal, Tinnu Anand, Jackie Shroff, Vennela Kishore, Murali Sharma Saaho was simultaneously shot in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. This is a review of the Hindi version.

Prabhas is a pretty boy and a giant of a man, the sort of hunk with a face so innocent that he looks like he does not realise quite how hot he is or the effect he has on our hormones as we watch him, a face also pleading not guilty to violence committed by his body against bad guys in films.

There are few things more attractive in this world than a person who is not overly aware of their beauty. This charming aspect of Prabhas’ personality is diluted though in a film obsessed with its leading man’s many positive physical attributes. And so we get Prabhas captured in a long shot as an imposing solitary figure leaning languidly against a car, Prabhas standing Batman-like atop a skyscraper looking out on the world, Prabhas shot from a low angle stretching his arms out as he is framed against snow-covered mountains, Prabhas’ monumental muscles on display as he bathes, Prabhas’ face in close up, Prabhas’ face in extreme close-up – any closer and the camera would have pierced him.

To be fair to cinematographer Madhie, this would have been the brief. Saaho is, after all, a film defined by visual over-statement. In leading lady Shraddha Kapoor’s introductory scene, we get an extreme extreme close-up of one of her eyes. And she too is treated more like a mannequin than a human being by the camera throughout.

This, in totality, is what writer-director Sujeeth’s Saaho is: an over-indulgent, over-stylised film in which looks have been prioritised over substance, swagger over script.

The plot, for what it is worth, is about internecine rivalry in a business empire that one man describes as the “world’s most powerful crime syndicate”. When the chief of the Roy Group (Jackie Shroff) is killed, the battle for his position is fought between a whole troop of characters played by Mandira Bedi, Arun Vijay, Chunky Panday, Mahesh Manjrekar, Lal and Tinnu Anand. As they scramble across the world in search of a black box that is the key to godknowswhat, a troop of others including the police are hot on their heels. Among those in pursuit are characters played by Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Vennela Kishore, Murali Sharma and Prakash Belawadi.

Please don’t ask me who is who, who is aligned with who, or what specific purpose that black box was meant to serve. I lost interest somewhere in the first half when it became clear that this uninspired script packed with a multitude of uninteresting twists was just an excuse to flash highfalutin gadgets, SFX, stunts and Prabhas at us.

The writing recycles a zillion tropes from a zillion ‘mass entertainers’ of the sort that continue to find favour with male megastars across Indian film industries from Prabhas to Rajinikanth, Salman Khan to Mammootty and Vijay.

Among Saaho’s library of clichés is the heroine who is given a serious job and then trivialised by the hero, her real purpose in the project being to fall in love with him, be loved by him, look glamorous and feature in a couple of song ‘n’ dance routines. Shraddha Kapoor’s cop Amritha Nair even gets to fall on the floor on her back in a shootout while Prabhas’ Ashok falls on top of her, they gaze at each other, breathe heavily and simultaneously deal with the life-and-death situation around them. Gawd! Done to death in commercial cinema across the world! Can we retire it forever? Puhleeease?

More clichés, these ones peculiar to the Indian cinemascape. Amritha sheds her smart work attire to slip into a teeny weeny shimmery outfit for a nightclub song – she is undercover, of course. And then there is that long romantic number for which she wears flowy dresses and poses around in grand natural locations while he poses around with her. The only such number I remember liking in recent years is Gerua from the Hindi film Dilwale (2015) because, the formula notwithstanding, that song was to die for and the SRK-Kajol chemistry is worth dying and being resurrected for. The music of Saaho, on the other hand, is insipid. And Prabhas and Kapoor have zero sparks between them. They are, in fact, so cold together, that when they first declare their love for each other, I burst out laughing.

The two also share a kiss at one point that would put an iceberg to shame.

As bland as their pairing is the acting of the entire cast. Mandira Bedi is the only one who gets to break from the rest when she overacts till kingdom come on discovering the film’s final big reveal.

The problem is not that that secret in the end can be seen coming from a mile. The problem is that it is, by then, just impossible to care.

Prabhas is one of Telugu cinema’s biggest stars. He is known nationwide for playing the title character in Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali: The Conclusion, the Tollywood ventures (released in several languages) that rank among India’s top 5 all-time greatest box-office hits. Saaho is his pitch to make a post-Baahubali all-India splash again. The film was shot simultaneously in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. Malayalam and Kannada dubbed versions have also been released. Whatever the Baahubali films’ flaws may have been, the first one was pathbreaking in its use of technology in the Indian scenario and neither of the two can be accused of being run-of-the-mill. With the world now at his feet, I cannot imagine why Prabhas signed up for a film as generic and dull as Saaho.

The only film more boring than this that I have seen this year is the Malayalam disaster Mikhael starring Nivin Pauly. Saaho and Mikhael make last year’s Hindi film Race 3 look shiny and innovative in comparison.

In the unending hours between the beginning and the end of Saaho, across locations in India and abroad, villains say stupid things in low voices, Prabhas’ character does things that we are told are impressive, there are fights and chases, bodies are battered, men in winged armoured suits fly through the air, mobikes zip down expressways and cars explode. A lot of it is very high tech and clearly very expensive. At the end of the day though, what we get is not a film but a little boy showing off his toys to his playmates.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	171 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/saaho-movie-review-prabhas-picks-a-generic-masala-mix-to-make-a-post-baahubali-all-india-splash-yawn-7254931.html

Visuals courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/SaahoTheMovie/

REVIEW 700: SHURUAAT KA TWIST

Release date:	May 31, 2019
Directors:	Praveen Fernandes, Hanish Kalia, Heena Dsouza, Sanjiv Kishinchandani, Avalokita, Gaurav Mehra
Cast: Language:	Neena Gupta, Chunky Panday, Amit Sial, Lalit Behl, Pramod Pathak, Shahriyar Atai, Kamil Shaikh, Delnaaz Irani, Merenla Imsong, Veera Fauzia Saxena, Anurita Jha, Saurabh Goyal, Mohit Chauhan, Preeti Hansraj Sharma Hindi

Shuruaat Ka Twist (The Twist at the Start) is an anthology of six short films, its distinctive feature being that the directors are all debutants who have been mentored by Bollywood stalwarts. This of course makes it stand apart from other compilations by the industry such as Bombay Talkies and Lust Stories, which have drawn attention for getting top-ranking, blockbuster-making feature directors like Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar to dabble in this experimental space.

Shuruaat Ka Twist’s mentor list is a roll call of some of Bollywood’s top shots though: Raj Kumar Gupta (No One Killed Jessica, Raid), Vikramaditya Motwane (Udaan, Lootera), Rajkumar Hirani (the Munnabhai series, 3 Idiots) and Amit V. Masurkar (Newton).

The anthology begins with a very short short titled Tap Tap by Praveen Fernandes starring Chunky Panday as an out-of-work musician desperately in search of inspiration and finding it in an unexpected place. Tap Tap is faithful to the overall theme spelt out in the title, delivering an unexpected twist in the end. This is clever, concise, sharp and consequently fun fare. It also builds a solid case for producers to cast the underrated Panday in more roles and to back Fernandes for a full-length film.

Next comes Khauff by Hanish Kalia, which stars Amit Sial as a man seeking medical help for an inexplicable phobia: he stays awake every night fearing that he will die. Pramod Pathak plays his therapist. This mini movie falls in the psychological thriller genre, and at its mid-point is just the sort of film about which those of us who consider ourselves “serious film buffs” tend to get cocky and start prematurely crying, “predictable!” Be patient, oh thou cynic: it is not.  Far from it.

Sial has been a consistent performer in Bollywood but has not so far been rewarded with the screen space he deserves. Here in Khauff he does well as an enigmatic, apparently tormented soul. And Kalia’s direction offers an apt lesson to his seniors who have, in the past decade, assumed that the route to frightening an audience is a high-decibel background score, grating sound effects and sudden camera movements. Khauff is genuinely scary and its sound design by Shajith Koyeri and Savitha Nambrath is superlative. Like Tap Tap, it is smart, small and entertaining.

From here on though, Shuruaat Ka Twist becomes uneven.

Adi Sonal by Heena Dsouza has a warm moment of female bonding in the end, of the sort that we do not see often enough in mainstream Hindi cinema, which prefers to dip into social stereotypes like the evil saas harassing her bahu and the evil bahu torturing her old saas-sasur. That scene brought to mind another rare Hindi film older-woman-younger-woman equation from a few years back: a mother-in-law (Tanvi Azmi) offering a listening ear to a daughter-in-law (Priyanka Chopra) whose heart has been broken by her unfaithful husband. Read: Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani.

Neena Gupta in Adi Sonal is the matriarch of a joint family in which the male head (Lalit Behl) does nothing all day but demand to be served, and the pressure of work leads to some tension among the women who, despite that, share an underlying unspoken understanding between them. Dsouza is effective in capturing the drudgery of their existence, the patriarchal nature of traditional marriages and joint families, and the terror that domestic violence brings.

That said, Adi Sonal feels stretched, especially coming as it does right after the clipped pace of Tap Tap and Khauff, and the writing of the other two women characters is not as comprehensive as it is with Gupta’s character and her suffering younger female relative. Its flaws notwithstanding, the uncommon empathy for women made me curious to see what Dsouza might do next.

Bhaskar Calling by Sanjiv Kishinchandani is a complete departure from the tone of the remaining five shorts. This one does not have any pretensions to great intellectual depth, in fact it pointedly – and thankfully – refuses to be a profound comment on the loneliness and helplessness of the elderly.

Shahriyar Atai is a hoot as an ageing Parsi gentleman home alone when he receives a visit from a housing loan officer (Kamil Shaikh) while his daughter (Delnaaz Irani) is away at work. To be honest, halfway through I kinda sorta figured what the old chap was up to, but whatever! I had a good laugh watching Bhaskar Calling.

Guththi (The Knot) by Avalokita is the film that most resembles in tone a work by the director’s mentor. Amit V. Masurkar’s calling card today is Newton, but before he made that film, there was a lovely, conversation-heavy, hilarious cum ruminative but unfortunately under-noticed gem called Sulemani Keeda. At first the conversations between the two flatmates played by Merenla Imsong and Veera Fauzia Saxena are nice because of how real they feel. Guththi brings home the extreme closeness that can develop between two very different individuals in a sprawling metropolis, their lives far removed from a conventional family situation. It is also a melancholic reminder of how much we are compelled to give up when we make choices we are keen on.

Despite its promising subjects, Guththi sags after a while. Still, Avalokita is another talent worth exploring further.

Aside: Misspellings in film credits are infuriating. The director’s name appears twice, first immediately after Guththi and then in the rolling credits right at the end of the anthology. So is it Avalokita or Avlokita?

The closing film in Shuruaat Ka Twist is the most self-indulgent of the lot and irritatingly gimmicky. Gaurav Mehra’s Guddu features Anurita Jha as a youngster trying to escape a marriage her father is forcing her into. The climax is a call for open-mindedness towards every kind of love in this world, but by treating a sensitive issue as a mere tool to draw a gasp from the audience rather than exploring it with any degree of understanding, Mehra ends up trivialising it.

Guddu is also the most technically iffy short in this half dozen. The continuity issues in a scene in which the leads, Guddu and Nishant (Saurabh Goyal), sit chatting in a vehicle should have been reason enough to chop this one out of the set. The car door on the passenger side is, in successive shots, shown open, closed, open and closed. It boggles the mind that such inefficiency passed muster in a film with so many leading lights attached to it.

Guddu’s ineptitude pulls down the entire anthology, coming as it does right at the end. Tap Tap and Khauff’s polish, the poignance of Adi Sonal and the merriment in Bhaskar Calling merited a better companion than this one. Still, as such film collections go, four out of six is pretty impressive.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	142 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/shuruaat-ka-twist-movie-review-neena-gupta-and-chunky-panday-join-a-likeable-cast-in-an-uneven-anthology-6735791.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/ShuruaatKaTwist/