REVIEW 741: DRIVE

Release date:	November 1, 2019
Director:	Tarun Mansukhani
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Jacqueline Fernandez, Boman Irani, Pankaj Tripathi, Vibha Chibber, Sapna Pabbi, Vikramjeet Virk Hindi

So it is here at last: the first direct-to-Netflix release by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. 

Produced by KJo, written and directed by Tarun “Dostana” Mansukhani, starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Jacqueline Fernandez, Drive is a thriller that follows the tried-and-tested pattern of a heist within a heist within a heist. Film industries across the world have explored this genre to fun effect. India’s Hindi film industry a.k.a. Bollywood proved that it has the chops for wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels crime back in 1978 with the iconic Don starring Amitabh Bachchan, more recently with Abbas Mustan’s Race in 2008 and the SRK-Farhan Akhtar Don films in 2006 and 2011.

The very least you would expect after seeing the poster, the credits of Drive and reading its summary is that it would deliver spadefuls of excitement, pretty people in pretty clothes and swish special effects. Well, lower those expectations right away. 

Sure, Rajput and Fernandez look hot in the film, both have tremendously fit bodies, and if you think back on the story, the original concept probably had the potential to become a slick cops-and-robbers drama. At first it does seem like Drive might prove to be an entertainer but the narrative, like the special effects, steadily declines as the film progresses. The SFX are overall so downmarket that it is hard to believe Drive comes to us from Dharma, whose signature for at least two decades has been glossy visuals. 

Not that anything else in the film is of high calibre. Well suited to the SFX are the generic storytelling style, the overall ordinary production quality, inconsistent audio, a stand-out acting loophole and glaring lack of logic that, among other things, translates into Delhi roads – notorious in reality for their traffic jams – obligingly emptying themselves out to accommodate high-speed car races and chases at all times of day and night. 

The reason why Drive is set in India’s capital city is because a robbery is being planned in Rashtrapati Bhavan. The primary players in this game are a group of car racing aficionados, an outsider who infiltrates their inner circle, a criminal known simply as King – you know, like Don in Don – and corrupt bureaucrats. 

The opening race in Drive is reasonably well done, the song ‘n’ dance that follows is kinda nicely choreographed by Adil Shaikh, and Jacqueline Fernandez has some cute moves in it. From then on it is a downhill descent. 

Gaping gaps in the plotline recede into the background in the face of ordinary car chases that routinely look plastic and an embarrassingly low-brow extended climax that feels like the work of an entry-level animation student. Lightning McQueen’s universe appeared more real than the vehicles and roads in several of this film’s scenes. 

Much has been made of the fact that a portion of Drive was filmed in Israel, making it the first Bollywood venture to be shot there. The media has reported that the film was also partly funded by that country’s government. The true mystery here is why the Israeli sarkar thought this film would be a good ad for them in India. Be assured that what Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is to New York City or Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is to Spain, Drive is absolutely not to Tel Aviv. At best the city is treated like the geographical equivalent of an ‘item’ number chucked mindlessly into a bad Bollywood film – it springs up out of the blue and it has no relevance whatsoever to the storyline.

In the face of such mediocrity, analysing the screenplay almost feels pointless. But a job is a job, so consider this. Without giving anything away let us just say the only way the masterplan revealed in the climax of Drive could possibly have worked is if no one in Rashtrapati Bhavan’s entire security department checked a critical character’s ID carefully for several days. 

Granted that this point arises only in retrospect, and granted that this person could have had the world’s top creator of fake IDs backing them, so instead consider this question that comes up quite early in the film. (Some people may consider this paragraph a spoiler) The loot could not have been where it was unless other critical characters managed to easily beat the security system in the Indian President’s residence for what must have been months, if not years. If you have visited Rashtrapati Bhavan and experienced the tight restrictions in place in the complex, you would know how ridiculous this is. How the crooks aced the system is never explained, we are simply expected to accept that they did because we are told so. (Spoiler alert ends)

Or consider this. Person X says in the end that they were expecting to be deceived by Person Y. But in an earlier scene when X realised they had been double-crossed by Y, the facial expression – clearly visible in close-up – is one of shock and not at all “oh well, I knew this was coming”.

Or this. In a key scene in Drive, a quartet of cars zips through an airport runway and the occurrence seems not to be a blip on the radar of Air Traffic Control (ATC), the local police or the news media at that point or for the two months that the story continues. This writing laziness is intentional – having ATC, the police and press notice the breach would have been too much of an inconvenience since it could have meant the kingpins of the gameplan being discovered before the writer wanted them to be, you see. 

Or consider this. Snazzy cars with the words “Delhi Police” emblazoned on them zoom about the city, offering evidence of how little the team of Drive knows the reality of the capital’s ill-equipped force. 

As for the acting, well, Pankaj Tripathi does lend a Pankaj Tripathi touch to his character, but really, how is one to seriously and fairly critique the performances in such a film?

For a moment let us set aside thoughts of the cast though, and Johar, Netflix and Israel. Let us take that moment to mourn the fact that this sub-standard action flick has been made by the same director who gave us Dostana, which, notwithstanding its resemblance to a Hollywood film, was, in its own way, pathbreaking in the Indian social context. From Dostana to Drive is such a fall.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	None
Running time:	119 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/drive-movie-review-sushant-and-jacquelines-prettiness-and-an-under-par-heist-come-wrapped-in-awful-sfx-7588511.html

Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(2019_film)

REVIEW 610: RACE 3

Release date:	June 15, 2018
Director:	Remo D’souza
Cast: Language:	Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Bobby Deol, Daisy Shah, Saqib Saleem, Freddy Daruwalla Hindi

In a ritual that male stars of the Hindi film industry have followed with religious fervour for too long now, Salman Khan and Bobby Deol strip off their shirts in the closing minutes of Race 3 for an extended sequence of hand-to-hand combat. Some directors in recent years have managed to lend heat or humour to this over-familiar cliché, as Ali Abbas Zafar did last year with Tiger Zinda Hai when Khan’s character – hilariously and memorably – gave ISIS the full blast of his naked torso. Remo D’souza’s Race 3 lacks the panache to turn such triteness on its head and/or to keep it still interesting.

In 2008, Saif Ali Khan redefined “debonair” and directors Abbas-Mustan reinvigorated the action thriller genre in Bollywood with Race, in the able company of Bipasha Basu, Anil Kapoor, Akshaye Khanna and others. The film wove double crosses into double crosses into further double crosses in a novel fashion and was justifiably rewarded with massive box-office collections. The surprise element was gone in 2013’s Race 2, but it remained kinda fun albeit forgettable.

Race 3 is an example of a franchise failing to recognise its own strengths and shooting itself in the foot in the bargain.

One Khan’s entry into this money-spinning series resulted in another Khan’s exit. And Abbas-Mustan have been replaced by D’souza (F.A.L.T.U., ABCD: Any Body Can Dance). The loss is the film’s, entirely.

Salman Khan here plays Sikander Singh, nephew of the dubious billionaire business tycoon Shamsher Singh (Anil Kapoor). We are introduced to Sanjana (Daisy Shah) and Suraj (Saqib Saleem) as Shamsher’s twin children who resent the attention and affection he showers on Sikander. Yash (Bobby Deol) enters this explosive family mix as a fond employee, along with a beautiful traitor who goes by the name Jessica (Jacqueline Fernandez). Shamsher leads a life of luxury in the Middle East but has not forgotten his days in his village in Allahabad.

Since this is the Race series, it goes without saying that twists are piled upon twists unrelentingly from start to finish, and in the suspense department, this third instalment does fare better than Race 2 – which was too obviously conscious of its desire to startle the audience at every turn – although it is not a patch on Race 1. The best of Part 3’s mystery elements are not enough compensation though for the dilution of several pluses that made Race what it was.

In the matter of acting, it goes without saying that Salman is no match for Saif. In Race 3, his face appears even more immobile than it has been in his earlier films. That alone might have been excusable since Salman has in recent years made up for what he lacks in the histrionics department with charming self-deprecation and amusing quirks. Not here.

Race 3’s screenplay by Shiraz Ahmed and the dialogues by Ahmed with Kiran Kotrial have been written not with commitment to the story at hand, as much as a deep and abiding commitment to the leading man (whose company has co-produced this film with Tips) and his by now legendary connect with his core fan following – the rest of the audience be damned.

This is never clearer than in the finale when Khan looks at the camera and directly addresses his fans, as has been his wont through most of his career. Khan a.k.a. Sikander makes them a thinly veiled promise that there will be a Race 4 and teases them by refusing to confirm that he will be a part of it. The problem with this device is that it assumes everyone in the hall is a devotee, and effectively excludes the rest.

In a similar scene just moments earlier, Kapoor too confirms that there will be a Race 4 and he will feature in it. Yet, he remains in character as Shamsher while delivering those lines, he does not stare at the camera and the lines are written in such a way that though the intent is clear, they simultaneously also take the story forward. This is the difference between a star and an actor, a star who is playing to the gallery and an actor whose sincerity to his craft extends to immersing himself in his role even in the silliest of works.

Further emphasising this film’s Salmania is a comment about the dispensability of women – whether in big-banner commercial ventures (as producers, directors and analysts have openly said in the past) or in men’s lives is unclear. When Jessica saves Sikander’s neck in Race 3, she asks him: Main nahin hoti toh kya karte (If I weren’t around, what would you have done)? Koi aur hoti (there would have been another woman), he replies without batting an eyelid, giving her a speaking look.

Read: women don’t matter. Yeah, we got that.

Fernandez and Shah are good with their stunts, and it is particularly nice to see Sanjana cocking a snook at those who are cynical about women and action by modifying her tight skirt for a fight scene in which she turns her stilettos – a constraint in such a scenario, you would assume – into a deadly weapon. Sadly, Shah lacks presence and it is exasperating to imagine that D’souza or his producers felt she could equal Basu’s charisma that was such an important part of Race.

Oh wait. I forgot. Women don’t matter?

Race 2 was replete with bombastic dialoguebaazi. Fortunately for Race 3, silly lines like, “Ise dil nahin Dell kholke dikhao (gist: instead of talking so much, show him the video we have on your Dell computer)” that Sanjana tosses at Suraj do not come too often.

The film has been released both in regular 2D and 3D. I watched the 3D version and I found it rewarding in the sense that it had the effect of drawing a viewer into its world while being intermittently shocking, even if the determination to impress in 3D got too glaring twice when Salman throws his sunglasses at the screen, once early on and once towards the end.

Kapoor is the best thing about this film, even though he is constrained by the not-so-imaginative writing and staccato rhythm of the screenplay that follows this pattern from beginning to end: high-adrenaline action, song, action, song, action, song, action, song. That arrangement is especially problematic because the soundtrack is packed with colourless compositions, redeemed only by Selfish with music by Vishal Mishra, sung by Atif Aslam and Iulia Vantur. “Ek baar baby, selfish hoke, apne liye jiyo na (Just once, baby, be selfish and live for yourself),” it goes. I approve of the sentiment.

The Allah duhai hai reprise retains the original robust tune, but much of its impact is watered down by the way songs are used in the film.

For the record, Kapoor looks handsome and immensely dignified with a grey beard and hair. That he is playing his age ends up underlining the fact that 52-going-on-53-year-old Khan is not. Sikander is 35 years old. Seriously? Why?

Race 3 is perhaps Khan’s way of assuring fans that he does not intend to make a habit of films like the gutsy, politically subversive Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) and the thoughtful even if flawed Tubelight (2017).

To be fair to him and to D’souza, some of the whodunnitandwhy in Race 3 is genuinely engaging, but the film needed more where that came from. Besides, the narrative style is tired and ends up adding nothing new to the Race franchise. Everyone and everything looks pretty and is dressed pretty in Race 3. The evidently expensive production design and the visuals by DoP Ayananka Bose – especially that aerial shot of vehicles in a desert looking like ants from high up above – give the film its polish.

You know what would have added depth to that polish? Saif Ali Khan and a better laid out screenplay.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	160 minutes

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

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/race-3-movie-review-salman-khans-generic-conversation-with-his-fans-is-no-match-for-saif-ali-khans-coolth-4515811.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_3