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 183: SHOOTOUT AT WADALA

Release date:	May 3, 2013
Director:	Sanjay Gupta
Cast: Language:	John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Kangna Ranaut, Ronit Roy, Sonu Sood, Manoj Bajpayee, Mahesh Manjrekar. Appearances by Soni Razdan, Ranjeet, Sunny Leone, Priyanka Chopra, Sophie Choudry Hindi

At one level, Shootout At Wadala is about how a single act of violence can lead to an endless cycle of bloodletting… Nice, but not new in Bollywood, remember? There’s more though. SAW is the story of a gangster’s son who wants to lead an upright life, but is ruined by a corrupt, sold-out system and one policeman’s refusal to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Based on journalist S. Hussain Zaidi’s book Dongri To Dubai: Six Decades of The Mumbai Mafia, the film is about Manohar a.ka. Manya Surve (John Abraham), a dreaded Mumbai don in the 1970s, said to have been the city’s first Hindu ganglord and an educated one at that. Manya of the film is so straight-laced that he won’t cheat in an exam even to help his girlfriend Vidya (Kangna Ranaut). One day, when he is caught in the crossfire between his gangster step-brother and an arch enemy, the police arrest both siblings, ignoring Manya’s pleas of innocence. The young man has just taken his college exams but is so embittered by that experience (a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit) that he turns his back on Vidya, a much-loved mother and the life he’d planned for himself. The year: 1970. The police are battling legendary gangster Haji Mastan when Manya enters the picture. His story (all the way up to a historic real-life police encounter in 1982) is told in flashback through a conversation between him and his bête noir, Inspector Afaaque Baagraan (Anil Kapoor).

My confusion about SAW stems from its schizophrenic gender politics. An “item” song in the film with porn star Sunny Leone features perhaps the most vulgar dance moves we’ve seen in a Hindi film. Sunny (as a sex worker) heaves her humungous, near-bare breasts and thrusts her hips back and forth before the camera with her legs spread out suggestively throughout Laila teri le legi; at one point Manya wraps the girl’s legs around his gyrating hips, as if riding a horse. Whoa! Step aside Mallika Sherawat and Rakhi Sawant! Sunny and John are here!

To be fair though, the song and its lewdness do have a context – realistically speaking, would the real Manya and his favoured prostitutes have bothered with aesthetics? Unlikely. Besides, if this song bows to the male gaze then in later reels SAW acknowledges the female gaze too when a shirtless Manya races through the streets of Mumbai. There is no excuse of context here. This is clearly director Sanjay Gupta’s way of compensating us ladies for patiently sitting through the objectification of Sunny Leone by now objectifying John Abraham for us. Did the real Manya ever charge towards rival gangsters with his top off? No idea. But if there’s a lady in the audience who’s complaining, please raise your hand so that we can deport you?

Then again there’s Babli badmaash hai featuring Priyanka Chopra. It’s interesting that when the “item” girl is a mainstream actress the choreography becomes more sophisticated. Besides, the lyrics – Dil pardaafaash hai / Neeyat aiyyaash hai / Na ban shareef tu / Babli badmaash hai (My heart is bare, my intentions are unbridled, don’t be coy when Babli is a rascal) – place the power in the hands of the woman. The song comes from a sexually assertive woman, unlike Kareena Kapoor’s Main toh tandoori murgi hoon yaar, gatkaale saiyya alcohol se (I’m a tandoori chicken, consume me with alcohol) from last year’s Dabangg 2 which dehumanised the woman and reduced her to a passive object in the hands of the leering men around her.

Interestingly too, SAW features a scene in which Manya and his sidekick Munir (Tusshar Kapoor) actually stand up for the right of a sex worker to say no. When a visitor to the brothel says, Mandi mein randi ki marzi nahin chalti, Manya replies that every woman always has the choice to say no, even if that woman is a prostitute. Full marks to you here, Sanjay Gupta!

But hold on… What kind of schizophrenic film follows up such path-breaking dialogues with a scene where that same Munir rattles off the work he can do for a don, “rape bhi, agar item acchhi hai toh (I’ll rape too, if the woman is hot)”? You may argue that this is a realistic scenario; that a gangster is likely to mouth such words. Two objections milord: (1) This is inconsistent characterisation. Munir of the previous scene does not come across as a guy who’d make a repulsive rape joke; (2) That the film maker intended us to laugh at this comment is clear from the character to whom he assigned the line – Munir is Manya’s sidekick and a bit of a comedian who is lampooned by fellow gang members throughout; and the line is uttered here not matter-of-factly but in a half jestful tone. Oh no, no excuses! For shame, Sanjay Gupta!

Sadly, there comes another scene in which traditional notions of macho-ness and mardaangi are underlined when a policeman says, even a eunuch begins to consider himself a man if you put a gun in his hands. And later, a disturbing sex scene which begins with Manya getting violent with Vidya – he tears at her lips with his teeth and rips her blouse even as she repeatedly says no, no, no…but then, she lovingly melts into his arms, thus perpetuating a notion that Bollywood strongly advocated particularly through the 1970s and ’80s: that when a woman says no she means maybe, when she says maybe she means yes. So was that scene in the mandi thrown in merely to be politically correct? This is both confusing and disturbing.

Yet there is much to recommend in SAW: moving story, sharp dialogues (when not gender prejudiced), neat camerawork and production design, slick action (if you can handle the extreme violence: chopped arms, a man thrown on a bed of firecrackers, etc), top-notch acting. John manages to hold his own against a bunch of first-rate talents and Kangna is back to being the actress who held out so much promise in her early films. But the stand-out performances come from the ever-natural Anil Kapoor (who we hope will never again accept a film like Race 2) and Manoj Bajpayee as Manya’s rival in crime. The background score, drawn from the tune of Babli, is excellent. The song Ae Manya, Manya sun is lovely but John’s facial expressions bely the sadness of the previous scene. This is the problem with all the numbers (the rest are not even as musically alluring)…they arrive abruptly, with no connection to the mood of the preceding scene. It’s as if songs were randomly chucked into the film as an afterthought.

Shootout At Wadala has clearly fictionalised parts of Manya’s life, especially when he crosses paths with the characters modelled on Dawood Ibrahim and his brother (played by Bajpayee and Sonu Sood). Flawed though it may be, the film is entertaining and moving for the most part. The poignancy peaks when Manya’s marks from his college exams are flashed on screen in the end. The waste of a life filled with so much potential is heart-wrenching, to say the least.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	150 minutes

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

REVIEW 156: OMG OH MY GOD!

Release date:	September 28, 2012
Director:	Umesh Shukla
Cast:   Language:	Paresh Rawal, Akshay Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, Govind Namdeo, Mahesh Manjrekar Hindi

 

This is the sort of film I wish I did not have to critique. Its intent and impact are so amazing, that I wish I could pretend it has only pluses and that I didn’t notice any minuses.

Ah well, there’s a job to be done here, but first may I say I had a rollicking time watching OMG Oh My God! It’s insightful, brave, funny and emotional all rolled in one. Just as important, the Central Board of Film Certification’s decision to release it is also a victory for freedom of expression in our country. When Paresh Rawal’s Kanjibhai Mehta asks a religious priest in court, “You call yourself a man of god yet it took just a few provocative statements from me to inflame your passions?” (or words roughly to that effect), he is delivering a slap in the face of every religious fundamentalist in India who has ever threatened or inflicted violence on an artist or an ordinary citizen. The ban on Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and threats to his life, the threats to M.F. Husain’s life and the violence against his property in reaction to his goddess paintings … in Kanjibhai’s question you could read allusions to these and other disgraceful episodes, but OMG makes no direct reference to any of them. It’s a simple story of a businessman whose shop is destroyed in an earthquake. When his insurance claim is rejected because earthquakes fall within the category of “act of god” as listed in his policy’s terms and conditions, a desperate Kanji decides to take god to court. Legal notices are promptly despatched to god’s agents on earth, namely, priests of all religions.

Last year’s Marathi film Deool was a stinging comment on the commercialisation of religion, but OMG goes several steps further by questioning the very existence of god and the need for religion at all. The significance of these films lies in the fact that such questions are rarely asked so pointedly on public platforms in India. Kanjibhai voices views that more social and political commentators should be airing. And he speaks so fearlessly – impertinently, some may say – that you have to admire the entire team of this film for daring to be associated with it, despite the increasing tendency in our country to take to the streets, threaten murder and destroy public property at the mere hint of religious “sentiments” being “hurt”.

OMG is based on the Hindi play Kishen vs Kanhaiya and the Australian film The Man Who Sued God, both of which have been credited (the rights to the film have been duly purchased; the play is written by Bhavesh Mandalia and directed by Umesh Shukla who share the writing credits for OMG; Shukla directed the play and now helms the film). It’s to the credit of the original material and the writers who have adapted it for the Hindi screen that it treads on tricky ground throughout yet manages to do so with finesse; that it is sensible and hilarious by turns without any let-up in its pace, leading to a completely unexpected climax; that while its focus remains the Hindu priesthood, it does not spare the Muslim leadership either and even reserves a couple of potshots for a Christian priest, striking this balance without ever seeming like it’s trying too hard, doing so instead with a flair and polish rarely seen in Bollywood.

I suppose nitpickers may ask why no Sikh priest was shown in the film’s court scenes. I didn’t think of that until I received this silly tweet from a typical troublemaker on Twitter who made this observation about our Censor Board with the sort of ignorance that is the hallmark of bigots, “I don’t think so, they still got balls to clear movie making fun of Mohammad :D”

Listen smart ass  (excuse me for not being polite), watch and understand before commenting; and if you can’t, here’s some spoon-feeding ... In one court scene, Kanjibhai exhorts Hindu priests to use the milk poured on deities to feed starving beggars instead; then tells a Muslim priest that it would be better if the chadars offered by devotees were garments used to clothe the poor; and to the Christian priest he says, wouldn’t those candles lit in church serve a greater purpose if they lit up homes without electricity? He quotes the Gita, Quran and Bible to bolster his case. Of his many blasphemous statements, one is directed at a Muslim neighbour off on a Haj. And the only man of the cloth who speaks up for him is a Hindu. Are you happy, dear troublemaker?

I do have some issues with this film, but they seem so minor when you look at the bigger picture that I’ll dispense with them quickly. First, the production values are not up to the mark, there are too many too-obvious sets in the film, the special effects in God’s introduction scene should have been better and the effort to give his face a halo-like glow are somewhat tacky. Second, the songs are disappointing even though Prabhu Deva and Sonakshi Sinha give us some neat dance moves in the amusingly titled Go go go Govinda. Third, there’s the occasional corny dialogue.

Now forget you read that paragraph, because there’s so much more to OMG than its drawbacks. Paresh Rawal and Mithun Chakraborty deliver brilliant performances, ably supported by excellent co-stars including Akshay Kumar whose arms (well worked out yet not over-muscled) would be enough to turn an atheist into a believer. There’s great on-screen warmth between Paresh and Akshay. Paresh is the focal point of the film while Akshay arrives rather late in the story which in itself makes this such an unconventional Bollywood film. At first I was irritated by Mithun’s effeminate demeanour before I fell off my seat laughing when I realised which real-life guru he’s aping. OMG is a wonderfully irreverent, courageous and life-affirming film that encourages us to be doubting Thomases with the humility to accept answers when we find them. Gorgeously gutsy!

Rating (out of five): **** (includes one full star for sheer courage)

CBFC Rating (India):

U (This disclaimer was carried before the film: “OMG Oh My God! is the journey of the protagonist who discovers his faith through the happenings and occurrences in his life and goes from being a non-believer to a believer. The film is meant for entertainment purposes only and we do not intend to hurt the sentiments of any individual, community, sect or religion. This film is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.”)

Running time:

132 minutes