REVIEW 790: MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

Release date:	January 12, 2024
Director:	Sriram Raghavan
Cast:	Katrina Kaif, Vijay Sethupathi, Sanjay Kapoor, Pari Maheshwari Sharma, Vinay Pathak, Pratima Kannan, Luke Kenny, Cameos: Radhika Apte, Gayathrie Shankar
Language:	2 versions of this film were shot – one Tamil, one Hindi – with different supporting casts. This is a review of the Hindi version.

 

“So this is Christmas / And what have you done?”

These words from the 1971 John Lennon-Yoko Ono song Happy Xmas (War Is Over) flash on the screen as a prelude to the director Sriram Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. They are played in quick succession with a tribute to Shakti Samanta and a teaser featuring the film’s stars Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi. The teaser alerts us to Raghavan’s intent to deceive and reveal in equal measure minus melodrama through this narrative. 

 

Happy Xmas – credited here to Lennon alone – is an introspective carol that “emerged from an era of activism and opposition to the Vietnam War”, as a blog by a Lecturer of International Politics on the University of Liverpool’s website explains. There are no manipulative global superpowers at work in Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. The battle here is familial, resulting in an unexpected alliance. And the director’s treatment is devised as a paean to Samanta, maker of such classic thrillers as Howrah Bridge (1958), China Town (1962) and Kati Patang (1971). 

 

Raghavan is a master of mystery. His filmography includes the stop-in-your-tracks delightful Andhadhun (2018), and his gripping debut feature Ek Hasina Thi (2004). Merry Christmas – an adaptation of the French novel Le Monte-Charge(English title: Bird in a Cage) by Frédéric Dard, with a Hindi script by Raghavan, Arijit Biswas, Pooja Ladha Surti (also the editor) and Anukriti Pandey – is a crime drama aspiring to be a love saga. It is a slow burn that is intriguing in its first hour, but declines after its big reveal. 

 

Since even minor specifics could be spoilers, here is a broad introduction to Merry Christmas’ plot. Kaif plays Maria who runs a bakery in Mumbai. She is married and a mother. Her daughter Annie is mute. Sethupathi’s Albert is returning home to Mumbai after several years, following his mother’s passing. When their paths cross, Albert feels an inexplicable empathy for Maria that goes beyond the appeal of her good looks. His past quickly catches up with him though, so he walks away after a warm encounter. When Albert realises that he is not the only one with a secret, however, he is fascinated and unable to stay away. 

 

Few Hindi directors have explored film noir as persistently as Raghavan has and made it his own. Merry Christmas’ gold-tinged world of warm lighting and shadow-rimmed frames has a furtive quality from the start. Its tone is deceptively understated as Maria and Albert go about their business on what initially seems like a routine evening for two lonely people on the town scoping each other out. Yet Raghavan builds an atmosphere aimed at keeping a viewer’s antennae on alert. 

 

The screen is filled with suggestive imagery that plays with our minds and plays on the traditions of crime fiction: a character who sculpts origami swans, speechless little Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) with the innocent wide eyes, a high-ceilinged apartment in a building with an ornate cage for an elevator, an attractive trinket, a watchful giant teddy bear. Besides, Maria and Albert have an aura of sadness about them, and they’re alone in a big city on Christmas eve, a time usually spent with family and community. Something’s gotta give. Obviously. 

 

The determined refusal to pinpoint the year in which this story is set adds to its inscrutability. 

 

I enjoyed Merry Christmas’ opening hour immensely, the sense of expectation, Kaif’s sweetness, Sethupathi’s extraordinary ability to elevate even stray words and glances into moments of great humour or poignance, the empathetic gaze on Maria in this troubling era of Animals and animosity, the art design, the cinematic references, the vintage tunes complementing Pritam and Daniel B. George’s music, Maria and Albert’s lively dance, and a slimeball played deliciously by Sanjay Kapoor. It is also nice to see a normalised representation of a religious minority that is not often visible in Hindi films these days, and an acknowledgement of the diversity within the community that an earlier era of Hindi cinema restricted to Goans and Anglo-Indians. Albert’s full name is Albert Arogyasami, but he is neither a caricatured Christian nor the stereotyped ‘Madrasi’ that Hindi filmdom was once notorious for. However, after a grand deception is unmasked – I can’t say more than this – the writing and direction get lax, the unplugged holes in the deception become apparent immediately and a glaring giveaway is even allowed to linger by the perpetrator.

 

The understatedness that works in Merry Christmas’ favour through much of the narrative delivers diminishing returns from then on, culminating in a climax with limited impact. What is missing in that final stretch is a magnetic pull between the leads and an urgency in the build-up that was sorely needed for the ending to provide a release. It doesn’t help that Maria’s character remains under-explored in comparison with Albert’s, or that Kaif’s likeability is no match for Sethupathi’s casual brilliance. As a consequence, as the curtain falls, it is possible to read Albert’s motivations and emotion but Maria is still an enigma, so it cannot be said with certainty whether she is driven by anything more than desperation and gratitude. 

 

The last half hour of Merry Christmas feels as if it was left to direct and edit itself and rely on the leading man’s speaking eyes to fill any gaps at that point. 

 

The philosophy behind the film is encapsulated by Albert in this sentence: “Sometimes violence is better than sacrifice.” Ultimately, Merry Christmas suggests that violence inevitably necessitates sacrifice – by someone – but the closing is too loosely handled for the point to be compelling.

 

Merry Christmas succeeds considerably as a thriller before losing its way, but is unable to establish itself as a romance. A pity, because while the going is good, it really is damn good. 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75   

 

Footnote: The credits walk a tightrope with a smartness that made me smile. Kaif’s name comes first in the beginning, Sethupathi’s comes first in the closing scroll, in a nod to their massive stardom in their respective industries, Hindi and Tamil, without succumbing to the gender bias that pervades all Indian film industries or ignoring concerns about Hindi belt supremacism. 

 

Running time:

144 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 274: EK VILLAIN

Release date:	June 27, 2014
Director:	Mohit Suri
Cast: Language:	Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh, Asif Basra, Kamaal R. Khan (haha, yes it’s true), Shaad Randhawa, Remo Fernandes Hindi

Reports are already in that Ek Villain has had an excellent opening at the box-office today. Can’t blame the audience at all – methinks Sidharth Malhotra’s beautiful face is worth the price of not one, but five tickets. Besides, as a gentleman in the multiplex where I watched this film said rather loudly, “Shraddha Kapoor itni cute hai yaar”.

Both stars fare well in this film, but the most striking performance of the lot comes from the actor armed with the most striking character of the trio: Riteish Deshmukh, who continues to do a great disservice to his talent by persistently starring in crass comedies. He is nowhere close to being as menacing or memorable as Prashant Narayanan’s crazed serial killer in director Mohit Suri’s own neatly executed 2011 crime thriller Murder 2, but Riteish in Ek Villain effectively imbues his character with a tricky mix of diffidence and eccentric evil towards the second half.

The film’s trailers are cleverly misleading. The only thing they confirm is that a serial killer is on the prowl in Mumbai, murdering women in gruesome ways. Sidharth plays a powerful gangster’s hitman called Guru, whose troubling past drove him to the underworld in Goa. Guru is a dangerously violent chap, until he meets and falls in love with the perennially optimistic do-gooder Aisha (Shraddha) who is guarding her own little secret. Enter Rakesh (Riteish), a curiously schizophrenic fellow whose penchant for cruelty is masked by his bland exterior.

If you intend to watch Ek Villain, make sure you are in your seat before it starts – the opening scene is crucial to your experience of the film. That being said, the first half is not particularly engaging, and fails to make the lives of the three lead characters worth emotionally investing in. Once the first murder takes place, it raises expectations of a gripping thriller but instead Mohit Suri deliberately decelerates. In addition, there are virtually back-to-back songs that end up over-stretching the romantic scenes, whereas what this film needed was a brisk pace to match the grim atmosphere that the director achieved at the start. Slow motion sequences and lots of close-ups of Sidharth and Shraddha’s faces are used to remind us how likeable and sweet-looking they are and how in love. Hey, we figured that out pretty quickly. C’mon on now, move on!

It is Ek Villain’s good fortune that the second half is the better half of the film. In particular through the entire flashback that takes us back to that first murder, I found myself suddenly involved in the lives of Guru, Aisha and Rakesh, and unexpectedly discovering tears in my eyes. Oh that phone call from a woman who doesn’t know she’s about to die! And that plea she makes for the reason why she wants to live! Both really got me.

There are rumours floating around that Ek Villain is a copy of a Korean film. I’ve not seen the reported original so I can’t confirm the allegation. Once trust is broken though, it’s hard to restore, and I can’t help but remember a long interview I did with Mohit for my book The Adventures Of An Intrepid Film Critic during which he insisted that Murder 2 is NOT a copy of the South Korean film The Chaser although I’d told him upfront that I’d seen the original and agree with the accusation. I ultimately didn’t mention this part of our discussion in The Adventures… since it was not relevant to the theme of the book, but my point is, this is a talented film maker who owes it to himself to win the trust of viewers to whom integrity matters.

We’ve already discussed Riteish’s performance in Ek Villain. Two supporting cast members merit a mention: the lovely Asif Basra as Aisha’s dad, and the child actor playing Rakesh’s kid. The director also effectively harnesses Kamaal R. Khan’s creepy off-screen aura here for his role as a wife-beating misogynist. Once she gets past her initial self-conscious cutesiness in the film, Shraddha shows the same acting chops that were evident in both Luv Ka The End – her first film as a leading lady – and last year’s runaway hit Aashiqui 2 which was also directed by Mohit. Let’s forget the poor kid was in that non-film Teen Patti. Aisha’s encounter with Rakesh could easily have been over-done, but in Shraddha’s eyes we get genuine pain, not melodrama. Unfortunately for her, people like Aisha are a Bollywood cliche, bubbly, ever-smiling, determined not to focus on the personal tragedy behind the façade and sometimes – as in this case – boringly flawless. She also spouts some cheesy philosophical lines. Sidharth, for his part, has a wonderfully sensitive face. In a career spanning just three films (this included), we’ve already seen those eyes tellingly convey hurt, love, affection, amusement and anger. What they haven’t managed yet though is to cross the line from anger to murderous fury, the kind of fury that we’re told Guru feels before he meets Aisha, though we don’t see it in Sidharth’s face.

This is a minor problem compared to the film’s lackadaisical pre-interval pace and use of music. Post-interval though, the songs are more intelligently deployed: a surprisingly soft nightclub number featuring Prachi Desai matches the brooding mood of the film at that point, a contrast to the jaunty – sometimes incongruous – insertions that club songs usually are in Bollywood; the song accompanying the closing credits (Galiyaan, which is the pick of the pleasant-though-not-compelling soundtrack) actually takes forward the poignancy of the story, instead of being one of those standard peppy numbers totally disconnected from the goings-on preceding the rolls.

Apart from a more consistent pace, Ek Villain also needed more detailing and more depth in its characterisation. As an American crime and legal teleserial junkie, I found myself longing for the writers of Criminal Minds and Law and Order: Criminal Intent to have a go at the profiles of both Guru and Rakesh. They’re interesting men who could have been so much more. Without that depth, Ek Villain is a reasonably entertaining but forgettable film.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/4 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	130 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/ekvillain

REVIEW 61: MURDER 2

Release date:	July 8, 2011
Director:	Mohit Suri
Cast:	Emraan Hashmi, Prashant Narayanan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sudhanshu Pandey

Murder 2 has nothing in common with Anurag Basu’s 2004 hit Murder barring Emraan Hashmi, the production house and the title. Mallika Sherawat is out, and in comes Jacqueline Fernandez. While that has translated into the heroine being an insubstantial presence in the film, what’s good is that the murderer in this case is a disturbing creature played by the inimitable Prashant Narayanan.

The film is placed in Goa where an unscrupulous ex-cop Arjun Bhagwat (Hashmi) is now a freelance investigator. When a pimp calls him in to solve a case of disappearing prostitutes, Arjun discovers that there’s a sinister force at play here that the police will not pursue.

Arjun’s scruffy look and unconventional lifestyle suit Emraan Hashmi’s personality. Jacqueline Fernandez as Priya, the model who is in love with him, is yet to develop much mobility in her facial muscles, but in this film her acting skills don’t matter much since her primary job is to look hot and boy oh boy, does she do that well!

But the scene-stealer in Murder 2 is Narayanan playing the film’s woman-hating, cross-dressing, mentally unhinged, amoral, brutal serial killer. The nice part of the characterisation is that the film makes no apologies for this vile human being, nor does it try to earn our sympathy for him with a moving back story. No, Dheeraj Pandey is pure, unadulterated evil. The man actually enjoys finding uncommon implements to hack his victims, and punish them for being what he believes all women are: temptresses. Full stop. Narayanan is a fine actor who appeared in the gangster flick Bhindi Bazaar Inc just last month as the conscienceless, foul-mouthed and ambitious street-kid-turned-don. Earlier in the year he was a mobster in Sudhir Mishra’s Yeh Saali Zindagi. In Murder 2 he gives Dheeraj Pandey an eerie edge, but I do wish Bollywood would give this versatile actor a shot at moving out of the bad guy slot.

Incidentally, Murder 2’s make-up artiste does an interesting job with Narayanan. But I wonder why we were given so many close-ups of the rash on Hashmi’s torso. Anyone heard of concealer? Or better lighting? Or camera work that camouflages flaws?

Since this is a Bhatt production, I don’t suppose there’s any point in mentioning that Murder 2 seems to have been “inspired” by the South Korean film The Chaser. But the negatives in Murder 2 go beyond the producers’ penchant for plagiarism. Arjun and Priya are shown making love in bed and elsewhere, but there is little chemistry between the actors (a contrast to the sparks that flew between Hashmi and Mallika Sherawat in Murder). Their ‘relationship’ seems to be confined to sex and since we discover little else about Priya beyond the fact that she has a stunning body, it’s hard to be moved by her love for Arjun or the fact that he ultimately falls in love with her. His bitterness towards God and the world too appears contrived because the story needed an ex-policeman who would cooperate with his former colleagues when they are being hemmed in by a powerful politician. The hurriedly given explanation for his perennial negativity feels like an afterthought.

With so much to criticise in this film, the surprise is that I still found it entertaining. Much of that has to do with the fact that Mohit Suri and his editor have kept the proceedings taut and pacy. The direction that can be faulted on certain fronts is remarkably deft elsewhere. There is one particularly well-executed moment of secularism woven in – unpreachy, unspoken and moving – when a Muslim prostitute seeks refuge from Dheeraj in a temple manned by a kind Hindu pandit. Equally well handled is this woman’s desperation and the frustrations of the film’s honest policemen that could have fallen prey to over-acting but do not. And a question raised by one of the call girls is particularly significant in a world debating the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

Surprisingly for a Bhatt venture, the songs in Murder 2 are not particularly inspiring. On occasion they are even too loud. But some of the background music is effective, as is the way the serial killer twists the lyrics of Murder’s Bheege hotth tere to suit his purpose.

Murder 2 is a cleverly handled erotic crime thriller with a villain so sneaky that he’s definitely worth your time.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating:                       A without cuts

Running time:                        125 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_2