REVIEW 409: DISHOOM

Release date:	July 29, 2016
Director:	Rohit Dhawan
Cast: Language:	John Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Saqib Saleem, Akshaye Khanna, Rahul Dev Hindi

There is an  assumption in most films of the buddy crime/cop genre, that every Jai needs a Veeru, every Munna needs a Circuit and every Detective Inspector Lee needs a wisecracking Detective James Carter who will come through for his partner when push comes to shove.

Director Rohit Dhawan adopts this prototype for the action comedy Dishoom starring his brother Varun Dhawan and John Abraham. Mentioning the relationship between the film’s helmsman and the young actor in the very first paragraph is only fair because although Abraham is the bigger star, it becomes clear at some point that Dishoom is primarily a showcase for Master Dhawan.

Ah well, thankfully he is a charming chap, easy on the eye and always nice to watch ever since he entered our lives in 2012 with Karan Johar’s Student of the Year. In this film he plays the ever-smiling rookie cop Junaid Ansari – an Indian working with the Dubai Police – who finds a reluctant partner in the smouldering, intense, never-smiling Kabir Shergill (Abraham) from a Special Task Force in New Delhi. Kabir has been sent to assist the Dubai Police in saving the star Indian cricketer Viraj Sharma (Saqib Saleem) from his kidnapper/s. Sharma disappeared just days before a crucial India-Pakistan cricket match scheduled to take place in the desert state.

The mystery element in the story is not entirely uninteresting and the humour – when it does rear its head – is effective. Besides, Abraham and Varun have a neat little bromance budding in the film. If Dishoom is not wholly compelling at any point despite all this, it is because too much is left budding and nothing comprehensively explored.

So Varun elicits laughs with his natural comic timing – but there is not enough where that came from. There is some good action, including a helicopter chase of a boat down a large expanse of water, shot lavishly by Ayananka Bose – but there is not enough where that came from. Abraham has a sweetly patronising, fond look in his eyes when he gazes at Varun and the two even get their own mobike-with-a-sidecar in a bow to Sholay – but there is not enough where that male bonding came from either.

It is as if the film’s director and writers (story and screenplay: Rohit himself with Tushar Hiranandani, dialogues: Hussain Dalal) were really kicked about their concept at the start, but lost steam somewhere along the way. This can be the only explanation for why, for instance, they got so many talented supporting artistes in the cast yet no character leaves a lasting impression. Rahul Dev has a fascinating face, but does not get the space he deserves playing the villain’s menacing flunkey in Dishoom. Akshaye Khanna manages to lend notable touches to that villain, but remains a victim of an under-written role. Vijay Raaz makes an inexplicable, just-a-few-minutes-long appearance as an inexplicable person inexplicably called Khabri Chacha. Mona Ambegaonkar – who plays India’s Minister for External Affairs – and her stylist do a rather decent Sushma Swaraj impression, but the minister seems curiously staff-less and entourage-less. And in a film that seeks more from her than merely to cash in on that gorgeous face and stunning body, Jacqueline Fernandez shows us that “ladki mein kuchh toh hai (there’s something about that girl)” as filmwallahs tend to say, including a funny bone that Hindi cinema is yet to explore, but she too operates on the margins of Dishoom.

All of them get less out of this film than Akshay Kumar does in a guest appearance. Playing a character who could easily have been stereotypically camp, Kumar manages to hold back just enough to ensure that he is intentionally over-the-top yet not crude.

The film’s fatal flaw, then, is its failure to persist with any particular idea, concept, theme or thought. There is, for instance, a potentially sweet scene when a bad guy barges into a group of Muslim men at prayer and Junaid stops Kabir from chasing him through the group, saying: “Namaz ki izzat rakh le, khuda hamari rakh lega (Honour the namaz and God will take care of us).” The few seconds of silence that follow are poignant, especially in the context of the Islamophobia pervading the world right now. And then … boom! … something goes wrong, and the entire point is lost, though it is clear that it was not Rohit or his co-writers’ intention to suggest that khuda was not bothered. Team Dishoom, it appears, were unable to sustain their own involvement in the moment.

Even the film’s obvious flag-waving ambitions are erratically executed. It is silly yet amusing when a star Indian cricketer smashes the ball all over a stadium for sixes and fours in an international match, just minutes after he was soundly walloped on a shoulder he had previously dislocated during a game. Amusing because the Saare Jahan Se Achchha playing in the background as he walks on to the field is no doubt meant to emotionally wave aside our powers of reasoning, and so, rather than be irritated, it is possible to chuckle over that scene.

When the Minister utters this line in the film’s opening minutes, “Duniya ke kisi bhi koney mein koi bhi ek Hindustani ko haath nahin laga sakta hai (Let no one dare to harm a hair on the head of any Indian in any corner of the globe),” it holds out the promise of much wolf-whistle-worthy, chest-thumping patriotism, but it is downright ridiculous to witness her addressing the Dubai Police like a condescending Aunty and to see Kabir bulldozing them as though India – not the United States – is the world’s Big Brother.

Half-heartedness pervades every department of the film. And so while the camera delivers some imposing shots of a Morocco mountainside during a bike chase scene, most all interior settings of the film look glaringly fake, particularly that underground den of vice in the fictional country Abudin.

Pritam’s music too is a mixed bag. While Sau tarah ke is infectiously upbeat, Jaaneman aah accompanying the closing credits is embarrassingly tuneless.

That closing track – shot with Varun and guest star Parineeti Chopra – epitomises the film’s problems. Abraham and Fernandez are curiously absent. Who is Dishoom’s protagonist? Is it meant to be a comedy? Is it meant to be an all-out action flick as you might assume from the title? What went wrong with this project is a mystery, but it is sad that the film is less than the sum of its many noteworthy parts.

Rohit Dhawan debuted with the unrelentingly funny Desi Boyz in which he managed to whip up bowlfuls of chemistry between his leading men Akshay Kumar and John Abraham. In Dishoom, Abraham looks as if he switched off halfway through the project as did most of the film’s team.

Result: Dishoom is a sporadically engaging, intermittently funny, yet always insubstantial film.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	124 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/dishoom-review-funny-but-flimsy-john-abraham-varun-dhawan-bromance-2922898.html

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

REVIEW 96: DESI BOYZ

Release date:	November 25, 2011
Director:	Rohit Dhawan
Cast:	Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Chitrangda Singh, Anupam Kher, Bharti Achrekar

If you don’t do as I say, I’ll feel it was a waste that I ruined my figure to give birth to you! It’s not the sort of line you expect to hear from an elderly, tubby, gray-haired Hindi film mother. And that’s precisely why it’s hard not to chuckle when Bharti Achrekar – playing the mata to Akshay Kumar’s Jerry Patel – flings the jibe at her son in Desi Boyz.

Place: London. Year: 2009. Jerry is a loser who does small jobs and takes care of his orphaned nephew Veer while sponging off his MBA friend Nick Mathur (John Abraham). Their world comes apart when Nick loses his job to recession, leaving him with his high-maintenance girlfriend Radhika to worry about while Jerry battles a Social Services department determined to send Veer to foster care. Along comes an offer from a male escort agency, Desi Boyz, whose owner (Sanjay Dutt in a cameo) points out that his is a business that never goes out of business. Jerry has no qualms about the career move with its promise of quick money since he needs to pay Veer’s fees immediately, but Nick’s conscience protests. The film is about how the path they choose affects Nick’s relationship with Radhika and Jerry’s future with Veer.

There’s humour, emotion and drama here, and debutant director Rohit Dhawan (son of veteran David Dhawan) pulls it off for the most part despite his highly flawed screenplay. The first half of the film is especially entertaining, filled with wacky one-liners and pretty people. But over and above everything else, what carries this film through despite its many blemishes is the Akshay Kumar-John Abraham pairing. In Priyadarshan’s Garam Masala in 2005, John was overshadowed by Akshay’s charisma and comic timing. In those days, rumours also abounded about how Akshay would bully directors into cutting down his co-stars’ roles. That was before he began repeating himself so much in comedies that the law of diminishing returns finally kicked in even at the box-office. In Desi Boyz, it’s nice to see a vastly improved John getting equal screen space and matching up well to Akshay who is back to being his naturally funny self.

Am I being a Female Chauvinist Pig for enjoying Desi Boyz? I ask because I remember finding Laaga Chunari Mein Daag regressive with its stance that bechari girls have no option but to turn to prostitution to make money in the big city. But hold on … Desi Boyz does not suggest that men have no choice but to become strippers to support themselves. There’s absolute clarity that Jerry joins the agency because it’s an easy means to make a quick buck during a recession.

I wonder too whether I should feel guilty for not objecting to the unabashed objectification of the men in Desi Boyz. But what the heck, in an industry that has made a habit of objectifying women, why shouldn’t we girlz get to gawk at great-looking boyz with great bodies who happily take off their clothes for us?! Yeah, I love the gusto with which Akshay and John throw themselves into their pole dance and striptease routines. The characterisation does not match their no-holds-barred song-and-dance and facial expressions though – perhaps the film should have admitted that despite the compulsions that drew them to the profession, after a while they did become addicted to the female attention. Problem is, Rohit Dhawan wants to serve us a comedy revolving around male strippers but clearly cringes at the thought of Indian boyz having sex for money. So we are told that Jerry and Nick work on a no-sex-with-the-clients basis, and when Jerry admits to having slept with one lady, it’s portrayed almost as an act of charity! Haha … unintentionally amusing, I say! Likewise, the film takes the conventional route of demanding that the woman should forgive her erring boyfriend; when Radhika (Deepika Padukone) asks Nick if he’d have been able to erase from his mind an image of her standing half naked in a room surrounded by lustful, screaming men, he has no answer. Instead he sends her off on a guilt trip. After all, it is every woman’s duty to pardon her man if he asks nicely enough, right?

There are several other issues I have with Desi Boyz … Radhika seems like an idle character who spends all her time making demands on Nick’s purse and it’s only when I checked the film’s website that I realised she’s an architect, though I don’t recall any architecturebaazi in the film … Jerry cleans up his act in the second half and the woman he falls in love with (Chitrangda Singh) seems not to raise half an eyebrow at his earlier avatar as a stripper! … It beats me why the film pointedly projects 44-year-old Akshay as a man in his early 30s! … There’s something icky and tacky about the way Radhika’s father (Anupam Kher) appears to leer at Nick ... Apart from the lively title track, the rest of Pritam’s songs are redeemed only by the slick picturisation … Random scenes are thrown into the mix that have no connection with the story – like Jerry’s confrontation with a white man who insults Indians. Just because it worked in Akshay’s earlier hit Namastey London, must we repeat the formula without any contextual relevance? … And the film’s ending is silly, abrupt and contradicts the preceding scenes.

But perhaps I’m thinking too much. The truth is that despite these reservations, I had fun watching Desi Boyz. Akshay and John seem to be having such a good time, that their enjoyment is infectious. Frankly, they look more in love with each other than with their respective girlfriends who have little to do beyond look stunning, which Deepika and Chitrangda do very well! So if you’re in a mood to forgive the mindlessness, then go ahead people – make some noise for the desi boyz!

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

CBFC Rating:                       A

Running time:                       117 Minutes

Language:                             Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.desiboyzthefilm.com/