REVIEW 536: RANCHI DIARIES

Release date:	October 13, 2017
Director:	Sattwik Mohanty
Cast: Language:	Taaha Shah, Himansh Kohli, Soundarya Sharma, Jimmy Sheirgill, Satish Kaushik, Pitobash Tripathy, Anupam Kher   Hindi

                                                                                                                   

Ranchi Diaries is meant to be a comic tribute to Ocean’s Eleven, with a bunch of quirky characters who get involved in a bank heist gone wrong. Writer-director Sattwik Mohanty seems to have a sense of humour that he might put to good use some day when he decides to write a proper screenplay rather than this lazily handled assemblage of scenes. I don’t know what it took to rope Jimmy Sheirgill and young Taaha Shah into this project. Maybe it did not take much convincing because these two talented artistes have been struggling long enough to get projects worthy of them.

Sheirgill made his debut in Gulzar’s Maachis back in 1996 and has since been seen in a whole host of films, though only a handful have been deserving of his naturally likeable personality and acting skills. Taaha Shah made his debut in Y-Films’ Luv Ka The End co-starring Shraddha Kapoor in 2011 and has since then hung around on the margins of the industry. He is a good-looking kid with a screen presence, stuck – like his senior Sheirgill – in this meandering mess that aspires to be a film.

The activity here is set in Jagarnathpur in Ranchi where Manish Pandey (played by Himansh Kohli) is a safe breaker waiting for his big break before he can run away with his girlfriend, the ambitious wannabe popstar Guddiyaa Sharma (Soundarya Sharma). Unfortunately for her, she has caught the eye of the local gangster Thakur Ranjhe Pratap Singh (a decidedly uninvolved Anupam Kher in a role that amounts to a guest appearance). Thakur Bhaiyya, as he is popularly known, spends his time leering at her Youtube videos. The only way Guddiyaa can make a career for herself or escape this elderly creep is to run away from that town.

Shah is Pinku, a local hooligan. Sheirgill plays senior cop Lallan Singh. Satish Kaushik is sub-inspector S.N. Chaubey whose most memorable scene involves him farting because he ate too much at a party. And Pitobash, who was so fabulous in 2011’s Shor In The City directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, is wasted here as a Naxal leader with hardly any screen time or lines.

So ya, there is a bank robbery, there are Naxals and there is some tomfoolery going on. At first the accents are funny, as is the stupidity of this entire clueless gang. Soon after the opening scenes though, it becomes apparent that Mohanty is as clueless as his characters and does not know how to proceed further with his concept. So Ranchi Diaries flails its arms about while the editor falls off to sleep on the job and the hapless cast does whatever they can in this whatever-you-wanna-call-it.

Guddiyaa is the brains behind the bank robbery in Ranchi Diaries because, well you know, as the overbearing voiceover tells us: “Har bawaal ke peechhe ek aurat ka haath hai.” (Rough, not literal, translation: behind every major problem, there is a woman.) In a less pointless project, I may have taken the time to join issue with that kind of backward language, but Ranchi Diaries is not even worthy of being argued with. The nicest thing about it is that it is just over one-and-a-half-hours long. Ideally, it should have been a 10-minute short with the song Godfather – which too deserved to be in a better venture – playing in the background.

Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai, ki yeh film na bani hoti toh mujhe aaj subah dedh ghante zyaada sone ko milte. To be fair, Ranchi Diaries is not repulsive or puke-worthy or anything of that sort. It is just one of those thingies that makes you want to ask: why did anyone bother to make this? Seriously, why?

Rating (out of five stars): 0 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	97 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ranchi-diaries-movie-review-jimmy-sheirgill-whatcha-doin-in-this-whatever-you-wanna-call-it-4139201.html

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

REVIEW 469: COMMANDO 2: THE BLACK MONEY TRAIL

Release date:	March 3, 2017
Director:	Deven Bhojani
Cast: Language:	Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Esha Gupta, Freddy Daruwala, Adil Hussain, Satish Kaushik, Shefali Shah, Suhail Nayyar, Thakur Anoop Singh Hindi

It might be natural to assume that the tale of a government-appointed, trigger-happy action junkie on the trail of a murderous, black-money-laundering villain would be a fun ride, especially with His Royal Hotness, His Muscular Majesty Vidyut Jammwal in the driver’s seat.

Jammwal (yes, now with a double “M”) is as good-looking as a man can be. If you watched him on debut playing John Abraham’s bete noir in Force (2011), you probably know that already. As Captain Karanvir Singh Dogra in Commando 2: The Black Money Trail, the character he earlier played in the 2013 film Commando: A One Man Army, he does everything to please a lustful viewer. He executes sleek stunts, repeatedly jumping, spinning, flipping, whirling and twirling his beautiful body through the air. Above all, he wears a ganji in large parts of the film to serve us generous views of his bulky bare arms and shoulders. What more could a hormone-laden viewer ask for?

Finesse in storytelling, perhaps? Hmm, problem alert!

So it goes that India’s Central Government, anxious to show results after the demonetisation exercise, desperately wants to retrieve the crores of black money stashed away in foreign bank accounts and deposit it as largesse in the accounts of the general population at home. The crater-like pothole in its path is the Union Home Minister (Shefali Shah) whose son too has a cache of cash lying abroad. Pretending to work towards achieving the government’s goals, she assembles a crack team of mercenary officials who are at her beck and call. They must travel to Malaysia and arrest Vicky Chadha who is in the business of keeping safe the black money of a large number of corrupt Indians.

Knowing the Minister’s ill intentions, Karan – a trained army commando – sneaks his way into the group. The film is a battle of wits and fists between the honest, patriotic officer who doesn’t mind taking the law into his own hands (when it is for the country, how dare we complain!) and those who would betray the motherland for their personal gain.

Commando 2’s narrative delivers some unexpected twists and turns, but the colours that fill in the outline of the story are weak, amateurishly handled and in the end, amusing in a clumsy effort to play to the gallery. In a film of this sort, aimed at racing pulses rather than thinking minds, it is perhaps pointless to ask why the Home Minister alone is the moving force behind the government’s efforts at retrieving black money from abroad, with the Finance Minister nowhere in sight. But even as the racy action keeps us hooked, it is hard to get past Commando 2’s cliches and loopholes.

Karan & Co zip around Malaysia with such confidence and ease, it would seem that country is in India’s pocket and barely has a police force of its own. Adah Sharma plays Karan's teammate Bhavna Reddy, an irritating encounter specialist who harks back to the old Hindi film stereotype of a south Indian. Bhavna is a double whammy of sorts since she serves as a ditsy, frivolous female sidekick to Jammwal’s grim-as-hell Karan, a sort of female Chris Tucker to every serious white cop in Hollywood history. Besides, the romance between them feels terribly contrived and silly because of the complete lack of chemistry between the two.

Then there is their colleague Zafar, the most awkwardly written, stereotypical ‘good Muslim’ seen in recent years in Hindi cinema, the kind that – in my humble opinion – could only emerge from the pens of writers over-compensating for their deep-rooted suspicion of the community, a suspicion they may possibly not even be conscious of.

The film’s impressive action scenes and pretty hero cannot make up for its limited substance, which matters particularly because the action is not unrelenting. While Karan is bashing up baddies, it is hard to look away from the screen. When he is not, it becomes easy.

Sadly, there is more to Jammwal than that face, body and his fighting skills. Someone give this man a more substantial film, please.

Rating (out of five stars): *

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/commando-2-movie-review-his-royal-hotness-vidyut-jammwal-in-a-super-silly-story-with-super-action-3313374.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_2:_The_Black_Money_Trail

REVIEW 401: UDTA PUNJAB

Release date:	June 17, 2016
Director:	Abhishek Chaubey
Cast: Language:	Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh, Satish Kaushik Hindi

Motherfucker, sisterfucker, cock, balls, nuts, asshole, madarchod, behenchod, fucker…

Once you get past the shock value of hearing those words in more than one language repeatedly on screen – yes, even more than in numerous Bollywood gangster flicks of the past 10-15 years – you will realise that all this is nothing more than what a visitor to many parts of north India will hear in casual conversations. It is hard to understand why the Central Board of Film Certification a.k.a. the Censor Board would get so antsy about invectives that are used more often than the definite article in real life; or why these abuses, which are uttered without beeps by various characters, are inexplicably asterisked out in subtitles in this primarily Punjabi, partly Hindi film.

Here is the actual objection that Punjab’s politicians and their Censor Board allies would have had: writer-director Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab minces no words about a fact that the state’s netas have been anxious to keep under wraps for years now. Punjab is facing a serious drug epidemic; common sense suggests it is impossible for so many addictive substances to be so easily available to so many people, without the cooperation of the police and the political class.

Now that we have got that out of the way, let us focus on the real problem with Udta Punjab. Sure it is great that Chaubey has chosen to highlight a pressing social calamity, but the erratic narrative style ultimately dilutes what should have been a hard-hitting, revelatory film, in the end reducing the tragedy of drugs and drug addiction to a farce.

“Ever since I saw her, I no longer feel the need to take cocaine. After a long time, a tune has begun playing in my head after I set eyes on her. I’ve got my mojo back.” – This, in a nutshell, is how Punjab-based musician Tommy Singh describes his reaction to a Bihari field worker.

Is this some kind of joke?

A self-destructive drug addict has been ‘cured’ of substance abuse because he saw a pretty face?

There is more in this film where that came from. The first half of Udta Punjab is consistently grim, deeply disturbing and, appropriately, almost docu-feature-like. The second half though is intermittently farcical and ultimately makes a mockery of the concerns it set out to raise.

Three threads play out simultaneously in Udta Punjab. One involves the artiste formerly known as Tejender Singh, now Tommy (Shahid Kapoor), whose talent and success are fuelled by his consumption of multiple drugs. The second revolves around the young sportswoman-turned-peasant (Alia Bhatt) who gets entrenched in the drug mafia when she tries to sell a stolen cache. The third is about Dr Preet Sahni (Kareena Kapoor Khan) who encounters assistant sub-inspector Sartaj Singh (Diljit Dosanjh) when his brother becomes her patient.

At first, Udta Punjab proves to be a well-researched, sharply observed, much-needed, no-holds-barred account of the extent to which the state is mired in drugs and drug-related corruption. Even if you think you know, it is shocking to see the extent of unscrupulousness of those willing to ruin an entire population and even their own families for financial gain.

The intricate web of powerful folk and minions involved in this conscienceless trade is gasp-inducing, to say the least. It is also unnerving to see the soul-shattering effect that drugs can have on individuals who might otherwise have been humans with dignity.

So far so good. Then though, as if another director or multiple directors have taken over, the film unravels. Udta Punjab’s Achilles heel proves to be an inexplicable compulsion to assign a romance to each major mainstream star in the cast. The acting too is surprisingly patchy.

In fact, this film might be a good case study to help students understand that fine acting is rarely possible without the right chemistry between an actor, a director and a script. This can be the only explanation for why Shahid – whose stupendous performance in Haider (2014) remains fresh in the memory – is convincing in the first half but goes all goggle-eyed and almost comical once he apparently gets over his love for coke and sets out to help a stranger; or why the usually dependable Kareena here seems not to know when to wipe the twinkle out of her eyes.

Besides, there is no spark at all between her and the man in whom she appears to develop a romantic interest. As a result, that entire blossoming ‘relationship’ is awkwardly handled and appears contrived. Their younger co-star, Alia Bhatt, comes off better for the most part.

Likewise, Amit Trivedi’s music is as pleasing to the ear as always – especially the foot-stomping title track – but every good song is not good enough to be stuffed into a film. Ikk kudi, for instance, is well sung by Shahid Mallya, nice as a standalone number but maudlin in this context and completely out of sync with Udta Punjab’s initial tone.  

It is a mystery why this film was allowed to come undone despite the tremendously gifted individuals involved and the extreme poignancy plus conviction of the first half. To watch a woman drugged into sexual submission, to hear her captors assure a potential rapist that “she is well trained” and will therefore not attack him, to witness the depths to which drug-addled brains will fall in their desperation for a fix is chilling beyond description.

After all this, then, to have a character suggest that he has recovered from his addiction because he fell for a woman is infuriatingly irresponsible; to see the film switch between heartbreak and the male protagonist’s serio-comic behaviour is confusing. 

It is hard to believe that this uneven treatment of a grave issue has come to us from the director who delivered Vidya Balan to us in all her electrifying glory in the otherwise mixed bag that was Ishqiya (2010), from the man who gave us the genteel Dedh Ishqiya (2014) starring Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Huma Qureshi.

How could you, Abhishek Chaubey?

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	148 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/udta-punjab-review-uneven-treatment-reduces-this-film-to-a-near-farce-2840198.html

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