REVIEW 228: BOSS

Release date:	October 16, 2013
Director:	Anthony D’souza
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Shiv Pandit, Aditi Rao Hydari, Mithun Chakraborty, Ronit Roy, Parikshit Sahni, Danny Denzongpa. Guest stars: Sonakshi Sinha, Shakti Kapoor, Prabhu Deva, Yo Yo Honey Singh Hindi

Cleverly-crafted mindlessness can be so much fun. Boss is mindless all right, but cleverly crafted it is not. Over and above everything else, it is designed as a vehicle for its megastar hero, his trademark swagger, his looks, his agility… you get the picture. Plot matters little in such films, but for the record, this is it: a teenager called Surya is disowned by his father (Mithun Chakraborty) for acts of violence that were not his fault. Surya is taken in by the kind-hearted gangster Big Boss (Danny Denzongpa) and 15 years later we meet him as the old man’s comrade-in-arms, known to the world as Boss (Akshay Kumar). His bête noir is the corrupt ACP Ayushman Thakur (Ronit Roy) whose sister Ankita (Aditi Rao Hydari) falls for Boss’ brother Shiv (Shiv Pandit) though Ayushman wants her to marry a minister’s loser son.

Never mind Akshay’s distractingly over-gelled hair or the fact that this nicely-fit 46-year-old actor is trying to pass off as a man in his early 30s in this film; we’ve got bigger problems here. Many Bollywood buffs have lamented The Curse Of The Second Half that has afflicted so many Hindi films in recent years. In Boss, the situation is reversed. It’s first half is littered with PJs-trying-desperately-to-sound-smart and action-trying-desperately-to-look-cool, and all the film’s genuinely comical and suspenseful scenes come in the second half. There’s one particularly hilarious scene involving Shiv reading text off Boss’ various body parts. And while the rest of the film’s songs are strangely noisy and tuneless (yes including the much-hyped title track featuring Akshay mounted on an all-gold Mercedes!), two remixes save the day. The Tamil superhit Appadi pode has been rewritten as the tad-noisy-yet-fun Hum na chhode; and Har kisi ko nahin milta yahan pyaar zindagi mein filmed memorably on Sridevi and Feroz Khan in 1986’s Jaanbaaz, is first filmed here on Shiv-Ankita and runs a second time with Boss and Sonakshi (Sonakshi Sinha) right at the end – it’s equally enjoyable both times.

What Sonakshi is doing in this film is a big question. Although Bollywood is shockingly male dominated, none of today’s other reigning male superstars relegates women to the insignificance accorded to most heroines of Akshay and Salman Khan’s films. In The World According To Akshay-Salman, women are meant to be pretty and/or protected, romanced and danced with, but nothing more. Boss takes its male interpretation of the world to a different level altogether by dispensing with a heroine completely, reducing what Bollywood traditionally calls the “female love interest” to nothing but an “item girl”. Sonakshi initially appears in the film at a party where she dances to Party all night while singer Yo Yo Honey Singh leers at her and a crowd of bra-top-clad gori women. Then she disappears to resurface in the finale song. Having proved in Lootera that you are capable of so much more, why would you reduce yourself to being a glamorous nobody in a film, Ms Sinha?

To be fair, this treatment is meted out not just to women, but to everyone else in the film except Mithun Chakraborty, Danny Denzongpa and Ronit Roy. A fantastic character actor like Mukesh Tiwari gets a few seconds on screen. Comedian Sanjay Mishra gets a few minutes of nothingness. Aditi Rao Hydari, who sparkled in Yeh Saali Zindagi and London Paris New York, is relegated to the role of a sweet face and a hot bod (underline that!) in a bikini. Poor Shiv Pandit from Shaitan, handsome and talented though he is, is often treated like an extra in Boss even though he plays a key role. Nowhere is the centrality of Akshay and the marginality of the rest of the cast emphasised more than in Hum na chhode in which Shiv is present in the scene but the spotlight rests throughout on Akshay’s Boss dancing wildly surrounded by an army of women. Then suddenly as the song ends, Shiv is once again awkwardly plonked next to Boss to dance energetically for a few seconds.

Early in the film, Ayushman tells a man: “Maut se kyun bhaag raha hai re? Maut ko log yu hi badnaam karte hai. Takleef toh zindagi deti hai.” A filmi type like me could live off such lines but writers Farhad-Sajid struggle to sustain the tone. They even start repeating themselves after a few scenes. Boss has pretensions to intellectual depth with the action shifting from Delhi to Kurukshetra and Boss being likened to Arjun, but again Farhad-Sajid can’t pull it off.

At his best, Akshay Kumar has an arresting screen presence and a flair for the action-comedy mix. We get glimpses of that man in the second half of this film, but it’s hard to fully enjoy a star when he becomes overly conscious of his charisma and his indulgent fans. He is not the only one. Too many recent solo-hero action-comedy flicks have suffered from this problem. They’ve even begun to resemble each other. Where does Rowdy Rathore end and Khiladi 786 begin? Where does Dabangg end and Ready begin? In a stark reminder of Dabangg, Boss even features a climactic fight in which Ayushman rips off his baniyaan, to which gesture Boss responds by tearing open his kurta. I’m not sure what profound meaning those moves have, though I suppose I shouldn’t grumble since both actors have wonderfully toned bodies without being over-muscled. Okay then, that complaint is withdrawn, Milord! The rest still stand.  

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A (despite some extremely violent scenes)
Running time:	2 hours 24 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_(2013_Hindi_film)

POLL 2: ANDAZ APNA APNA VS AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI VS PHATA POSTER NIKHLA HERO

Dear Readers,

It’s time to announce the results of the second poll on my blog. This one was pegged on the release of Rajkumar Santoshi’s Phata Poster Nikhla Hero starring Shahid Kapoor and Ileana D’Cruz. 

The question I asked was:

WHICH OF THESE COMEDIES BY DIRECTOR RAJKUMAR SANTOSHI DO YOU LIKE THE MOST?

Here’s how you voted:

76% of you voted for Andaz Apna Apna as the best of the three films listed. AAA, for those of you who are too young to recall, was released in 1994 and starred Aamir Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Salman Khan and Raveena Tandon.

15.5% voted for Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani, the Katrina Kaif-Ranbir Kapoor-starrer. 

8.5% of you voted for Phata Poster Nikhla Hero.

Some of you pointed out last time that my poll-related posts will be incomplete unless I tell you how I myself would have voted in the poll. Fair enough. Here’s your answer:

My first choice: Andaz Apna Apna – I find myself laughing even now when I catch snatches of that film. I also can’t help but wonder if any Hindi film director will ever again manage to get Salman-Aamir or for that matter any of the two Khans together in one film.

My second choice: Phata Poster Nikhla Hero – Yeah yeah, I know some of you want to shoot me for this, but what can I say? I enjoyed PPNH. It slowed down in the second half but for the most part I found it funny, I thought Shahid was a delight, his versatility was enjoyable plus it was clean.

My third choice: Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani – I’m not in love with this film. From the collections of APKGK and PPNH, it’s clear that a much larger section of the audience embraced the former. Well, I must beg to disagree. This film was nice in places, the songs were lovely, I did enjoy it’s deliberately stage-sets-like look and of course as always Katrina Kaif & Ranbir Kapoor were easy on the eye, but it didn’t keep me engaged throughout.

So it turns out that with PPNH and APKGK I differ from voters on this blog, but I’m totally with the majority view about AAA.

Incidentally, this blog post made me ask myself: what’s my all-time favourite No. 1 Hindi film comedy? Such questions are always hard to answer because “all-time” is such a long time, but I do know that the first film coming to mind the moment I hear the question is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Every single time I watch excerpts of the film I die laughing and then have to be born again. Oh for a film maker who could give us such quality once again! Sigh!

Signing off now. The next poll is already up - check the right-hand-side panel on this blog. Do vote. But first, here's a tip: like I always tell my students, READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY! :)

Warm regards,

Anna

Photographs courtesy: (a) The Wikipedia pages of Andaz Apna Apna and Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani (b) Phata Poster Nikhla Hero courtesy bollywoodtrade.com

REVIEW 227: BESHARAM

Release date:	October 3, 2013
Director:	Abhinav Singh Kashyap
Cast: Language:	Ranbir Kapoor, Pallavi Sharda, Neetu Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Amitosh Nagpal, Jaaved Jaaferi Hindi

Besharam reminded me of the experience of watching Salaam-e-Ishq. Was this unfortunately elongated multi-starrer really the work of the man who’d made the delightful Kal Ho Na Ho, I wondered? The contrast between KHNH and director Nikhil Advani’s other films is a lesson for this industry which fails to acknowledge that the best films are ones in which a team clicks.

Besharam’s director Abhinav Singh Kashyap earlier made Dabangg, which catapulted Salman Khan from being the darling of his own massive following to a star even non-Salmaniacs fell for. Dabangg was produced by the hero’s brother Arbaaz who went on to direct Dabangg 2 after a bitter parting of ways with Abhinav. Salman was on fire in Dabangg. In Dabangg 2 he was repeating himself. So what was missing? Abhinav? Now Abhinav’s directorial venture Besharam brings together for the first time the superstar-of-the-moment Ranbir Kapoor with his actor parents Neetu and Rishi. We’ve seen the Kapoors shine individually in other films; we’ve seen Abhinav shine with Dabangg. So what’s missing here? Salman and Arbaaz?

Point is, film making is teamwork and clearly the right team has not fallen into place for Besharam. The film starts off in an enjoyable fashion. Babli, played by Ranbir, is a smooth-as-butter car thief who works with his friend Titu (Amitosh Nagpal). The two are fun together and Ranbir looks spiffing. Then Babli falls for Tara Sharma (Pallavi Sharda) and everything goes downhill. Pallavi is an attractive woman with a spark that may one day be better used. Here, however, two issues emerge with her entry: (1) there’s zero electricity between her and Ranbir (2) the minute her character is introduced, Besharam metamorphoses into one of those pre-2000s Hindi films in which the hero repeatedly misbehaved with the heroine, the script implied that female disinterest is usually a sham, and her acquiescence to his aggressive overtures was deemed inevitable since stalking was projected as proof of true love that the woman was bound to recognise and reciprocate some day. As in so many old films (remember Dil?), the girl in Besharam is shown to do mean things so that the audience may dislike her while sympathising with the male aggressor. An early dialogue is designed to damn her in the eyes of the film’s male viewers when she makes it clear she will only fall for a man of a higher station. Truth is, Besharam is a sophisticated Raanjhanaa. Ranbir’s good looks induce in us a reluctance to dislike Babli’s antics. And I say “sophisticated” because unlike Kundan from Raanjhanaa who slashes his wrists, roughs up women and drives his scooter into the Ganga with Zoya riding pillion, Babli is not physically violent. Instead he is offensively pushy, and convinced that if he wants Tara then his interest in her must over-ride her objections to his persistent pursuit of her.

In fact, the men in this film are at no point held responsible for their sins. Babli justifies his choice of profession by pointing out that as an orphan he had no other option. The attitude is glaring though in the marriage of Inspector Chulbul Chautala (Rishi) and Head Constable Bulbul Chautala (Neetu), on whose watch Babli commits some of his thefts. Bulbul constantly insults her husband for their childlessness, questions his mardaangi, and goads him to take bribes so he can better their lives and make up for his failure to make her a mother. Of course we can’t help but consider her a bitch; of course we can’t help but pity bechara Chulbul who is forced into corruption by that horrible wife. It’s a gender equation that’s been reiterated to us ever since we first heard the story of how Eve tempted Adam to bite the forbidden apple, thus destroying the idyll the world had been till then. When Chulbul vanquishes the villains and earns his wife’s admiration in the climactic scene, the hilarity can’t mask the stink of traditional notions of masculinity being reinforced. It’s a measure of the senior Kapoors’ incredible charm that much of this regressive talk ends up sounding humorous. This though is what makes Besharam dangerous – it strives to lull us into an acceptance of its medievalism.

Besharam, then, is a mixed bag of goods. It is very funny at the start but after a while the laughs come only in spurts. It is disturbing, backward, charmless and cliched whenever Babli and Tara are together. Sure it’s comical-despite-being-retrograde in scenes featuring the sparkling seniors but the two of them disappear for large swathes of the film. In fact, Babli, Chulbul and Bulbul don’t share much screen space, which makes you wonder why the casting of the three Kapoors was made the film’s marketing USP. The villain of Besharam is a poorly developed character called Bhim Singh Chandel (Jaaved Jaaferi), a hawala operator with whom Babli has dealings. Babli’s friend Titu is relegated to the sidelines after some interesting early scenes. There’s also a half-baked addendum in the form of an orphanage to which Babli donates all his ill-gotten earnings – once again, you see, this rapscallion can hardly be blamed for his actions since he’s so saintly as to donate bad money to a good cause. Worst of all, there are too many songs in the film, and even Ranbir’s amazing agility can’t redeem the mediocre music. In the end though, when he dances with Rishi and Neetu to a number (a tuneless one) intended as a tribute to Mom and Dad, it’s impossible not to smile at the reminder of their signature dance moves from their youth, it’s hard not to notice Rishi’s endearing personality or Neetu’s enviable hotness at 55. Sadly, by then it’s too late for Besharam.  

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	2 hours 18 minutes (courtesy pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besharam_(2013_film)