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Rohan Sippy quite surely has seen some world cinema, and has learnt about a few interesting filming techniques. But seeing his Dum Maro Dum, he seemed akin to a student of literature who might have memorised all the technical aspects about the language, maybe even the grandiloquent words, but has never learnt how to form a cohesive sentence. The film follows the lives of a number of disparate characters – an angry cop (Abhishek Bachchan), a sad musician, a naïve young guy and a self-destructive lady (Bipasha Basu), among others, all brought together by the prevalent underground drug-culture in India’s party-capital, Goa. Bachchan did a good job as the head of the team to clean Goa of its mess, and ends up going into collision-mode with the drug lords. A plethora of twists and turns later, however, the film turned into more of a brainless cat-and-mouse game than an intelligent thriller. For the film to be successful, it was essential for the director to invest time in building the atmosphere and making Goa the symbolic fifth character of the film. Unfortunately for us film goers, that never happened, and so a premise that held a lot of promise, was instead turned into a mindless, hyper-stylised and over-edited series of unrelated montages. And by the way, legendary composer R.D. Burman would surely be turning in his grave listening to the bastardisation of his iconic tribute to the hippy era – the Hare Rama Hare Krishna song that game the movie its name.
Director: Rohan Sippy
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Mystery
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Seeing the presence of Henckel von Donnersmarck’s name during the end credits caused me to wonder – was The Tourist, the movie that I’d just watched, directed by the same man who made a powerful debut with Lives of Others! There’s no denying the movie had the capability to rise above the numerous thrillers that are produced by Hollywood’s assembly-line, and the presence of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in the star-cast really had make me feel that this would turn out to be different. The film started out well, and the scene where Jolie meets Depp on a train through European countryside was both smart and ingenuous. Nonetheless, this story of Depp being thought of as an internationally red-flagged criminal who has stolen around 2 billion dollars from a British gangster, didn’t manage to be anything special. So while Depp finds himself on the run, he surprisingly gets help from Jolie (well, at least the audience wasn’t surprised at that), who used him in the first place to shift attention from herself, and ends with the two falling in love along with a couple of rather ludicrous twists thrown in for good measures – well, the movie sure turned out to be a disappointment given the engaging first half. The gorgeous screen-captures of Paris and Venice, and the presence of these huge stars, might have made our stay in theatre less painful than would have otherwise been.
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Genre: Thriller
Language: English
Country: US
We saw the latest from Tom “Run Lola Run” Tykwer, The International, at a theatre with poor sound quality. This proved to be doubly unfortunate because, in contrast to what we had presumed, it is a verbose thriller with an exceedingly meandering plot. On first glance, the tale of a super-rich bank playing the role of a vital keg in promoting international terrorism and chaos might seem straight out of a Robert Ludlum thriller, and hence ticket to a perfect summer popcorn-churner. Perhaps precisely for that reason, the director tried raising the movie a couple of notches above the daily diet of slick thrillers by adding complex layers of corruption, deceit and conspiracies – that too on a mega-global scale. Unfortunately much of it failed to make sense, and to top that it failed to thrill as well, apart from the bloody Guggenheim shootout scene that is. Naomi Watts, who is compelling as always in the role of an asst. DA, and the polished vistas of places ranging from Berlin to Milan to New York City to Istanbul, are perhaps among the few positives for the movie. Clive Owen, though an Interpol agent, never really seemed capable of kicking the bad guys’ asses, and the loose script too didn’t help Tykwer’s ambitious causes.
Director: Tom Tykwer
Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller
Language: English
Country: US
Post Rang De Basanti the whole of India was looking forward to Rakesh Mehra’s next venture; Rang De Basanti never touched greatness, but what made it special was the director’s clarity of vision and his intent to speak his mind and not please his audience. Delhi 6 (a reference to Delhi's famous Chandni Chowk area), unfortunately, is the very antithesis of the former in its blatant desire to endear itself to its viewers. In an inferior variation of Swades, the movie chronicles an NRI’s return to India out of compulsion only to end up falling in love with the place, the locals, the culture, and not surprisingly, a girl (the lovely Sonam Kapoor). That said the movie is not all bad, it has its moments. The first half – a vibrant splash of colours, images, and the various idiosyncrasies that define a place – is filled with both nostalgia and mild satire, and left me craving for more. The director, however, undid all the good work with a forcefully contrived, overtly didactic, and hopelessly clichéd second half that left me unfulfilled. I was also severely disappointed in that very few scenes were shot on actual locations. Rehman’s energetic score and Abhishek Bachchan’s smart performance were the only saving graces.
Director: Rakesh Omprakash Mehra
Genre: Drama/Social Satire/Slice of Life/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Based on a little known short story by Ian Fleming, Quantum of Solace could have easily become a great spy movie – what with the inner turmoil of an otherwise brilliant agent, and a fair share of megalomaniacs and red hot damsels in distress. Unfortunately, while what the director perhaps wanted to make was an unglamourized spy thriller in the same veins of maybe something like Munich or The Conversation, where the human story is more important than spectacular car chases, the money-crazy monster of Hollywood and big production houses refused to bulge. So instead what we have is a bit of hotch-potch – a little of this and a little of that without one complementing the other. Thankfully, the day was rescued to some extent by Daniel Craig, in his follow-up to Casino Royale. I won’t go into the longest running debate among the aficionados of Double-O-Seven regarding the greatest Bond ever, but suffice it to say that what Craig has managed in doing is quite exceptional. Bond still loves his Martinis, babes and fast cars all right; but in place of the suave, wise-cracking gentleman-agent who could beat all those goons without having a crease develop in his dinner jacket, what we instead have is a bruised and battered spy who’d rather avenge the death of his love than follow procedures in the line of duty.
Director: Marc Forster
Genre: Spy Thriller/Action
Language: English
Country: US
Romeo is Bleeding is an exceedingly violent, over-stylized and distressing modern day noir, starring Gary Oldman, a respected though underrated character actor seen mostly in supporting roles, as the protagonist and the narrator of the story. He is a New York City cop with a lovely wife, a doting mistress and a good job. But he dreams of making big, monetarily that is; so he does dirty jobs for the Russian mafia on the sly in return for fat tips. But then he is asked to “take care of” a Russian over-sexed assassin – a sultry femme fatale who turns out to be more than a handful for him. Things thus take a horrible turn for him and soon he finds his life in complete shambles. Lena Olin, as the seductress is too violent, perverse and thoroughly repelling, and it’s a surprise that any smart, crooked cop with a decent sized brain would fall for her. The plot is engaging, but the tone is too unnecessarily bleak, pungently cynical and hopelessly shallow to be captivating. The only saving grace is Oldman’s brilliant turn as a brooding loner and an amoral anti-hero who realizes his foibles a tad too late. The final scene, too, is well presented; one can only hope that if only things had turned out a little differently (make that a lot) in the remaining movie as well, watching the movie wouldn't have turned out a disappointing experience.
Director: Peter Medak
Genre: Thriller/Post-Noir/Erotic Thriller
Language: English
Country: US
