Movie Review : Raajneeti (2010)

 

3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Early in Raajneeti (“Politics”), a veteran politician worries that the hot-headed young members of his party will screw up everything that he and his allies have worked for their whole lives. And that’s exactly what happens in this political soap opera.

Prithvi (Arjun Rampal) and Veerendra (Manoj Bajpai) are rising stars in a political party headed by Veerendra’s father, Bhanu. Bhanu’s brother, Chandra (Chetan Pandit) — who’s also Prithvi’s father — is his right-hand man. Chandra’s youngest son, Samar (Ranbir Kapoor), returns from studying in New York for his uncle’s birthday party.

When Bhanu suffers a stroke on his birthday, it sets off a power struggle between Prithvi and Veerendra, who sees himself as rightful heir to lead the party, despite his villainous mustache and penchant for satin suits. Handsome Prithvi is more popular, but he’s not such a great guy either. Bhanu recovers enough to name Chandra acting president in the hopes of maintaining party unity. It doesn’t work.

Veerendru tries to consolidate his power by taking under his wing a popular local athlete interested in running for office. The jock, Sooraj (Ajay Devgan), is the adopted son of Chandra’s chauffeur — and also the secret love-child of Chandra’s wife, Bharti (Nikhila Trikha), making him Pritvi & Samar’s older half-brother.

When Veerendru and Sooraj resort to violence to achieve their ambitions, Samar steps in to help his brother (the one he knows about, not the secret half-brother). Aiding him is Bharti’s brother, Brij (Nana Patekar), who’s long been the family’s clean-up man. The violence spirals out of control, ruining the lives of everyone involved.
With so many characters, it’s hard to keep track of everyone in Raajneeti. Oops, I left out two of the women critical to the story. There’s Sarah (Sarah Thompson, who played Eve in the final season of Angel), Samar’s American girlfriend. And there’s Indu (Katrina Kaif), who loves Samar but is forced into a political married to Prithvi by her wealthy father.

The story sounds convoluted, and it is. But the filmmakers take nearly three hours to tell the story, allowing enough time to give each character depth. There are no heroes in Raajneeti, and no one’s really innocent apart from Sarah, and that’s only because she’s an outsider.

I found Sarah’s perspective invaluable in the film. Every Hindi movie I’ve seen on the topic portrays Indian politics as violent and corrupt. It makes me wonder why anyone would want to enter the field, given the high mortality rate of Bollywood politicians. It was nice to have an onscreen avatar acting as shocked by the carnage as I was.

Indu also plays an important role, giving women a voice in a male-dominated arena. While she could’ve acted a few scenes more forcefully, Kaif is competent in her portrayal of a manipulated woman. It’s an ambitious choice for Kaif, and the right one if she’s looking to branch out from comedies.

While no one character dominates the screentime, Raajneeti wouldn’t work without Patekar as Brij. His character is involved in almost every critical decision, even if peripherally. Brij is a clean-up man who never gets his own hands dirty, allowing him to remain in good standing with the constituents. Patekar plays him as cool and controlled, manipulating people with a smile.

Brij is the eye of a storm that spirals out of control in the last 30 minutes of the movie. Subtle intrigues are abandoned for an orgy of violence that strains credulity. An important rule that the old politicians adhered to is to always get someone else to pull the trigger for you. The young upstarts forget that, and an unnecessary bloodbath ensues. It might make for a good movie, but it seems like bad politics.

movie review : I Hate Love Story

The movie is a very predictable love story full of clichés, the very Bollywood-style romances that it aspires to spoof. The film reminded me of an assignment in film school where we had to make a remix sequence. ‘I Hate Luv Storys’ is a bit like that — a montage of scenes and songs from the various Dharma Productions/Yash Raj Films/Sanjay Bhansali love stories.

Like any of these other productions, the packaging is great but what’s different about this story? It’s pointless trying to even go through the nuances of the plot because there isn’t any. A love triangle with several expected twists that finally proves the inevitability of how everyone eventually falls in love no matter how much they hate love stories.

The basic premise: Our heroine loves love stories and has a perfect one of her own till she suddenly decides to fall for our hero who believes in everything but love. Our Casanova hero falls head over heels in love as typically as one can despite having been repulsed by the whole notion of being in love. But the timing is all wrong.

Sonam Kapoor has the same expression throughout the film; she delivers her dialogues in the same nasal monotone whether she is falling out of love with her childhood sweetheart or falling in love with her initially-annoying colleague. At no point in the movie did I find Sonam’s conviction about love credible because her character seems to be more in love with the notion of being in love.

No matter how filmy and implausible it seemed in real life, Madhuri in ‘Dil To Pagal Hai’ or Kajol in ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ were persuasive about their romantic beliefs. Sonam’s character lacks any rationale for either falling in love or staying in love.

Imran Khan and his fat friend are the only saving grace. Imran lacks the easy charm that we saw in his debut film. He puts in too much effort in his performance as if desperate for a hit. His body looks great and he should be awarded for the most graceful slow motion run at airports.

While the film does make you laugh in bits with a few original one-liners, the characters lack conviction. The movie looks more like a spoof than a real love story where at some point you identify with the characters on screen. It doesn’t really tug at the heartstrings or strike the right chords.

movie review : Lamhaa by yahoo fit to post

Rahul Dholakia’s ‘Lamhaa’ is an ambitious attempt, trying to bring to fore the multifaceted conundrum that the Kashmir crisis is. For the most part it is quite a realistic depiction of the various issues that plague Kashmir. The film, probably deliberately, is more like a documentary than a cohesive narrative that unfolds to tell a compelling story.

Kashmiriyat, the catalytic role that ISI plays in the valley, the vested interests of the Indian and Pakistani governments in keeping the issue alive, the plight of Kashmiri pandits, the atrocities by the security personnel, the trials suffered by the widows and orphans caught in the midst of all this and foremost, the systematic brainwashing of young and vulnerable minds to join the ‘holy’ Jehad – Dholakia attempts to address all these issues in this film. Given that Kashmir cannot be understood from a limited perspective and any portrayal of this contentious issue needs a holistic approach, Dholakia fails to provide a comprehensive narrative.

It’s a persuasive tale, how the issue of Kashmir has become more of a business proposition and a story of political one-upmanship for those in power. Caught in the crossfire of political rhetoric and unabated militancy are ordinary lives struggling to come out of the shadow of terror. But somewhere it falls short of becoming that one defining film on Kashmir that tells a complete untold story.

The cast doesn’t disappoint with Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha Basu and Anupam Kher delivering their parts with conviction. Kunal Kapoor is decent except his attempted fiery and provocative speeches that fall flat and sound totally unconvincing and filmy. Some characters with their frightening beards seem like lame stereotypes that we could have done without.

The songs are just thrown in without any attempt to weave it into the narrative. The experimentation with the camera movements and editing didn’t quite seem to have the desired effect; in fact, I found it quite disconcerting initially.

To give him his due, it’s a commendable effort but the climax doesn’t quite pay off. Like I said, in his attempt to address varied issues at the same time, the plot doesn’t quite tie in everything with together at the end. I was left wanting for more and looking for some kind of closure while I watched the end credits on screen.

movie review : Khatta Meetha

I wish I could at least call “Khatta Meetha” a mindless comedy but it isn’t even that. Priyadarshan has thrown in oodles of melodrama and dollops of attempted-morals in a film that is for the most part intended to be a funny political satire. The film has a struggling hero, corrupt elder brothers, sarcastic sisters-in-law, a righteous patriarch and eve-teasing politicians, reminiscent of B-grade Hindi film sagas from the 1970s.
Akshay Kumar is a road construction worker struggling to make it big like his dishonest brothers. Initially it seems like honesty is the only impediment to Akshay’s road ahead but as the film progresses you realize that he is not that honest after all. Then why does he try to reiterate again and again to his elder brothers that they are successful only because they are unscrupulous?

The narrative is all over the place, an item number here, a song sequence there, lots of drama, an attempted suicide, an alleged murder and a brutal death of the villain, and Priyadarshan seems to think his job is done. Where is the finesse with which he made us laugh and cry in “Billu” or the psychological thrill and the seemingly unintended comedy that was there in “Bhool Bhulaiyaa”?
You will manage a few laughs because Akshay’s and Rajpal Yadav’s comic timing is instinctive. But other than that the film seems like a never-ending ordeal. Trisha is a total misfit and her lip-sync seemed off in a number of places. The rest of the cast is the usual ensemble that you see in most of Priyadarshan’s Hindi films. They do a reasonable job considering they can do little to overcome a very bad script.

The film is a remake of the Malayalam political satire, Vellanakalude Naadu (1988) which was a huge success but the problem is something that worked in 1988 has a limited chance of working today unless the director effectively repurposes the original story. It’s a huge letdown from a director who we know is capable of much more.

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