Kurban (2009) -- [1.0/5.0]

If you want to “Kurbaan” your time, energy and money on Dharma Production (Karan Johar Camp) go and watch this film. If you have anything better to do, please do that instead.

“All the Muslims are not terrorists but all the terrorists are Muslims” this is a stigma which every new born child born in Muslim religion has to face in today’s world. What this film does… it encourages such a stigma! Seriously, the people who do not have deep understanding of political and social problems of minors should stay away from making films on them.

Why do I feel so negative about the film? Reasons as follows:

The promos of the film say “some love stories have blood on them.” Any one who is expecting a good love story with a back drop of political situations such as “Roja”; modify your expectations. This film is anything but a love story.

It’s a story of a girl Avantika who is a professor of psychology at Delhi University. She gets cheated into a marriage by a charming colleague Ehsaan Khan. He marries her because he wants to move to NY with her. In New York she discovers how he is involved in terrorist activities and that’s pretty much it. I don’t know if there was any more story in the film.

Viewers Can’t Digest:
The screenplay of the film had so many flaws that I don’t even know where should I start from -

• Avantika is supposedly a professor; she is an independent person with a mind of her own. But when one of her neighbours comes to her for help (and all she asks her to do was to give a call to her friend Rehana and inform her that she is in terrible danger) Avantika waits till the evening when her husband comes back from work and asks him what she should do! Dhaa! I mean she should have gathered some help for this woman Salma by now, but no, she doesn’t do anything!!
• Then Avantika comes to know that some of her neighbors are planning to bomb a plane. She also knows that a girl who she has met once named Rehana was about to board this plane. She calls Rehana to tell her that she should not board the plane but could not get her as her cell phone is switched off… hellooooo… would any person with even normal intelligence level would not dial 911 (in US) if he/she has such information. I do not understand what Avantika is trying to do? Does she want to tell Rehana that “see master-mind, I don’t care if there are lots of casualties as this plane is going to be bombed, but you get off the plane??” If she had the option of saving all the lives why was she giving a personal call to Rehana?
• Ehsaan and his group spare Avantika’s life. But why? If Ehsaan was the master-mind and that’s why he lets her live then how come he doesn’t know when Wahid (Om Puri) puts a bomb in her purse (pre climax). On the other hand if Wahid was the master-mind, then why would he kill Hussain’s wife Salma and not Ehsaan’s wife when both of them have same information?
• There is a scene in which one of the terrorist Hussain kills an NYPD guy quite impulsively when the guy had asked him to show him his papers. Terrorists are probably not that impulsive people. We are not taking about petty criminals here.
• When Hussain gets killed Ehsaan suggests Wahid to hire Riyaaz in Hussain’s place. There is no background check of Riyaaz. There is no formal training, nothing. Even if they would have googled his name they might have found a few references linking him to “Iraq War News coverage”.
• Riyaaz, Rehana’s boyfriend gets the message of Avantika after Rehana’s death. Now for heaven’s sake at least he should have rushed to police with this very strong evidence that he has found against the people who planned this attack. But what he does in the film? He rather chooses to play FBI and goes after these terrorists all by himself.
• He goes and plays an angry Muslim in front of Ehsaan who takes him in his gang to plant another bomb in Subways. Till very recent past Hindi films used to be bad copies of Hollywood films, now they have started to make bad copies of their own films, have we not seen the same things just a few months before in the film “New York”?
• Ehsaan is supposedly a very intelligent (one of the FBI agent says he is capable of planning something as big as 9/11). But in the entire film all we see as part of Ehsaan’s planning is such juvenile way of operation which is inferior to even a school kid.
• People don’t assign a 5 day old recruit for the most critical work even in office situation whereas we are talking about terrorist attacks here.
• He is planning a Subway blast with other neighbors. He includes a novice whom he met in his class to carry out part of his “mission”. Riyaaz is given 42nd Street subway blast mission (which is definitely the most important spot). But he doesn’t know the entire plan.
• Wahid’s wife tells Avantika how Ehsaan joined Jihaad because his wife and son were killed by “Inn goro ke bombs” in Pakistan. Now help me to remember, when did America dropped bombs on Pakistan? May be that was the wish fantasy of the writer!
• Wahid’s wife also tells how one of her six years nephews got injured by bombarding and he used to cry and beg for death. Finally, Wahid mercy killed him! If the child was suffering parents had to take him for a surgery. They are NOT supposed to kill him because he was screaming all night!!!
• The highly promoted backless scene of between Kareena and Saif comes when Avantika wants to get information out from her husband’s drawers. He keeps the map of his plan in his drawer. All his wife has to do to get this map was to seduce him in her bed and give him “a good time” so he dozes off. She goes down and takes out all the details of the blast from his drawers!! Buzz!! Were we not taking about super intelligent terrorists here??? (My husband doesn’t even keep his office documents in open drawers!!)
• When Riyaaz comes to know about the entire operation he calls an FBI agent…Finally! Now we expect him to tell the agent all about the “mission”, right? No, he asks him to meet him the next day alone in a church? Yes, don’t get shocked. Why he wanted the agent alone? I have no idea. Why he could not have called him before? OK, Wahid had taken his cell phone. But if he gets enough privacy to meet the agent alone I am sure he gets enough privacy to find a telephone booth and could have told the agent about the places of the blast on phone itself.
• The police department finds a death body. They manage to reconstruct the graphic image of her face. Then they put her pictures as “missing” at Subways. Give me a break! She is not missing, she is dead. Why would police mislead people like that?
• Now due to these circumstances Wahid decides to prepone the Subway blast. See in the film the planting of a bomb is portrayed as one of the easiest tasks, so don’t even ask that question “why they didn’t need any preparation for this preponing! “
• On the day of the blast when Riyaaz is in the train with the bag full of bombs (what has he decided to do, God only knows!) one of his colleagues meets him and says “Hi” to him. Riyaaz refuses to recognize him (as he fears Ehsaan and Wahid would suspect him if he will say a “Hi” to this guy!) and that’s how Ehsaan comes to know that Riyaaz is a news reporter. So till now Ehsaan has not done any background check of a guy whom he has included in his high profile terrorist group with very confidential information…but Oh! We forgot such confidentiality is NEVER shown in the film, Oh right…
• Riyaaz shoots Wahid, Wahid tells Ehsaan that there is a part of this “super intelligent” plan which even Ehsaan is not aware of and that is “even Avantika has a bomb in her purse (without her information, of course) and she would be bombing Times Square. If Wahid didn’t tell about this to Ehsaan earlier, why he is telling him about it now, again God knows…
• Ehsaan goes after Riyaaz who gives him a lecture on “True Islam” and Ehsaan’s heart changes. He asks Riyaaz to take the help of police and save Avantika. Finally, Riyaaz calls police, who does their level best to save the damage but thanks to Riyaaz and his intelligent investigation (on his own) they can not completely avoid the damages and two targets are bombed successfully.
• Ehsaan manages to save Avantika by defusing the bomb she was carrying.
• The least I was expecting from a film on international terrorism and the involvement of Muslim community in it is to see an unbiased point of view. This film just encourages the general belief that Muslims cannot be trusted. Avantika’s father tells in the beginning that he is not very happy with marrying his daughter to a Muslim… in the flow of this particular film… how right he was! I have no idea what the film maker tried to say. Educated Muslims (a professor in this case) are shown to be such shabby terrorist, which is not exactly the picture. All Muslims Are Not Terrorists!

Every thing aside, I have a real problem with this film and all the films of this genre that portrays a problem without any understanding of where the shoe hurts. It’s definitely not a joke to live a dignified life as an Islam follower in today’s world. And I guess this kind of film promotes the general misbelieves about Muslims. It’s a wrong film with badly screwed up central message. If people don’t understand something they should not talk about it. At least not on such a big platform!

I really hope that Yash Rajs and Johars will go back to their Raj-Simran stories and leave the real issues for people who read news papers beyond page 3. And I am really scared for the writers of this film who might be marked for assassination considering the kind of humiliation they have done to the 9/11 planners by comparing them to Ehsaan Khan!

All the Best (2009) -- [1.0/5.0]

Farce is a form of comedy, but when a majority of films falls into this category only, it’s a concern for me as a film viewer. “All the Best” is an out and out farcical film.

The film starts with a loud score with title sequence. After which we see that a couple Veer (Fardeen Khan) and Vidya (Mugdha Godse) receives some money to support themselves from Veer’s elder brother Dharama (Sanjay Dutta). Veer has lied to his brother that he is married to Vidya to increase his pocket money. Veer is associated with some band. He is a struggling musician. But what is his role in the band or what is he trying to achieve at the end of his struggle is never mentioned in the film.

Then we see another couple Jhanvi (Bipasha Basu) and Prem Chopra (Ajay Devgan). Jhanvi works hard to run a gym left to Prem by his father whereas Prem wants to make an ultramodern car using money sent by Veer’s brother. This character seems to be motivated by Fast and Furious movie series.

Veer and Prem borrows money from Tobu to participate in a car race and lose all the money. In order to repay the money Veer plans to give his bungalow on rent to RGV.

One day Dharama comes to Goa and wants to meet Veer and Vidya. Vidya has gone out for a meeting when Dharama arrives. He sees Jhanvi and thinks she is Vidya. Lots of confusion happens as they keep pretending that Jhanvi is Vidya and Vidya is Jhanvi.

Tobu and RGV keep coming in the picture and Veer and Prem speak one lie after another to cover up their initial lie. In the end Dharama comes to know the truth but before he can say anything his African girl friend arrives at the scene and says that the King of their land (who is her brother) is after Dharama’s life as she is pregnant with his child. In order to cover up his mistake, Dharama forgives everyone. Phew! So this was the story! Now the weak points of the film -

• All the characters in the film are extremely weak. No one seems to have any real problems in life. There have been films in which a character speaks few lies and lots of confusion happens because of that, e.g. Golmaal (directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee) but there the character has a genuine reason for speaking such a lie. Whereas in this film they speak lie without any logical reason. When Dharama comes and thinks that Jhanvi is Vidya and doubles Veer’s pocket money how difficult was it to say that “Bhaiya, you are mistaken this is Jhanvi, Vidya has gone out for some work.” It was not that there was no Vidya at all and they had to present someone as Vidya.

• Now Veer and Prem seems to be in need of money all the time but why? Veer is a struggler and his brother any which way sends him money in lacks of Rs, what was the need at the first place for him to pretend the marriage to increase the pocket money. And if marriage was really solving his problem he could have married this girl Vidya because he is anyway dating her.

• They borrow money for a car race? Now why would someone borrow money for it? That too 5 lacks Rs. They say that they want to triple the money. But why do they want to triple the money. Anywhere in the film it doesn’t seem that they have any real financial problem then why are they borrowing money.

• The film maker Rohit Shetty was an assistant of Aniz Bazmi and the entire film is kind of an exact replica of any Aniz Bazmi film. (Now in my opionion Aniz Bazmi himself is a bad film maker, it’s like someone copy a David Dhavan film).

Let’s compare it to Welcome (Akshay Kumar starrer) and see how Rohit Shetty is not original even in making this third class films.

1. The names “Welcome” and “All the Best”- none of the films have anything to do with these names but in the film, all the time we hear the annoying sound tracks “welcome…welcome…” or in this case “all the best…all the best…” .
2. Both the films have lots of situation when people confuse other people for someone else.
3. The climax offers no solution with the flow of the film but is an absolutely random sequence of totally absurd events.

There were one of two moments in the film which where a little funny- especially the comic timing between Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgan but overall the film is a disaster. Fardeen Khan should understand this that he cannot act and should leave this job forever to the people who can do it better.

Bipasha and Mugdha didn’t had much to do and they did exactly what was expected from them, nothing!!

Music was mediocre and the film would have worked equally well (or say not well) without the songs so they were quite redundant. Art direction and consume design where too loud. (And someone will have to tell Ajay Devgan that he will not look in his 20s by wearing those idiotic T-shirts).

I sincerely hope that comedy would not be treated like this by Hindi film Industry because to lock people in dark theater and torture them should not how comedy should be defined!

Tum Mile (2009) -- [3.5/5.0]

DIRECTOR: Kunal Deshmukh

If you are going to watch this film with an expectation to see some steamy kissing scenes (As this is an Imran Hashmi starrer film) you might be disappointed. But if you just want to watch a feel good film on the weekend this might turn out to be a right choice.

Premise- The film is a love story with the backdrop of 26th July, 2005’s deluge in Mumbai.

Theme- Sometimes disastrous situations give people a chance to rethink what matters the most to them.

Plot- The film is the love story of Akshay (Imran Hashmi) and Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan). In the very beginning of the film they meet in a flight to Mumbai after six years since they broke up. But their reaction to each other tells that they have a significant history. In the film they recall how they were as a couple. After reaching to Mumbai they say farewell to each other and part their ways. But when they would be stuck in the deluge they would understand that they matter a world to each other. In a struggle to survive they come together one more time.

Protagonist:
Akshay- Akshay is an artist. He studies Arts in Cape Town, South Africa. He also works part-time as a delivery boy. He meets Sanjana by accident and gets infatuated with her. But very soon this infatuation blooms into a love relationship and they decide to live together.
Akshay is a talented artist but at the same time he is very open about his opinions. He is quite blunt and speaks his mind without much of a consideration. So in spite of the fact that he is the best artist of his college from his batch he cannot make a successful career as a painter. Meanwhile Sanjana supports him financially as well as emotionally. She stands by him in his thick and thin and doesn’t let her faith in him waver. But after a point it becomes difficult for her to understand Akshay because-

1. He keeps most of his things to himself.
2. He has a difficult artistic temperament; there are times when he thinks very selfishly.

In spite of these difficulties Sanjana keeps up with him but when he decides to take a drastic career decision which needs them to relocate to Australia; she puts her feet down and asks him to rethink his priorities. As for her she always gave this relation her first priority, so she gives him 2 choices-

Either he marries her and they both move to Sydney or she will not go with him if he takes this offer. Akshay decides his career over Sanjana and they break up on a soar note.
Sanjana- Sanjana is the only daughter of a multi millionaire but in spite of the position of her father she is a strong headed individual. She cares for environmental causes. She is an upright and extremely responsible person.

When she starts to live with Akshay, she takes his responsibility and gives him full support so he can work as an artist. It’s only much later when she feels that Akshay’s lack of financial independence is ruining their relationship that she suggests Akshay to take up a job. But Akshay takes it negatively and feels that Sanjana is suffocating him with her control freak nature. They break up because for Akshay his career advancement is more important that the relationship. Not only that, he is also not ready to take the responsibility of marriage.

Antagonist- It’s a nicely played love story in which the characteristics of protagonists play the role of antagonist. It’s not that their parents or any such reason hampers their relationship; rather their relationship breaks because they have not sorted out their priorities in life.
Sub-plots: In spite of the fact that the film is promoted as a “disaster film”, it’s not exactly a disaster film. It’s more of this love story which just uses 26th July episode as a backdrop.
Structure: The film starts with Akshay and Sanjana meeting in a flight to Mumbai and then it goes back and forth. They remember their love story in flashbacks whereas in their present lives they are stuck in the flood situation.

Dialogues: The dialogues of the film were not very well written, but at most of the places they sounded like normal colloquial language of our generation, which is a good point.

Critical Analysis:

[+] I went to see this film with zero expectation but fortunately it turned out quite an OK film. The love story looked credible. The characters were facing problems which sounded genuine. They had the kind of struggles in their lives which looked sincere. It didn’t feel as if they are living in some “gaga world” and they don’t have a life or the problems related to that life.

[+] The music of the film was very good like it generally is in all the Mahesh Bhatt films.

[+] Both Imran Hasmi and Soha Ali Khan were fine in their parts.

[-] The deluge scenes are not very well shot.

[-] A few sequences close to the climax were redundant. There is an entire sequence which is a frame by frame copy from Titanic which was quite unessential. It looked quite clear that the only purpose of that sequence was to stretch the second half.

[-] Akshay and Sanjana go to a building to avoid the water, but I don’t understand why they leave their friend behind who was there voluntarily to help this couple out!

[-] The death scene of Akshay’s friend also looked planted. It was a feeble attempt to show that there were deaths in the flood but unfortunately the scene didn’t leave any emotional impact which I guess was the very purpose of this scene. I still don’t understand why did Akshay not use his second hand to save his friend?

Technical Assessment:

• Kunal Deshmukh has definitely improved as a director from his last film Jannat to this film.
• The writer, Ankur Tiwari did a fairly good job.
• Art direction was good. Many of the flood sets were replicated nicely.
• Visual effects were fairly OK by Indian film standards.
• Cinematography by Prakash Kutti was average.
• Editing by Ajay Sharma was tight.

Overall it’s a nice one watch film.