Dum Maaro Dum – Hindi Movie Review

Hitting at your emotions, on the face at every point, is what makes the movie’s stronghold. To the point, the movie blows your mind by its crispness and tells its story without fixating, on the actors. The script doesn’t deviate anywhere, nothing is inconsequential. You are left with the seriousness of the issue staring at you, woefully on the face, as if with a glass separator as a saving grace.

Though it does show Goa in a bad light, it also shows the mental sickness of people (forget nationality) dealing in drugs; the sheer ruthlessness, the audacity and the idea of minting money at the expense of innocents. It does, though create an impression as if Goa is the homeland for only loose women, easy sex, drugs and rave parties. It also includes people from other nationalities as part and parcel of the instigation, of such trade.

ACP Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) is assigned the cleaning of the drug trade in Goa, by the Home Minister. Abhishek selects a team of two to achieve this. Slowly he busts all the small rackets.

Enter; Lorsa Biscuita (Aditya Pancholi) and everything starts and ends with him.

On the ride, hops in Lorry (Prateik Babbar), DJ Joki (Rana Daggubati), and Zoe(Bipasha Basu) who ultimately help Abhishek, in completing the mission. Lorry is the poor juvenile innocent who falls unwittingly in to the trap. Likewise, Zoe who loves Joki is forced to relinquish all, in order to achieve her dreams and finally falls in to the same web, as Lorry.

The elusive Michael Barbozza is the key to everything. Once he is found, everything falls in to place.

Another score point in favour of the movie is that, it is not very predictable and it definitely strays away from the tried and tested kinds of endings. It projects things pretty realistically and leaves it at that.

The last scene of Bips in the movie is touching and has touched the right chords in the mind; somehow it makes you want to do something to stop it. In simple words, like a slow killer!

Abhishek is impressive, though after seeing movies like Guru and Yuva, it feels like he has not exploited himself fully here. Still, the word for him is impressive and he plays his role to the tee. His portrayal of cops has always brought him luck at the box office (Remember Dhoom?)

Newcomer Rana Daggubati has made a good enough debut. Bipasha Basu performs her role with élan and with the ease of a talented actress. Even though Vidya Balan’s role is that of a cameo, one feels her strong presence throughout.

The Dolby 7.1 theatrical sound mixing is a first for Bollywood and is a must mention!

Pritam has done an excellent job with the music of this film. All the songs are in sync with the situation and ‘Te amo’, ‘Jaana Hai’, ‘Jiyein kyun’ and ‘Dum Maaro Dum’ rock, the movie. The scores are very good and as an album will definitely top the charts but in the movie, it is felt in a subdued way on account of the strong issue that is the highlight of the entire movie. It just blends well with the movie.

It is goa all the way which works well for the cinematographer and a mood enhancer for the film. It shows Goa in different lights; especially the difference in daylight and the ‘after light’ scenes seem well taken. It does show the soot and underbelly of the place and also manages to show us, how a beautiful place can also be so ugly.

However, what stays in the mind, is the drug scene and the sacrifice and waste of human life to drugs; one must understand that the drug scene is a reality, not pinpointing any particular place. But let’s face ground reality. In the light of changing worlds and society, the makers have tried to portray an ever growing menace to society, by bringing it to the fore. It is one hell of a gripper!

Cast and Crew:

Banner : Fox Star studios

Direction: Rohan Sippy

Production: Ramesh Sippy

Story: Shridhar Raghavan

Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Rana Daggubati, Prateik Babbar, Bipasha Basu, Aditya Pancholi, Monty Munford

Music: Pritam Chakraborty

Cinematography: Amit Roy

Editing: Aarif Shaikh

Verdict: Hard hitting Riveter

Haunted 3D – Hindi Movie Review

The moment you hear the brand name ‘Vikram Bhatt’ and his combo with ‘Horror’, it’s obvious that everyone would get a high shot on adrenaline. His previous films ‘Raaz’, ‘1920’ and ‘Shaapit’ might have followed the footsteps of some of the best Hollywood horrors, but they were stunningly done in terms of both narrative and technical aspects. Well, with ‘Haunted 3D’, Vikram Bhatt leaps to the next level with his fantabulous work in both direction and technical panorama.

Set in the misty mountains of a hill station, the film revolves around the straggling bungalow with a secret past and a haunted present. Rehan comes to the place to sell it as his father, who initiated this business is ill. As Rehan starts spending his time there, he experiences some paranormal activities and starts investigating to unravel the mystery. Yes, as you might have assumed, it’s all about a secret that is haunting the place. But then, it’s not just about the truth unveiled, but Rehan has to accomplish the most speculative and biggest challenge of his life.

How can he save her when she is already dead?

While reincarnation and vengeance to be retaliated remained as the central theme in Vikram Bhatt’s ‘Raaz’ and ‘1920’, Vikram Bhatt involved a sort of ‘Adventure’ in his previous film. This time, he takes on a different spell by involving ‘Horror’ with an extremum of high-end adventure. Perhaps, revealing that suspense element will turn out to be a big spoiler. To start off with, ‘Haunted’ will chill your spines, even if you’re watching the film without 3D. Few shots will surely scare you to the core. Say for instance, the very opening sequence where Rehan notices paranormal activities in his home terrific.

Usually, a horror film would follow the same pattern of a protagonist exposed to some phenomenal activities followed by exposure to truth and the climax point is either the protagonist seeking revenge for the sake of victim and fighting against it. But, everything is completely new here as the flashback sequences are over by first 40minutes. The twist that comes through the second half is something extraordinary as it is an attempt never made before.

On the front of performance, the lead actor looks doubtful over his gestures in some portions. But, he fits aptly for the role of a confused person and at times the savior. The other actors have done justice to their roles.

Technically, the cinematography and CG works are done with excellence. In fact, they play a vital role in enhancing the eerie feeling.

On the whole, ‘Haunted 3D’ gives a good experience to the audiences, especially when watched with 3D version.

Cast & Crew:

Banner: Dar Motion Pictures, BVG Films

Production: Vikram Bhatt, Rangachari

Direction: Vikram Bhatt

Story: Amin Hajee

Screenplay: Brent Robinson

Star-casts: Mahakshay Chakraborty, Tia Bajpai, Achint Kaur and others

Music: Chirantan Bhatt

Cinematography: Praveen Bhatt

Editing: Kuldeep Mehan

Action: Abbas Ali Moghul

Verdict: Enjoy the eerie experience

Thank You – Hindi Movie Review

Anticipation is created at the beginning portrayals, with the well choreographed introduction of the main casting, in simple dance tangos mixed with a pinch of humor. Happily enough, one cannot begin to stop saying “Thank you” to the editor as the scenes all seem well cut and crisp. The drama is just right from the word go.

The director, Anees Bazmee has made sure; to leave his imprint on the film with it’s likewise similarities to his earlier films. There are a whole lot of traces of the film “No entry” in the movie, with one difference. “No entry” was a complete Salman Khan movie; here the concept is solely worked on.

The story line is based on extra marital affairs conducted by three men; Vikram (Irrfan Khan), Raj (Bobby Deol), Yogi (Suneil Shetty) who are married to Karthika (Rimi Sen), Sanjana (Sonam Kapoor) and Radha (Celina Jaitley) respectively. In, steps the formidable Akshay Kumar, as Kishen, to help the women rework their marriage and also to make the men change their mindsets.

With psychological emphasis, the movie focuses on the “generalized” male character that all men are infidels in marriage and all women being saints and good housewives, with fewer brains. More so, it showcases the men having beautiful and gorgeous wives, yet looking for external satiation of their lust. It explores the role of a marriage counselor in real time, full of empathy. This concept is pretty new in India and it may cause people to take a hint that all marriages do not have a rock solid base which would require a lot of working on and also maybe help from competent third parties.  The comedy is pretty stale as it uses tried and tested liners, already common and having a pretty high usage locally. But the concept of a counselor helping to keep and build a marriage on love and using it to the effect of making a change is pretty good.

Irrfan Khan, as usual, splendidly essays his character. He creates the mood and pace for the movie with his histrionics and makes a good impact right up to the end. Akshay is not much different from his other movies. He plays it good, by packing in an understated and markedly stamped performance, as the counselor, for the women.

Rimi Sen stands apart, having an excellent comic timing which is indeed refreshing and is different from the staid comedy. She has portrayed her character in the best possible way succeeding immensely in keeping the viewers hooked to her. Bobby Deol does not create much of an impact with the same wooden faced expressions. Celina Jaitley reflects the ‘here and there’ situation which means she occupies hardly any screen space and less said on it the better. Sonam Kapoor just failed to even put on an act, her crying needs a lot of practice and the same goes for her as for Ms Jaitley. Last but not the least, Suneil Shetty, just does what he always does.

Mallika Sherawat does nothing for the movie. Her item number is not worth its salt either for the music or for the dance.

As such, Pritam’s music is neither soulful nor melodious or that which lasts longer than the exit from the theatre for the cine-goer. One thing that has to be mentioned here is the flute music which is played by Akshay’s character and does strike the right cord with the tune in sync with everything else. Wonder how the composer’s projects in the future like “Dhoom 3”, “Race 2” etc. will pan out.

The scenes of the movie have been taken in the beautiful locales of Canada and its high pitched clubs reflecting well shot cinematography.

The cameo by Vidya Balan does nothing special but adds to the overall mood of the film.

In spite of its drawbacks,” Thank You” genuinely, in certain places, makes you go from a hint of a smile to a full blown one.

Cast and Crew:

Banner: UTV Motion Pictures and Hari Om Productions

Direction: Anees Bazmee

Production: Ronnie Screwvala andTwinkle Khanna

Screen Writer: Anees Bazmee

Star Casts: Akshay Kumar, Irrfan Khan, Bobby Deol, Suniel Shetty, Sonam Kapoor, Celina Jaitley, Rimi Sen

Music: Pritam Chakraborty

Cinematography: Ravi Yadav

Editing: Steven H. Bernard

Verdict: One time watch

Teen Thay Bhai – Hindi Movie Review

With such an ensemble star-casts known for its excellence coming together and Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra backing the project, the expectations were literally far above our usual limits as we felt that there could be something interesting involved in the project. Of course, we must accept the fact that basic plot of the film is good and quite interesting. New filmmaker Mrigdeep Singh Lamba really deserves a pat on his shoulder. But then, what goes terribly wrong is the very poor writing. We’re sure that director must have kept the screenplay away from these actors and it makes us wonder how come Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra could really okay such a crap work.

Even if this is not the situation, it badly disappoints us to see how come these great actors like Deepak Dobriyal, Shreyas Talpade and Om Puri could sign such project that would really warn them on the paper itself that it’s going to ruin their career.

Sorry to say! ‘TEEN THAY BHAI’ is such a boring piece of work that will grab hold our necks and urges us to run out of theatres. There is nothing much to be analyzed with this movie as there are whole lot of loopholes and on whole, it’s a movie to be avoided at any cost.

Three down-on-their-luck and out-of-money brothers meet for the reading of the will when their grandfather dies. And this is no easy meeting, because they hate the very sight of each other. This is no death at the funeral, but a pre-monition of hell, and all they want to do is to get back to their lives, miserable as they might be.

But suddenly, there is hope for freedom-from their money, woes and from each other. They find that their grandfather has left them an inheritance that will free them of financial worries for ever. But-as always-there is a catch, the brothers will get the multi-crore estate only after fulfilling a series of bizarre clauses set forth by their eccentric grandfather. They will have to spend an entire night at an abandoned cabin on the estate; along with two other people they hate the most – their brothers. And their dead grandfather’s ashes for company.

It is blatant that Hindi cinema is touching new line of experiments and is proving to be successful on that front. For illustration, we can bring the films – LOVE SEX AUR DHOKHA, PEEPLI [LIVE], UDAAN, TERE BIN LADEN, PHAS GAYE RE OBAMA and BAND BAAJA BAARAAT…

Naturally, ‘Teen Thay Bhai’ would have been one amongst these films, if the filmmaker had tried placing everything at the right place. But, when it’s not happening, it will turn to be a film that has to be forgotten forever.  When we have three brothers on the opposite sides, we naturally expect them to come closer through a meaningful trait. Though, it sounds cliched, it would become a good flick with its visual significance, but nothing is perfect here.

Inspite of the film boasting of some best technical aspects, everything dashes down our hopes as even the actors are so withered with their performance.

It looks like they took up the film for time-pass…

Cast & Crew:

Director: Mrigdeep Singh Lamba

Producer: Rakesh Omprakash Mehra

Music Director: Ranjit Barot,  Sukhwinder Singh,  Daler Mehndi,  Rajat Dholakia

Cast: Om Puri, Shreyas Talpade, Deepak Dobriyal

Verdict: Please Avoid it

Game – Hindi Movie Review

The movie is fast paced and slick but fails to create any real excitement after all the hype generated by Excel entertainment.

The story:

The story centers on Anupam Kher’s character (Kabir Malhotra), the billionaire recluse.  He brings four strangers together atop his island in Samos, Greece by luring them with false promises of mutual benefits and monetary gain to each of them.  The four strangers Boman Irani(O P Ramsay), Abhishek Bachchan(Neil Menon) , Jimmy Shergill(Vikram Kapoor) and Shahana Goswami(Tisha) arrive at the island, they realize that his game plan is to make their lives miserable and land all the men behind bars.  This is all because of the story he reveals of a girl named Maya (Sarah Jane Dias), whose life is intricately connected to each one of them.  Maya is his daughter born to his lover Mallika who was dead.  He delivers a surprise bomb to Shahana that she is the twin of Maya (non-identical) and therefore his daughter as well.

The reason for his revenge was to make the three men suffer for all that they did to his daughter, prior to her death and for it.  He exposes in detail what each one of the characters is in reality (a scheming politician, drug mobster, an actor) and makes them fear for the morrow by saying that he has proof of all his accusations and will hand it over to the vigilance officers the next day.  The movie begins to roll when, the next day, a gun shot sound makes them all run thither, only to discover that Kabir Malhotra is dead.

Seah Agnihotri (Kangana Ranaut) and her vigilance team takes over the investigation of the crime.  Another character in these scenes is his personal assistant Samaina, who reveals the videos taken by Kabir Malhotra of the exposing conversation amongst the guests unintended and him in his library, where he drops the individual and personalized bomb to them.   Soon, Seah receives an order from her superior to drop the case against the three men and allow them to return to their respective lives inspite of the evidence of the video which would not hold out as concrete proof.

Then, the entire focus shifts to Neil Menon, Abhishek’s character, who goes after the other two men and forces them to confess their sins and dying in the process.  A romantic angle becomes clear to the audience in the form of Neil and Maya . Neil is closely followed by Seah who a little later realizes that she has been made a fool of, by her superior officer when it is revealed by Neil, that he is a superior commanding officer in the vigilance department.  Soon, it becomes clear that the answers to the puzzle lie within the will of the dead Kabir Malhotra.  The film then takes its viewers down a really straight road without unnecessary confusion to the murderer or should we say murderer(s) seat.

In the film:

Boman Irani’s character was unnecessarily loud.  Kangana looked like she was doing a spoof on the original role offered to her.  Anupam’s role though very small, was the only one which had a resemblance to its actual.  Even Jimmy Shergill came off okay in the movie. Abhishek, played his role as a suave and slick character and portrayed a new age fit cop/drug dealer.  The romance angle was shown as if the director needed a motive for moving the story forward as it shows Abhishek’s character making a late realization to avenge the death of his lady love a while later.

The first half of the movie really took the audience nowhere, not even on a wild goose chase.  It actually had the potential of being very slow and fluid but also seeming to be fast paced.  The saving grace of the entire flick was the second half of the movie.  The real shadow of the movie, the suspense factor, was explored here which did admittedly keeps the viewer glued to the seat whereby the mind played with the movie as to its “whodunit” premise.  The last suspense scene of the movie was well taken and maneuvered smoothly by Abhishek.

The music is nothing to write home about, apart from “Maine yeh kab socha tha”.  The background scores are heart pumping as befits most thrillers.  Though, the movie is shot in Bangkok, Thailand and Greece, the focus is not on the backdrops.  Kangana’s scenes are really disappointing, what with an actress with as good an acting caliber as portrayed in a movie like “fashion”.  The only thrilling scenes are when Abhishek, is revealed as an undercover cop and the last suspense scene.  If you are looking for adrenalin pumps here, please fasten your seat belts and let your imagination run itself wild.

This movie is very important for Junior Bachchan whose performance seemed to be average; though it could also be blamed on the flick which failed to deliver its actual price.  It fails because it does not match up to its pre-release hype and thereby making it an average flick which is only watch-able for its turn and clarity in the second half.

Cast & Crew:

Banner: Excel Entertainment, Eros International Media Ltd.

Production: Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani

Direction: Abhinay Deo

Star-casts: Abhishek Bacchan, Sarah Jane, Kangana  Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Boman Hirani, Jimmy Sheirgill, Sahana Goswami and others.

Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Cinematography: Karthik Vijay

Verdict:  Visual treat with a poor content