Aamir

Rating : 8/10
Running Time : 90 Minutes
Release Date : 6th June ‘08
Director & Writer : Raj Kumar Gupta ; Music : Amit Trivedi
Starring : Rajeev Khandelwal
A genuine surprise, this one, and very unlike a normal hindi movie. Don’t watch if you’re in the mood of light, timepass entertainment. Watch it though for some great acting, a very authentic and gritty look at the bylanes and Muslim areas of Mumbai, some good dialogue, a fantastic background score and some great editing which never lets the tension slacken.

Aamir, a Muslim doctor in UK, decides to return to India and lands in Mumbai airport. Outside the airport, he can’t find his family and no one responds when he calls home either. That’s when his nightmare begins. Two strangers on a motorbike hand him a mobile phone and when it starts to ring, Aamir finds out that a stranger knows everything about him, has kidnapped his entire family and now wants Aamir to follow his instructions or else…

The instructions take him all over Mumbai, in small by-lanes, dirty hotels, std phone booths etc. A man who was walking the pristine streets of Windsor / Eton a few short hours ago, is soon having to gingerly step over faeces in a public lavatory in some city lodge. And all this while he has no idea what the stranger wants him to do. And his every move is watched, the mobile has outgoing barred, the strangers henchmen seem to be everywhere !


Rajeev is outstanding. No other word fits his performance. He displays the whole gamut of emotions – from incredulity to anger to pleading – he goes through all of them flawlessly. Everyone else fits their parts well – they really don’t seem to be extra’s performing a part. Its apparently copied from a movie Cavite. However, its so nicely adapted to Mumbai / India / Muslims that this doesn’t detract anything from the film at all in my eyes. The ending does a bit – I wish they had gone for a different one but nothing else truly fit the characterization of Aamir they had shown.

I also found the ideological debate between Aamir and the stranger fascinating and they balanced it well, never letting it get too weighty. As someone once said, poverty is the most fertile breeding ground for terrorism. Because when you’re poor and things aren’t going your way, then every setback seems like a perceived injustice, another reason to don arms and fight against the perceived oppressors.

Like I said, its not an easy or light subject matter, but is made eminently watchable by the brilliant direction of Rajiv Kumar Gupta and the equally brilliant acting of Rajeev Khandelwal. The tension is not the type where it makes you bite your nails, but rather hovers over the atmosphere, like a dark menacing cloud. However, there’s enough of a cool breeze to still make it an enjoyable day out.

Woodstock Villa

Rating : 5/10
Running Time : 94 Minutes
Release Date : 30th May ‘08
Director : Hansal Mehta ; Writer : S.Farhan and Rajiv Gopalkrishnan ; Music : Anu Malik
Starring : Sikander Kher, Neha Uberoi, Arbaaz Khan, Gulshan Grover
Yet another set of star progeny get introduced, Sikander (son of Anupam and Kirron Kher) and Neha Uberoi (daughter of Suresh Uberoi). After the disastrous Saawariya, I thought I was off such launch films, but this one wasn’t so bad after all. And yes, the leading pair may actually have a future in Bollywood after ironing out a few rough edges. .
Sikander plays a stud who’s penniless, down on his luck and also has to pay back a ‘Bhai’ type Gulshan Grover, who basically gets Sikander beaten up every time they meet since he still hasn’t gotten his money back. His luck changes or so he believes, when a seductive siren walks in with a get-rich-quick scheme. Validating the empirically proven ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’ saying, Sikander accepts and soon things have gone awry and he’s running to save his life with the cops breathing down his neck.

There are a few logical flaws but what really pulls this movie down is the predictability of the plot – there is nothing really new here and you can predict every curve, every twist and every turn more accurately than an F1 circuit, if you’ve seen a few film noir movies like Body Double, Just Cause etc. The dialogue, while natural, doesn’t really enhance the film and is sadly lacking in any witty repartee. Finally, the songs are an unwelcome intrusion and slow down the movie. The acting is good overall (not great but good), its pretty slickly done, runs along at a fairly nice clip. One of the big pluses for me was that I found Neha Uberoi to be very easy on the eyes. Have a look at the photo below
and to paraphrase George Clooney in Oceans Eleven, if she doesn’t look like your brand of vodka, then you might as well stay away from the film.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Rating : 6/10
Running Time : 124 Minutes
Release Date : 22nd May ‘08
Director : Steven Spielberg ; Writer : George Lucas, David Koepp ; Music : John Williams
Starring : Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone, Karen Allen
This is a fun movie, if, like Bond movies, you’re willing to suspend your disbelief at some of the stunts, some plot elements and the fact (like most Hindi movies of yore) that even though 100 bullets are fired from ten guns, not one is going to hit the leading man.

Indiana Jones is older, but has lost none of his enthusiasm or sense of humour. The plot (does it really matter ?) is just another excuse for him to indulge in his twin favourite pastimes of going to ancient ruins (which are now only marginally older than him…just kidding…) and bashing the baddies. The ruins in this case are located in Peru, around the Nazca Lineas / Cuzco, and it was very nostalgic to see the Soviets making a comeback as the baddies – I had been missing them and the Koreans, Iraqi’s, Afghani’s etc somehow don’t evoke the same emotion as the blank-faced beefy blond guys they usually manage to dig up to masquerade as the cold Commies of yore. Adding extra spice to the proceedings are two subplots, one involving a James Dean / ‘Easy Rider’ imitator (Shia LaBeouf) and the other involving the McCarthy era communist witch-hunt which characterized the USA of the fifties (and then we get surprised when the USA does a similar witch-hunt, this time spurred by the spurious 'war on terror' and imprisons people in inhuman conditions without trial in Guantanamo Bay ? What was that about ‘history repeats itself’ ?).

There are moments where you blink and shake your head incredulously at what you’re asked to believe (how Indiana Jones manages to match a giant Soviet army specimen blow for blow in a fistfight, for instance ? A real fight would have not lasted more than 30 seconds). However, in most cases, you go along with the flow, admire the scenery, the special effects, the beautiful booby traps they conjure up and laugh at the steady stream of one liners…It was also refreshing to see them desist from showing any eye candy…in most Hollywood and all Bollywood movies they would have succumbed to temptation and shown a nubile young twenty something falling in love with the older man. Maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m older but right now it still seems too desperate and unreal and I'm glad they didnt.

If all else fails, you can still enjoy watching the venerable Mr Jones crack the whip and make all those around him dance to his tune. Enjoyable from the first to the last moment but not one that’s going to leave a lasting impact or change your world.