Review : 300

There are movies which have scenes which make your testoterone levels shoot
up to alarming levels and jacks up your adrenaline to send a current of thrill running down the whole length of the spine. It happened to me when Neo raises his hand and says “No” to the incoming shots fired by the Agents and the bullets stop dead in mid air (The Matrix), when William Wallace gives a rousing speech to his minsicule army (Braveheart) and when Ripley, faced with the insurmountable odd of fighting off the mother Alien with things about to blow around her, sees the rescue space ship of hope pop out from the inferno. 300 is one of the movies replete with such instances which are further fueled by breathtaking imagery.

Though I wouldnt place 300 along the aforementioned action greats but it is still a very good rollercoaster of a movie with its own unique and path breaking qualities especially in the visuals department. Based on the fantasized account of the Battle of Thermopylae, integrated into a comic by Frank Miller called ‘300′, it is a vivid and kinetic realization of the same. King Leonidas, played with zest by Gerard Butler, goes to fight off the invading Persian army along with his army of 300 Spartan warriors against insurmountable odds. The focus in the movie is on battle and valor and there is no scope for developing characters which is correct by design. The Spartans were warriors and not characters.

From the first frame to the last, 300 is a treat for the senses. Each scene is vividly painted, the red robes of the Sparta warriors float in slow motion action, the grey spears lacerate the enemy flesh and drips blood which spatters in a gorgeous cloud of thousands of little drops, each spartan fights in an orchestrated manner turning, shielding and slashing the enemy to pieces, arrows fly, bombs explode and rhinos and elephants rumble the earth. The movie makes up with kinetism what it lacks in depth and the result is a success.

The 300 spartans are a tightly knit unit with an expert training, honed fighting techniques and most importantly, a great team spirit. It was a test for the movie to make 300 against a million believable and not get lost in the improbability of a fantasy tale and I knew it had succeeded in the very first battle scene where the spartans successfully stops the barging infantry with methodical precision. Also the unabashed bravado is perfectly captured in the scene where the spartans laugh over the rain of arrows being showered over them. Its trivial for them, and its a change from other sword and sandal movies where archers invoked dread in the defending soldiers.

Thus 300 is certainly not madness, but it is certainly close to being maddengly entertaining.

 

Review: Hattrick

Bollywood is going through a evolutionary phase presently. The content of our cinema is moving on from erstwhile masala entertainment with poor production qualities to experimental cinema bringing in fresh innovative stories. 2006 was a year of transition for Bollywood with movies like Rang De Basanti, Iqbal, Khosla ka Ghosla, Woh Lamhe and Being Cyrus making daring experiments and succeeding. Even masala entertainment was executed with a class, hitherto unknown, in Don, Gangster, Zinda and the very successful Lage Raho Munnabhai.The year 2007 looks absymal with a bunch of croppers, which though charading a fresh outlook, suffer from creative ineptness to the core. Hattrick belongs to such a category.

Hattrick is opportunistic cinema at its worst. Opportunistic because it seems the only reason for its existence is to cash in on the World Cup craze. It features three distinct story lines with the characters having some sort of a rendezvous with our national passion: Cricket. So far so good. One of the story lines has Kunal Kapoor and Rimi Sen playing a newly married couple for which cricket proves to be a thorn in their blooming relationship. Most of the time this track starts off with a non-sensical song and dance routine which is jarring. The humor element in this particular story falls flat apart from a couple of witticisms here and there. Kunal Kapoor is completely ill at ease in his role of a cricket crazed husband though Rimi Sen lends on the requisite oomph to her role.

The second track features Nana patekar as a dead pan and emotionless doctor which recieves a cheerful Robin Williamesque patient who is a forgotten cricket hero, played by Danny Dengzongpa who teaches the doctor a few lessons of the human heart. Where Munnabhai as a doctor absolutely thrilled us with his antics, Danny is completely over the top and utterly unconvincing. The jokes are flat and there is a forced and unsuccessful attempt at developing an emotional hook amongst the viewer (the teary eyed attendant, the love angle between the interns and the aloof husband angle).

By far the most convincing, albeit cliched, is the third track featuring an affective performance by Parel Rawal as a janitor at a British airport desperately waiting to realize his Britannia dream with a formal UK Citizenship.

The movie is an emotional drama rather than a comic caper as painted by the advertisements. The movie is completely undone by the lack of focus, poor script and defused dialogues which turns it into an exceptionally painful watching experience. I could almost visualize how this particular movie would have taken off. The producer and director would have huddled together to cash in on a world cup movie. Out of the box thinking would have produced a word “Hat trick”. Lo! the idea of three stories would have originated and well the rest of the movie, as they say, is history ( pun intended)

 

Review : Eklavya (The Royal Guard) [2007]

Welcome to the Hindi remake of the last years hit, V for Vendetta. Don’t believe me? Well allow me to explain. There is Amitabh Bacchan replete with his turban and a full grown beard that is practically hiding his face (V’s Mask), The weapon that he uses is the bullet time slow motion dagger (V’s primary weapon), he cant see things properly (V wears a mask with no eye holes) but has ears which can pick up the minutest of aural sensations. V has Vendetta on his mind and Eklavya has his Dharma. Eklavya derives from the Mahabharta tale while V for Vendetta derives itself from the Gunpowder plot.

Also the 60 plus something Eklavya has the power to launch a 90 kg Jackie Shroff up in the air towards the moving train, such power was also demonstrated by V. Also V seems to have an almost unlimited supply of daggers, which seems similar to Amitabh’s case. Remember how the dragger slips out of his hand when he see’s the Boman’s dead body? Did he go back and retrive it? Did the dragger turn into a boomerang and came back to him when he did that majestic pigeon trick? Nopes, He would actually have a trunk full of them.

The last showdown scene between Saif and Amitabh had me translating the hindi dialogues into V’s English. Amitabh was actually saying “The Only Verdict is Dharma”. In the scene with Jimmy Shergill, Jimmy was saying “have mercy!” to which Amitabh says “Oh..not tonight” SWISH the dagger goes and carves out an air tunnel out of his trachea.

Also Eklavya has a few strengths. All of its characters speak almost chaste normal street Hindi devoid of any Rajasthani twang so its kind of easy to digest. Okay Okay the Royal ones are entitled to speak normally as they are educated outside and all, but what about Eklavya? Imagine Langda Tyagi without the UP accent. The last time Amitabh changed his accent drastically was for the excellent Agnipath and it bombed. And since then every movie of his has his Amitabh-Hindi only, some Punjabi and Banarasi meanderings nowithstanding.

With Eklavya and some of his other movies, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has revolutionized the whole concept of casting i.e.”selecting actors suited to his role”. Instead of this, Chopra has just handpicked certain actors and made them into a Chopra Tribe and he justs picks stories that surprisingly integrate all these actors in some role or the other or atleast a subset of these actors do fit those films. Choose story > pick actors has gone to actors chosen > choose story thus reducing one level of complexity.

The best thing about Eklavya is that its highly digestible. With a running time of around 1 hour and 45 minutes, with a No-Brainsterol No Fat story I was wondering why it wasnt being called “Eklavya Lite” or “Diet Eklavya”. I just went out of the Exit door and stood outside the Multiplex thinking,”Hey what am I doing here?” Then as I saw a swarm of blank faces I instantly knew what I was upto.