Darna Zaroori Hai
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Ritesh Deshmukh , Anil Kapoor, Mallika Sherawat, Manoj Pahwa, Randeep Hooda, Zakir Hussain, Sunil Shetty, Sonali Kulkarni, Rajpal Yadav, Bipasha Basu, Arjun Rampal, Makrand Deshpande, Isha Koppikar and Nisha Kothari.
Directors: JD Chakravarthi, Manish Gupta, Rohit Jugraj, Sajid Khan, Jijy Philip, Prawal Raman, Vivek Shah and Ram Gopal Varma
This week's new release Darna Zaroori Hai has been made with a very clear intention -- to provide that one good scare, that one good jolt in the dark, that one good shake-up. It's not a horror film that will haunt you for hours after you've left the cinema. It is, in fact, an event film, the sort that keeps you hooked for the entire duration that you're in your seat. It adheres to that basic principle, that basic purpose of cinema -- to keep you entertained while your cola and your popcorn lasts.
Conceived by Ramgopal Varma, the concept of Darna Zaroori Hai is quite simple actually. Six short thrillers unfold within the canvas of one larger premise. By that description, this film follows the same format as Varma's previous film Darna Mana Hai. But this time round, six different directors have been hired to tell each different story.
Now right off the bat, let me tell you Darna Zaroori Hai is not a HORROR film in the conventional sense of the word. In fact, Varma takes the horror genre and turns it upside down. He uses all the classic horror film cliches to mount his stories, and then shows you he can surprise you even with that. So the six short stories aren't particularly imaginative or original.
In fact, you're familiar with each of them at some point or the other. A man goes into a graveyard late one night, refusing to heed his mother's advice. An old man insists there's a stranger lurking in his home. A man stops to make a phonecall at a desolate house after his car breaks down on the road.
A stranger enters a couple's apartment with mysterious intentions. An attractive girl hiteches a ride in a stranger's car on the highway. Or then a motorist runs into a woman on a rainy night. You've seen or heard every story before, but not quite in the manner that Varma presents them in this film.
That Ramgopal Varma understands genres and audiences becomes amply evident when you consider the fact that Varma abandons the conventional single-narrative, single-story format this time round, because he knows there's probably no story today that's so scary it can hold your interest for three hours at a stretch. So, he breaks down the film to include six shorter stories, each delivered with one hard punch that shakes you in your seat.
Also, Varma understands that the only way to treat the horror genre differently is to elevate it from its B-movie status and take into the big league by adding big-movie stars all over the place. So this time round you'll see Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Bipasha Basu, Sunil Shetty, Ritesh Deshmukh and Mallika Sherawat in the kind of roles they've never taken before.
The best way to really enjoy Darna Zaroori Hai is to catch it at a late show in a crowded cinema hall. You'll see the film works exactly in the manner that it's meant to. Even if the stories are often predictable, the scare lies not so much in the 'end' of every tale, but in the journey to the end of every tale.
Look out for particularly remarkable perfomances from Amitabh Bachchan, Rajpal Yadav and Randeep Hooda. My favourite of the six stories is the one centred around hitchhiker Mallika Sherawat and filmmaker Anil Kapoor in a story that combines laughs with thrills. And that's perhaps the best thing to take away from Darna Zaroori Hai -- a few thrills and a few laughs. It's a film designed to ratle you a little. Don't resist that. Go watch Darna Zaroori Hai with an open mind and a large portion of popcorn. It makes for a good old-fashioned movie-watching experience.
Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
Write Your Review
PAGE_BREAK
Gangster
Starring: Shiney Ahuja, Emran Hashmi, Kangna Ranaut
Director: Anurag Basu
In director Anurag Basu's new film Gangster which opens this week, newcomer Kangana Ranaut is a chick who needs to take her pick. She's a gangster's moll, holed up in a small apartment in Seol while her boyfriend's on the run from the law, doing shady business across the globe.
She's been with him five years and loves him dearly, but can't deal with this life of uncertainty and insecurity. Even as she waits months for him to show up, she finds herself falling for a seemingly simple musician fellow who promises her a normal life away from crime.
When confronted with the decision to choose between ganglord Shiney Ahuja and gaane-bajanewala Emraan Hashmi, the lady in question decides to give the goonda another chance - after all, he's promising to turn over a new leaf. But as luck would have it, she discovers she's pregnant with the musician's child.
Despite the snail's pace that this screenplay moves at, you cannot deny that it keeps you gripped till the very end. Director Anurag Basu succeeds in maintaining a heightened sense of drama throughout the film, although he does botch up the pre-climax when he reveals what lies beneath. But truth be told, that's one of the very few flaws in what is otherwise a nice, entertaining drama.
Gangster is what you'd appropriately describe as a character-driven drama, in which the tension and screenplay movement comes not so much from the basic plot as it does from the characters and their motivations. That, of course, immediately puts all three principal actors in a very precarious position since they're pretty much carrying the entire film on their shoulders.
Emraan Hashmi playing the hopeless romantic is thankfully restrained and surprisingly competent in the kind of role that he hasn't yet tackled. Meanwhile, debutant Kangana comes off looking terribly unprepared in what is clearly the film's most central role.
Her dialogue delivery needs immediate attention. But it is Shiney Ahuja with his leading-man charisma and arresting screen presence who practically steals the show from his co-actors. In a part with very few lines, Shiney becomes the character he's been hired to play. I think it's fair to say he's the film's biggest strength, shining through, with a performance that is remarkable to say the least.
The film works primarily because it's an engaging story that's neither predictable nor plagarised. Is it based on underworld don Abu Salem's life? I don't think so, and quite frankly I don't even care. What I do care about, however, is the director's conscious attempt to abandon clichés in exchange for originality. And for that reason, Gangster is worth a watch. That's a thumbs-up for director Anurag Basu's well-intended Gangster, undeniably a notch above his previous films Murder and Tumsa Nahin Dekha.
Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
Write Your Review
PAGE_BREAK
The Mistress of Spices
Starring: Aishwarya Rai, Dylan McDermott, Ayesha Dharker and Anupam Kher
Director: Paul Mayeda Berges
Aishwarya Rai's latest crossover attempt The Mistress of Spices has finally made it to our local cinemas this week. Adapted from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel of the same name, and directed by Paul Mayeda Berges, the film revolves around Tilo, an Indian girl blessed with magical healing powers derived from traditional Indian spices.
Now, a young woman living in San Francisco, Tilo runs a spice shop where she finds the perfect solution for everyone's problems. Crushing spices, adding herbs and preparing instant recipes to cure everything from family differences and love snags to physical pain, Tilo's got her work cut out for her.
Only hitch, the powers come with a curse. Meaning she can never leave the store, and she must never fall in love. But before long Tilo breaks both the rules, and it's the people she helps who must pay the price for her faults. In the end of course, she's caught between desire and duty, but things have a way of working out, don't they?
Despite a running time of just 96 minutes, The Mistress of Spices seems like a never-ending saga because it's so damn boring. In fact it's a piece of self-indulgent pap that takes itself so seriously that you want to stand up on your seat and holler. Tilo's meant to be a mysterious character with these magical powers and a surreal past, but Aishwarya Rai plays the role so impassionately that you suspect she may have been stoned throughout the making of the film.
Lifeless and uninspired, she walks in and out of scenes mechanically, and seems a perfect match for the equally dull Dylan McDermott who plays the American who unlocks her forbidden passions when he enters her establishment.
They have practically zero chemistry together and even their love scene lacks any sensuality.
Now, magic realism is not one of the easiest themes to pull off. Add to that the fact that neither the director nor the script of this film have any idea how to translate that element to the screen. As a result, from start to finish, the film is plagued by pretentiousness -- even artificiality to be honest.
For writer-director Paul Mayeda Berges who previously collaborated with his wife Gurinder Chadha on the scripts of Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice, this film marks an inauspicious directing debut because it falls flat on its face. With Mistress of Spices, Aishwarya Rai proves she's no Spice Girl and you can safely say this film is as bland as English food.
If there's anything worth recommending in this film, it's cinematographer Santosh Sivan's eye-watering camerawork. Mistress of Spices is like that chilly that doesn't tingle, it just burns your stomach up.
Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)
Write Your Review
Comments
0 comment