Yearly Archives: 2011

Doodh Ka Karz

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I wanted to write something about the late Bob Christo as he was my first ‘That guy again!’ in Hindi films. He seemed to be in everything, often trying to kill Mithun which was considerate of him, and generally being menacing. I think I first noticed him as he was one of the small number of white guys that turned up over and over in a huge array of films. But later I started noticing the gleam in his eye as he flung himself around the set, pretending to be beaten half to death by the hero, and I enjoyed his apparent glee at being the baddest baddie. He played his villainous henchman roles with great enthusiasm and I always look out for his shiny bald head when the main villain appears.

Good friend and snake film aficionado jenni enthusiastically recommended this film. Several times. Her summary on BollyWhat was so persuasive. And now I ask myself – why did I wait so long? I can’t explain the story any better than jenni did, so with her kind permission I quote:

“OK.  The story goes something like this.  A snake charmer, who treats his snake as a son, witnesses the plunder of the local snake temple jewels.  He is then framed by the thieves (local thakurs one of whom is played by Amrish Puri of course) and is beaten to death.  The beating is witnessed by his wife (Aruna Irani), infant son and loyal snake.  It is left to the widow to build a pyre and perform the funerary rites as she contemplates her future as a destitute widow.  Loyal snake has accompanied them to the cremation and when the widow realises she is unable to care for him, along with herself and infant, she feeds him some breast milk, sings a song about him repaying the debt of her milk, then sends him away.  This part is really sad and the snake actually looks sad and lost and grief stricken as he leaves (and I cried).  Not a woman of forgiveness, the snake charmer’s wife then sets about avenging the death of her husband.   And she is still on task 25 years later.

By then, the boy has grown up to be Jackie Shroff (Suraj) and he falls in love with (you guessed it), the evil Thakur’s daughter (Neelam).  Loyal snake has returned to both protect (his family) avenge (his enemy), and pay the debt of the milk, just like his (human) mother would have hoped.  There is parental opposition (both sides) and romantic complication (both sides).  Also a corrupt priest who is handy with snake lore himself.  And Bob Christo in a smooth talking, double dealing,  diamond smuggling minor role.  And let’s not forget, the THRILLING SNAKE FILLED CLIMAX”

The Snake represents all that is good and moral and he is the hero of this film, regardless of what Jackie Shroff might think. Sadly, he was never named which seems remiss considering his important role. The Snake is loyal and protective, has sound family values and judging by the number of friends and relatives who turn up for the final showdown, he must have been a nice snake.

 

There was genuine emotion in some of The Snake’s scenes and I have to say the editing was outstanding in making it seem that The Snake was reacting to the drama around him. I also have a mental picture of some poor sod standing just out of shot, dangling a mouse or other tasty treat to get The Snake’s attention. And who knew that snakes could emote?

Sad Snake
Righteous
Forgiving
Judgemental teetotaller

There are always concerns about animals in films but I think the instructions to the snake wranglers went along the lines of ‘Chuck ‘em in and stand back’.  I am hoping that some fake snakery went on in a couple of scenes.  And the mongooses seemed quite chipper in their special appearance. Certainly more enthused than the mongoose wranglers were! I know I wouldn’t have lasted long as an extra on this film.

The human actors go about their supporting roles quite successfully, and I did find the story very engaging.  Aruna Irani nails the vengeful widow role and raises her human son to be as strong as iron, although takes her time in telling him why. The scene when snake and widow separated was quite moving, although I didn’t cry. Perhaps I was too startled seeing breast milk expressed on screen and in close-up. I did find myself singing along with the recurring title track though. Goga Kapoor and Raza Murad make an impression in their smallish roles.  Amrish Puri as the Thakur didn’t put up much of a fight before he was persuaded to turn to crime, and was a villain of the weak and greedy type rather than a creatively dressed megalomaniac. But the allure of the jewels was just too much for him as was the notion of taking the easy way out of his self created problems. And he is backed up by Prem Chopra so you just know how that’s going to work out.

 

My mind did wander a bit during the songs though as the only thing that seemed to happen was Jackie pawing at Neelam. And it’s a snake film so it’s mostly snake music and that can get a tad monotonous. Meanwhile The Snake was slithering the countryside in search of his father’s killer who he would recognise by a distinctive necklace. That’s something to think about before borrowing jewellery.

 

When Neelam is bitten by the vengeful loner, she faints gracefully and is spared the sight of Jackie sucking her toes to extract the venom. Dear reader, you will not be so lucky.

 

Bob Christo has a small yet pivotal role as a venal Englishman who represents all that is bad and stupid. He is a diamond smuggler called Angrezi Master so maybe the script writers had just given up on character names and it wasn’t an anti-snake thing. Bob wants the stolen temple jewels but is afraid of the snake that is reputed to protect the temple, and demands to be shown its corpse. Oh Bob. So many films and still messing with the gods…Finally, Bob has to decide what is more important to him.

 

The snake gave him a choice, and Bob chose wrong. I also learned that when white people are bitten by snakes, we turn green. This should be a very helpful diagnostic tool in future.

 

The snake filled climax is really filled with snakes. Bucketloads of snakes. The Snake may not have been wandering the woods alone for all those years. Here’s a little taste of the mayhem, with Bob doing some very fine acting:

I have to say, I really enjoyed Doodh ka Karz. I like a good snake revenge film, and this is very snake-centric and vengeful. Ashok Gaikwad kept the story and editing pacey and there is stuff happening all over the place so there is never a dull moment. There is pathos in the snake charmer family scenes, and Aruna Irana is excellent. The only thing missing was a proper snake dance. This is a great ripping yarn, and a fun way to remember Bob Christo. 3 and ½ stars!

Edited to add: Here is a link to Beth’s round-up of ‘Bob’s Your Uncle’ posts. Go have a look!

http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2011/04/bobs-your-uncle-late-great-bob-christo.html

Dum Maaro Dum

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Maybe it was the relief of seeing something interesting, or the after effects of emergency dental surgery, but I really liked Dum Maaro Dum. It’s a standard cops and gangsters story, with bit of Pulp Fiction flavour (right down to a character called Vincent Vega). It’s a film to see for what happens and how, although there are few significant surprises and too many contrivances that deflate the second half. Ultimately the straight up thriller isn’t blended so well with the masala elements so it’s not as satisfying as it could have been, but it’s still good fun.

Abhishek Bachchan is the reformed corrupt cop ACP Vishnu Kamath, sent to Goa to deal with the drug issue. I’m not always a fan of his, but I really liked this performance. His entrance was fabulous and exploded in a sparkly manga style. Kamath’s character is established by exposition so Abhishek has less to work with as it isn’t a development the viewer is involved in. But I could totally buy his conversion from corrupt cop to crusader. He was confronted with the consequences of being on the take and he made a decision. For the most he plays it straight as an officer with a past and on a mission.

I’m not sure whether I like what seems to be a constant need to pay homage to his father, as I then see Abhishek as someone doing an impression of his dad rather than successfully portraying a character. It works here as he was great with the one-liners and it is quite 70s dishoom stuff–and the Kaike Paan scene was very amusing!

Lorry (Prateik) is a drug mule, seduced by a woman in a sequinned bikini mere hours after the love of his life departed for the US. Yes. He is supposed to be 17 but even so, he was an idiot. He took the drug gig to get the money for college despite knowing better. And he is an athlete so we know they never make stupid decisions about drugs!

Prateik certainly does well in being irritating. I was so annoyed at the way he lashed out at his girlfriend when she won a scholarship he wanted. There wasn’t much character development in Lorry. I got no sense that he would be much the wiser after the drama played out as his life seemed destined to pick up where it left off. Prateik hammed it up in some of his post-arrest scenes and I thought he was OK without being great; but that may just be because I dislike his character so in fact he may have given the performance of a lifetime. The camera certainly loves him.

Joki (Rana Daggubati) is a musician, and for most of the film he is the moral compass of the story. I wonder why Rohan Sippy didn’t give Joki a back story to deal with the accent instead of dubbing. It’s not like he didn’t know who he was casting. Joki is in some respects the junior version of Kamath. He stood by and let the underworld taint the lives of people around him, and is forced to decide whether he will continue to turn a blind eye.

His journey to the same tipping point as Kamath forms a lot of the story, although Joki is rarely centre stage. He has to connect with several of the characters as well as explain bits of plot, and I thought Rana was convincing and appropriately low key in most scenes. The dialogue sometimes sounded slightly flat, so I am judging more on expression and reactions and I thought he was good. The writing lets Joki down as his motivations aren’t always well articulated, and later things take a turn for the WTF. I like an abundance of pleasing visuals and Rana features heavily in those moments. He looked great and I have to say the wardrobe team aced Joki’s style, the slightly hippy muso look but not too try-hard.

Bipasha Basu is Zoe, Joki’s old flame and currently in the possession of Biscuit (Aditya Pancholi in a creepy sleazy caricature). She is another of the characters having to deal with the consequences of bad decisions, and is more clear sighted than some about human behaviour.

I did have an eyeroll moment when her character was introduced as half English. ‘Aha’ I thought, ‘That’s how they justify her sleeping with men she is not married to and all the drug taking etc. She’s a skanky half white girl.’ Bipasha impressed me with Zoe’s transition from light-hearted to darker emotions. I didn’t get any sizzling chemistry between her and Rana, they seemed a couple who had been together for a while and were completely comfortable with each other.

There are a few things I found hard to swallow. The methods by which Kamath and Joki arrived at what they each knew were just too sketchily written and didn’t hold up. The villain Barbossa was a cipher not a character and failed to create real menace. All the characters were a bit underwritten so everything relied on being swept up in the story. When the other story elements dropped away in the hunt for Barbossa, the lack of tension undid the energy of the first half.

Things I enjoyed perhaps more than I should have included Abhishek stirring up a drug cocktail as though he was mixing paint, Mercy for his name and his fab satin shirts (I suspect I know why he was Goa’s oldest virgin just based on the pink ruffly number) and the very useful electric crematorium. Identifying an unknown suspect’s nationality by the label in their sequinned underwear seemed slightly improbable. On that basis, today I am Italian and yesterday was Chinese/Australian. Identifying said suspect at the airport by her sparkly undies was hopefully intentionally funny!

I didn’t hate Deepika’s item number. Given this is a film about the drug trade, it actually worked well as one of the few scenes that showed the drug culture that sustains the business. The song and the choreography were dire but I think it was successful in giving the rave and party context and Deepika did what she was asked to do – stand around and look good.

The Abhishek Thayn Thayn ‘song’ was dire. He raps like my dad would if we let him. I really don’t know what they were thinking, and the timing of this interlude was all wrong. Bipasha’s last song was sad as it was almost a mirror image of her first song with Rana, but a reflection that became a horrible parody of her earlier happiness. The rest of the songs were unnecessary although I don’t dislike them at all. The background score was apt but it’s not memorable either.

The cinematography is excellent and the film looks great. The camera often creates a disorientation and fractured sense of time that suits the story. The second half drags, the ending is too pat and the closing visuals are overly sentimental, but it’s also satisfactory as I like a good comeuppance. Perhaps I laughed more than I should have (I’ll blame the painkillers…oh wait…wasn’t there a message about drugs?), but I was highly entertained.

Heather Says: For me, Dum Maaro Dum tries to mix the Usual Suspects with Dirty Harry and fails to quite hit the mark on either front. But I think it’s an entertaining watch with good performances from the core cast.

While the story is overall good, there are some gaping plot holes and the ever increasing body count ensures that the number of possible candidates for Barbossa grows ever smaller, not helping plot development. I found the dubbed voice for Rana to be particularly grating and doesn’t suit him at all, although this may purely be due to seeing his previous film Leader. Abhishek Bachchan is good in his role as the reformed cop but tends to ham it up a little too much in the scenes with his wife. He is convincing in his ruthlessness although some of the torture scenes were too over the top and ended up as amusing rather than gruesome. This may have been the intention though as they were really silly. Some of the best scenes and dialogue are with Kamath and his partners, Mercy and Rane. I loved Mercy’s collection of ‘date-night’ shirts which are the most lurid I have ever seen and perhaps explain why he is the oldest virgin inGoa.

Bipasha Basu is excellent as Zoe and I thought her transformation from happy fiancée to drug-addicted mistress is well shown – although she does perhaps look a bit too healthy. She does manage to convey her mental deterioration and distress at her situation and there is some definite onscreen chemistry between her and Rana. The development of their relationship shown by the photographs on the fridge is a clever idea and one I really liked. Rana is less convincing as Joki, and his relationship with Lorry is too contrived. But his character is better in his own story loop and I liked him much more in the second half when he was on the trail of Barbossa. Overall though Joki is the leasat satisfying character in the story and I would have liked to see more of his background. He wasn’t quite the free-wheeling spirit he was supposed to be.  This is the third film I’ve seen with Prateik, and he continues to be very impressive. His portrayal of Lorry is convincing and just naïve enough to be a believable character. The romance with his girlfriend was good, and he was excellent as the scared kid in jail trying to just survive.

The second half of the film starts to drag as it becomes obvious where the story is going to end and there are just too many diversions as the writers try to be clever and insert far too many twists and ‘surprises’ into the plot. None of which are vey twisty or surprising. The soundtrack has been a topic of conversation online, but it wasn’t very memorable and overall the songs were badly pictured, apart from Te Amo with Bipasha and Rana which was pleasant but not spectacular. The item song with Deepika Padukone was absolutely terrible with no choreography to speak of, and looked much more like a cheap MTV video for a wannabe Christina Aguilera. I really didn’t like it at all – and neither did the audience who were laughing!

There was a lot to like about this film. The comradeship between the three police officers works well and their raids are dramatic with some light-hearted moments to even up the blood-shed. Dum Maaro Dum is a watchable film and strong performances almost make up for the weaknesses of the story. A better climax would have helped immensely but there is enough in the story to make it one of the better Hindi releases this year so far.

Mr Perfect

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There really is only word to describe Mr Perfect, and that is boring. That’s not just because we couldn’t understand much of the dialogue either, there was just nothing at all to keep our interest in this very predictable and slow-moving romance.

Mr Perfect starts in Sydney with Prabhas as Vicky, a computer game developer who has dreams of running his own company with his friends. Straight away there is a rather inexplicable fight in a pool with some Europeans – French? Or possibly Belgian? They certainly sounded more like Inspector Clouseau than any Australians we know. After some rather impressive ‘Man from Atlantis’ impressions by Prabhas and his jet-propelled feet the action moves on to various parts of Sydney. He and his friends spend a lot of time hanging around various landmarks but never really doing any of the work that is supposedly their dream. He goes back to India for his sister’s wedding, and meets Priya  (Kajal Aggarwal), a childhood companion. A flashback introduces the idea that Vicky needs to learn the art of compromise and explains to some extent the animosity between the two.

Over time Priya’s likeable personality wins Vicky over but he decides that he can’t possibly remove Priya from her family or her obviously happy life in India, and he won’t leave his life of aimless wandering around Sydney. Vicky keeps insisting that he will not compromise, but we don’t know what sparks these speeches as really people are only asking him to have some manners and be considerate which is hardly the end of the world. He’s such a grumpy, argumentative man who falls into fights for no reason whatsoever.  There is some attempt at comedy involving Brahmi as an uncle who is trying to get rid of Vicky, and also some funnier moments involving Master Bharath but none of it works very well. There are some good points though.  This part of the film in India was beautifully shot and there were some lovely moments with Priya and her family. The teasing and banter between Priya and Vicky is also amusing, even without understanding the dialogue, and Prabhas and Kajal have excellent chemistry.

Vicky heads back to Sydney and through the wonders of product placement meets Maggie who is his ideal partner – or so he thinks. Her family disapprove of Vicky, mainly due to his brattish and immature habit of arguing with everyone senior to him. It really made us wonder how he would ever manage to run a business successfully! There were more Europeans in Sydney – this time Dutch we think – and a stylist who really didn’t like Taapsee. This is one of the better outfits as sadly we can’t find any of the really terrible ones.

After more confrontations and more inexplicable, although very nicely choreographed fights (thanks to Peter Hein) Maggie’s father challenges Vicky in order to win his support for their marriage. At a wedding somewhere that wasn’t Sydney or India, but may possibly have been Malaysia both Maggie and Priya are present and Vicky has to decide between the two. And really that was it – most of which could have been condensed into an hour and saved us from the never-ending drama of the second half.

A word on Prabhas’ styling in the film – which was really quite terrible. But not terrible enough to be interesting. Dressed in far too many designer T’s, which looked to have come straight from the street markets of Bangkok, worn over the top of plaid shirts, this really was not the best look for him at all. He looked awkward and overdressed in the various layers especially when seen next to Kajal who looked beautiful in some lovely saris.

Overall, the whole story was predictable with far too many contrived ‘chance’ meetings and co-incidences. Prabhas character was essentially unlikable and had no convincing relationship with his family. In fact the scenes with his father (Nassar) and mother in Australia were much more reminiscent of a live-in boarder rather than an only son. At least in ‘Orange’ the hero’s decision never to compromise and to live life on his own terms blah blah blah was given a context so while you might not empathise with him, there was at least a reason. Here there was nothing – just a lot of attitude. The interactions with his friends were a little more convincing but only just. There was never any sense that he was ever going to achieve his dream of owning a company and none of them seemed to actually do anything like work.  It’s such a pity as we both like Prabhas and were so disappointed in this lacklustre venture.

Kajal was lovely as Priya but seemed to fall for Vicky just a little too quickly. Initially she seemed to be a strong character with plenty of determination and confidence but lost her backbone when she fell in love. However her character was reasonably well developed and she delivered a good performance in her role. Taapsee’s character was less interesting and suffered from some very unfortunate choices in the wardrobe department. Prakash Raj and K. Vishwanath play their usual type of role as do many of the other uncles, aunts and family members and it’s nothing we haven’t seen many times before. And that really is the problem here – there is nothing new and the story isn’t interesting enough by itself. The comedy didn’t fit and in general just wasn’t funny. The fights were technically impressive but added nothing to the drama and didn’t serve to progress the story. It felt as though they were just added because they are more or less obligatory and people would want to see Prabhas in action.The songs were much better and mainly were well picturised although the placement was rather clumsy. We tried to look for good points but even the pictures on the walls and the furniture failed to inspire!  Less a Mr Perfect and more a Mr Ordinary.