Tag Archives: Kelly Dorjee

Billa (2009)

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Billa is a remake of Billa (Tamil) which is a remake of an earlier Rajnikanth film of the same name which is a remake of the Amitabh Bachchan classic Don (Salim-Javed are credited for the original story). I’ve seen all of them, plus the more recent Hindi Don starring Shah Rukh, so I didn’t expect the unexpected and largely this is faithful to those predecessors. Meher Ramesh adheres to Telugu film conventions requiring happy endings and righteous heroes so there are a few changes. I enjoyed the total disregard of inconvenient logic and budgetary challenges. It is a modern, slick film with a dash of B movie and the spirit of making do for the sake of entertainment.

Prabhas plays the title role of Billa – a gangster with a puzzling penchant for black satin and three piece suits. In the tropics. No wonder he was always so irritable. The chafing must have been a nightmare.

Billa works for ‘Devil’ and seems to be a model employee. He is out to eliminate the competition and stay ahead of the law while selling arms, drugs and who knows what else to villains all over South-East Asia. He lives a luxurious lifestyle on his private island where he continues to overdress for the beach.

He is a cranky intolerant man, and Prabhas does well to be so unlikeable and dour. I did like Billa’s catchphrase ‘Trust no one. Kill anyone. Be only one”. It was a bit reminiscent of Highlander.

The English dialogues were often very funny though I am not sure the level of cliché was intended.  The subtitle team made their mark too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prabhas also plays Ranga – a naive thief and layabout who has a heart of gold. Ranga is Billa’s duplicate and when Billa is out of circulation, the police use Ranga to infiltrate the gang. This role is a better fit for Prabhas as his likeable goofy side is given more rein and he is more expressive.

Ranga is sympathetic without being overly complex. Prabhas gets an opportunity to play up the confusion as Ranga impersonates Billa but his characterisations are so broad that there is no ambiguity at all.

Ranga has a far more colourful inner life than Billa, so that allowed for some variation in the song treatments.

Subbaraju makes an all too short appearance as Vikram, the gang member who tries to leave Billa for love.

Once I realised he was marked for death I was a bit sad. But I cheered up when Hansika (his love interest) was hit by a truck. Seriously – casting Hansika for the role requiring a seductive dance? What were they thinking? Her costumes don’t help; a floor length evening dress (for clubbing, of course) is replaced with cut-off denim shorts and an oversized jumper. It was all quite daft and compared to Helen … well. Say no more.

Vikram’s sister Maya (Anushka) goes undercover to avenge her brother and his flattened fiancée.

Anushka is not exactly wasted in this role but despite being a strong personality, Maya is not all that integral to the action. The swimming pool has a more important role as it is the means of getting the heroines into their skimpiest outfits. Maya vies with Lisa (Namitha) for Billa’s attention and there is more chemistry, albeit toxic, between the ladies than there is with the hero.

I liked that Lisa was allowed to fight to get rid of her competition, and surprised to see that her repertoire included a fencing bout.

The action scenes by Stun Siva (what a great name!) are a blend of impressive fight choreography and some quite lame stunts. I could see the inspiration for a few scenes was directly lifted from Farhan Akhtar’s Don (2006) but it felt as though they got to the location, realised they didn’t have the budget or know-how and just went for it anyway. Prabhas seemed much more at home in the high adrenalin action scenes than with the dialogues he was given as Billa. The action scenes are sometimes quite creative.

Every good hero/anti-hero needs a good villain and Kelly Dorjee’s character Rashid is flamboyant and slightly unhinged. Krishnamraju (Prabhas’ uncle) is the dedicated policeman after Billa, and gives a nicely balanced performance. Adithya is a cop under suspicion of collaborating with the baddies and is effective and understated. Rehman is Dharmendra, the Interpol agent in charge of hunting down Billa. The supporting gang members are a mixed bag, including Supreet as Ranjith, Billa’s 2IC. Ali has a significant role that is not a comedy distraction. He is a good character actor so I wish he would do more roles that contribute to the story instead of distracting from it.

The music by Mani Sharma is disappointing despite being closely linked to the drama. It was all quite uninspired and only the performers and costumes made any of the picturisations very memorable. Anushka isn’t a very enthusiastic or accomplished dancer so I found the work-arounds in this clip quite amusing.

The costume designers had a fine time and the look developed for Billa and gang was quite consistent and fitted the overall visual flavour.

Namitha and Anushka seemed to have clothes designed by a 20 year old boy with raging hormones but they wore it all well. I have to say that if I am to be afflicted with half naked skanks swanning around, it is nice to see more curvy and natural shapes than a stick insect with implants. But was it necessary? What do you think. To be fair, there was a lot of shirtless Prabhas on display so there was almost equal opportunity for eye candy regardless of your interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quite apart from the endless parade of shiny suits, I lost count of the montages of sour-faced Billa flexing and/or staring enigmatically.

I found Billa very entertaining. I pretty much knew where the story was going, but I liked the spirited and fast paced dash through all the shenanigans. Prabhas is in good form, the support cast do well with their material and the film looks great. It was a fun timepass and watching it again recently, I enjoyed it all over again. 3 ½ stars!

Heather says: Faran Aktar’s  Don is one of my favourite Hindi films which may be one of the reasons why I couldn’t appreciate this Telugu version. The opening scenes where Billa does his stuff as the king-pin of the drug organisation were painful to watch as the actors indulged in some of the most stilted acting and dialogue delivery that I’ve ever seen. Billa’s English phrases, in particular his ‘Can, can’ were dreadful and made him sound like a total idiot, while it was hard to watch Prabhas impersonate a chunk of wood when he’s normally a much better actor. It wasn’t just the terrible direction in this section that didn’t work for me, since the stunts and effects were just as bad. It appeared as if Meher Ramesh thought that a film about gangsters needed plenty of fast cars, helicopters and motorbikes, which I agree is not a bad idea, but then couldn’t work out how to use them in the story. So we ended up with completely implausible situations which seemed contrived just so that another over the top stunt could be stuck into the screenplay. And for goodness sake, if Billa was trying to escape in a Ferrari there is no way that anyone would have been able to keep up!  Plus it’s not exactly the best car for an unobtrusive getaway, but I guess that really wasn’t the point. Thank heavens for Subbaraju who did help me get through the first few scenes, along with Hansika as a comedy side-plot, since I couldn’t do anything but laugh at her character.

The film picked up immensely once Prabhas was allowed to exert his natural charm as Ranga, and despite the continuing forays into pointless special effects it was much more entertaining. I enjoyed Ali’s role for a change, and Anuskha and the other supporting actors were all good enough to keep their characters interesting. I just wish Billa had been less of an escapee from a Goth fashion parade (clichéd model personality included) and more of a vicious but possibly more interesting killer. 2 ½ stars.

Dhada

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It seems to have been a very long time since the last Telugu film release here in Melbourne, so we were quite delighted to hear that Dhada was showing this weekend. Despite the negative reports, we headed in to the city for another ‘adventure without subtitles’.

The film opens with a parkour chase sequence across, over, around, through and between various buildings, bridges and major highways. It’s very well done with great cinematography and editing, and is an excellent introduction to Vishwa (Naga Chaitanya). He’s just graduating from college in some unspecified city which we think might be supposed to be in the USA, or possibly Russia. It’s hard to tell from the accents of the English speaking cast who seem to be mainly of Eastern European origin but since the cops are wearing US style cardboard badges and US flags we’re going to go with the States.

Vishwa lives with his elder brother Rajiv and Rajiv’s wife Preethi.  He fancies himself as a modern day hero, and cannot help rescuing a tearful girl running from a pack of thugs. In the course of the rescue he manages to set free another 99 girls who were rather conveniently loaded in trucks in the same car park. This doesn’t endear him to local mafia don RD (a wonderfully over the top Rahul Dev), who was just about to close a deal selling the girls (all 100 medically certified virgins) on to white slaver Kelly Dorjee (almost his equal in the over the top evil stakes).

Around the same time Vishwa has spotted, and instantly fallen in love with, Ria the daughter of a millionaire (Mukesh Rishi) who doesn’t have any time for her. She spends her days on a chaise longue in the wine cellar surrounded by bad polystyrene replicas of classical sculpture, either watching old 8mm film of herself and her mother or developing pictures she has taken of parents and their children, and generally feeling sorry for herself. The mother was played by the excellent Satya Krishnan and it was such a shame she only had a tiny role.

Vishwa has a classy idea of a date which involves taking Ria out on the back of a motorbike, stealing a bottle of wine along the way (drinking and driving and no helmets– tsk tsk!), to a a bare knuckle fight (which judging by the spectators’ apparel seems to occur some time in the early part of last century) and finally to a club based in a ship. Strangely they seem to travel back in time again when a bunch of 1930’s styled shoe shine boys arrive aboard the Titanic styled set to join in the song and dance number, the seriously catchy ‘Telugu Bengali English Marathi’. It was an odd blend, especially with the random and bored looking audience including one beaming Sikh guy. Vishwa and Ria do lots of flirting before he drops her back to her dull party, and her fiancé, two minutes before her stated deadline. Ah yes – the fly in the ointment is that Ria’s father has promised her to Amit, a local businessman with a commitment to shimmery suits, who isn’t impressed at all with Vishwa.

There are more chases and excellent fight scenes as RD’s younger brother closes in on Vishwa seeking revenge for their lost millions in the white slave trade. There is the obligatory twist in the tale as Rajiv reveals his entanglement in the mafia web. There is an excellent flashback scene to the two boys growing up, and we learn that Vishwa has always protected his big brother, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  Ria becomes a hostage and Kajal was good at being unconscious. It’s all up to Vishwa to save the day – can you ever doubt that he will? Would a man lacking self confidence wear so much pink?

The film looks fantastic and the direction is confident and visually accomplished. The styling is good and both Chaitanya and Kajal look the part. Except one of the hairdressers seems to have a grudge against Kajal and gave her an absolutely terrible fringe. In fact, we suspect we have seen that wig before, when it appeared as The Wig in Shakti. She looks much better in her emo rock-chick look, or Aishwarya Rai wannabe avatar, although losing the blue contacts would have been even better. Vishwa’s fantasy versions of Ria in one song also included Foreman Ria (in hard hat and high-vis overalls), Police Ria and Skanky Carwash Ria so her wardrobe team were kept busy. Chaitanya has a wonderful collection of slightly sparkling superhero and James Bond T-shirts which we were delighted to see he felt were entirely appropriate for day wear.

Chaitanya has developed as an actor, and it’s obvious he has worked hard and really improved his dancing. He handled the demanding action sequences well, and the multiple camera angles and slo-mo replays meant he had to deliver in those scenes or they wouldn’t have worked at all. He does look rather embarrassed by a few of his outfits, but by the time we get to the lilac satin band-leader costume he seems to have become resigned to his fate. The lurid checked lunghi in the final song doesn’t faze him at all but he seems to suffer from Thrust Reluctance.

He’s also committed to the wet look throughout the film, indulging in a number of activities guaranteed to keep him slightly soggy.

Rahul Dev is excellent as the evil RD and his execution of a rival involving a prosthetic leg was rather special. Although Kelly Dorjee doesn’t turn up quite as often he makes up for it by some inspired sneering behind his ever present sunglasses.

But that’s all the good stuff.  The story is weak and the white slave trade link pathetic. The comedy with Brahmi, Ali and various others all falls very flat and mainly involves racist and sexist jokes. It’s all unnecessary and not even remotely funny. Venu Madhav is mildly amusing but totally unnecessary as is MS Narayana. The pace of the first half is too slow as time is spent on laborious set-ups and establishing characters who lacked substance or who disappeared. There were silly errors; in the Super 8 film of baby Ria and her mother, there is someone in shot using a digital video camera. And don’t get us started on Hair Continuity – it was all over the place (literally).

Chaitanya is more amusing in some lighter moments than any of the ‘comedians’ and those scenes suited the masala action style of the film much better. Dhada is style over substance. But it’s worth a watch for the well executed fight scenes and nicely picturised songs from a reasonably appealing soundtrack. Not a great film, but not a terrible one. And if you take nothing else away from Dhada, the phrase ‘Smoking is injurious to health’ became even more ominous.

Badrinath

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The great thing about an Adventure without Subtitles when Allu Arjun stars is knowing that no matter what, the dancing will be awesome.  But there is so much more to enjoy in Badrinath, and we had a great time.

The plot, for what it’s worth, can be summed up as follows. Prakash Raj is a guru who trains young boys to defend temples in the major holy cities of India. His school is located high in the mountains, and the scenery and the sets are nothing short of spectacular. Allu Arjun is Badri, who is assigned to protect Badrinath. Badri has a special relationship with the place, amazing sword and fighting skills, a strong faith in god and his guru, and is earmarked to take over the training camp. Tamanna is Alaknanda, a very pretty atheist who lost her faith after seeing her parents accidentally catch fire and die at a pooja. Badri and Alaknanda eventually fall in love, then the bad guys turn up to kidnap her. Will Badri desert his post, anger his guru and rescue his love? So much drama!

This is a vehicle for Bunny and, as expected, he excels in the dancing and fighting scenes. We had questioned the efficacy of an Indian Samurai when pitted against men with guns, but that question was put to rest. You need arms attached to your body to pull a trigger. Swords win! The fight scenes were cool, and it looked like someone may have been inspired by games where each set of bad guys has a particular set of weapons. So once the guys with sickles are defeated, the next batch has axes and so on. It isn’t all gore and anger though; there is room for what our friend calls Funny Bunny and he is joyful in the dances. He does an excellent wet shirt, and even wears a Chiranjeevi inspired silver cape in one song! This pleased us greatly.

Tamanna is a beautiful girl, and she can act and dance. She more or less keeps up with Bunny, and her facial expressions when she dances are great. Alaknanda is rarely more than a sketch, a pretty face on the sidelines, and sadly it seems that she discovers faith and love only after Badri slaps her. She also discovers more appropriate clothing. (And she had been spectacularly rude and stupid in the lead up to the slap). There is a fun moment when she keeps pretending to slip so she can fling herself on Badri’s manly chest and cop a feel. That seemed perfectly sensible so we decided we liked her a lot. Her subplot involving abduction by evil relatives and an attempt at forcing her to marry could have been cut back without diminishing the idea of the damsel in distress. Tamanna was very good in 100% Love, and lovely in Badrinath, so we hope more substantial roles come her way.

Alaknanda had the best imagination. Most of the songs were her dreams and she spared no effort in dressing Bunny up and giving every single backing dancer the most amazing outfits as well.

On the subject of wardrobe, this is what Badri wore as his going into town outfit so there are arguments for and against him choosing his own clothes.

Prakash Raj is excellent as the guru. He gets to do pretend martial artsy stuff, levitate, growl at people and also use his misty eyes of love. His character is the cause of Badri’s conflict as he demands the young man be sworn in as his replacement, and thus swear off marriage and women. He probably should have thought that through a bit more.  But we could rely on him to do the right thing when it counted and all was well between the master and disciple.

The Comedy Sideplot was over represented by MS Narayana, Venu Madhav , Master Bharath and Brahmi among others. Too many! And took up at least 30 minutes that could have been condensed or cut. Brahmi was fun, and the crowd went wild for him, but it was basically the same fleecing the pilgrims shtick he did in Indra. We guess that was a deliberate reference. The supporting cast was full of familiar faces, all of whom do the thing they do so well. We think the Allu family pug made an appearance too so if Ice’s agent is reading this, please confirm? But in an unsubtitled film we tend not to give the support artists their full dues as we have to concentrate on the main action. And yes, there were compelling visuals adding to the distractions. We totally appreciated the backing dancers for their enthusiasm, their dancing and the way they rocked the purple and gold glittery outfits.

We did have to notice the evil family as they showed dedication to the bulk purchase of coloured contact lenses, and the matriarch wore some excellent saris.

The evil henchmen deserve a shout out. From the Pick n Mix Assorted Terrorist Stereotype Brigade to the Ninjas in Hoodies, they gave it their best, and Peter Hein and team really made them work for their money. He knows how to make chaos look elegant.

There are massive plot holes, but they aren’t an impediment to enjoying the story. There is no pretence at realism so questions of why there are never any police around or how Badri could survive the latest incident just didn’t matter. We were far more interested in why people wore some of the crazy outfits. The soundtrack is effective and enjoyable, and the songs are well placed. How well they stand up without the supporting visuals is another question.

This is an out and out entertainer that succeeds, and the audience last night certainly enjoyed it. The balance of action and ridiculous stunts with beautiful visuals and fantastic dancing is just about right. See it on a big screen if you can!