Ab Tak Chappan 2 - A review

If we talk about sequels of movies that got released in Bollywood, not many fared as well as the originals did. Sadly Ab Tak Chappan 2, which is the sequel of Ab Tak Chappan (that came in 2004), too meets the same fate. A whole lot of factors are to be blamed for its debacle. But one of the primary reasons for its failure this time around is because it is outdated, apart from an unimaginative plotline. The movie is said to be inspired by the life of real life encounter specialist Daya Naik. There have been better cop dramas earlier too. Ten years back when Shimit Amin had directed Ab Tak Chappan, there was a nice intensity to the direction to go with a fairly good script. But this time around, the script looks very unconvincing. The characters too in this movie seem to be sketchily written, for instance the character of Gul Panag as the crime reporter. Other veteran actors like Mohan Agashe and Dilip Prabhavalkar too got wasted, they got nothing much to do.

The story starts from where it had ended in the 1st part, following the life of encounter specialist Sadhu Agashe (played by Nana Patekar) of Mumbai Crime Branch. n Ever since his wife was shot, he has been leading a peaceful life with his son in a small village in Goa, after having left the police department and his dreaded past behind. He now spends time in fishing, cooking, playing marbles with the village children. Meanwhile in Mumbai since crime graph has been on a high once again, the politicians want Sadhu to be reinstated into the Police force and so he is brought back from oblivion to re-establish the rule of law. He refuses to rejoin the force but then relents when his son encourages him to take up the task once again. As soon as he rejoins the force, he goes about his business by activating his old trusted informers and reliable sources. There is also a fellow policeman played by Ashutosh Rana) who isn't too happy to see Nana Patekar back into the police force because he felt that had he not been there, that post would have gone to him. So he always looks out for an opportunity to hinder his Sadhu's mission.

The plotline actually looked very odd because what we were expecting from Patekar's character was to see him killing criminals and pumping bullets. But what we got instead were just warnings sounded out by him to them as well as to his corrupt colleagues. Also there were times when i felt as if Nana Patekar looked disinterested. Then his son gets killed by shooters which leaves him totally devastated. While looking out for his killers, he comes across a shocking truth that Jagirdar (played by Vikram Gokhale) had in fact got the CM killed so that he could take that position. So Sadhu kills him in full public view and remains unrepentant about it. Ab Tak Chappan 2 actually looked like a pointless film to me.

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Badlapur - A review

[caption id="attachment_16" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Picture Copyrighted to Eros International[/caption]

Though I was hugely disappointed by his previous movie "Agent Vinod" but nonetheless I was still looking forward to watching Badlapur after seeing its promos because I still remember how well Sriram Raghavan had directed his earlier thriller movies "Ek Hasina Thi" and "Johnny Gaddar". But sadly he couldn't do an encore with his latest release Badlapur. I was expecting a riveting storyline and some terrific performances going by the ensemble star cast that Raghavan had got for this movie. So I had kept high hopes from this movie but I was terribly disappointed by the plot as well as by his direction, even though Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui played their parts superbly.

The movie's story is about an advertising professional Raghav whose happy life suddenly gets overturned when his wife (played by Yami Gautam) and kid get killed by Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and his accomplice Harman (Vinay Pathak) while being chased by the police. The two robbers after committing a bank robbery, try to flee from the spot by taking Yami and her kid as hostages and use Yami's car but both she and her kid get killed. Though Harman his accomplice manages to flee with the money but Liak gets caught by the police and is sentenced to 20 years' jail imprisonment.
Raghav then sets out to take revenge. Though Varun Dhawan puts on an endearing performance, Nawazuddin too is superlative as Liak and Huma Qureshi too plays her part exceedingly well but the brilliant performances and the gripping narrative notwithstanding, I felt the movie became too sluggish in the second half, it just kept meandering. The tempo just didn't quite build up.

At some parts, I also got a nagging feeling of deja vu as if I was watching Ek Villain yet again. Though Varun Dhawan looked real in most scenes and impressed me with his measured acting and the way he enacted the emotional scenes was endearing too but the direction I felt failed him at certain places. Like though he hires a private detective to find out all about Liak but on discovering that he had a girl-friend, all he does is to force himself on the girl (played by Huma Qureshi). The climax too looked unconvincing that Liak after all the years in jail, goes to the police and confesses about he being the man behind the murders of his accomplice and his wife, out of guilt and remorse, just because he was dying from stomach cancer. I felt the ending somewhat abrupt. But the movie can be watched for the superb acting performances, especially of the young Varun. The movie is undoubtedly his best performance till date and he can only get better.

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BABY - A review

The trio of director Neeraj Pandey and the actors Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher had impressed me a lot with their last movie together "Special 26". So a lot of expectations were riding on this movie, "Baby" when they again got together. Though I felt Baby to be a bit tedious and boring during the initial stages and mind you, Baby is not of the same class as "A Wednesday" belonged to, but the solid performances of the star cast (Anupam Kher, Kay Kay Menon, Danny Denzongpa), especially the restrained acting of Akshay Kumar almost made up for the lapses. Baby would definitely be counted as one of his best performances of his career. Not only was he impressive with his swift action moves in the movie but he was also perfect with his composed and restrained performance, he wasn't the usual larger than life hero that we usually see in Bollywood movies, rather he played the character of a tough cop with great panache which looked very real and felt life-like.
Add to that an engaging and riveting plot, so the movie surely succeeds in holding one's attention till the very end.

The story revolves around a special secret team formed by Danny Denzongpa to thwart terror activities and is led by Akshay Kumar who plays the character of Ajay Singh Rajput, a secret agent. The group comprised of specially trained paramilitary officers with no official records. Since the special unit was still in its infant stage, so they name the group as BABY. Its mission is simple - to derail every evil plan that was being hatched against India and it had been succeeding at that too.
However the continuity of their team rested on the success of their last mission, whether the team would be able to execute the most daring secret operation of capturing Maulana Mohammed Rahman alive at Istanbul and bring him back to india for interrogation. Because he was the mastermind behind all terror attacks directed at India and was forever searching for an opportune moment to strike a terrorist attack in some indian city.

Well, speaking of performances, the lead actor Akshay Kumar has put his best foot forward with a brilliant performance, but even the supporting cast does a commendable act, what with Danny as the chief of the special team displays tremendous versatility. Anupam Kher too delivers an endearing act and keeps coming up with subtle humour every now and then. Tapsee Pannu too does a fine job and delivers a griping fight sequence opposite Sushant Singh (he only has a minuscule role) with tremendous ease. Sadly for an actor of his calibre, the character of Kay Kay Menon could have been written better with more life in it. Yet he manages to perform very nicely even in the minutest role that he got to perform in.

Thus brilliant acting performances, sleek action, superb screenplay, a gripping narrative and a razor-sharp storyline and editing makes Baby a must watch movie.

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Shankar's "I" (Tamil) - A review

After reading some rave reviews written about the movie, I too felt an urge to watch Shankar's I. He had impressed me with "Robot" that starred Rajnikanth and came in 2010. I was also heard a lot about Vikram's acting prowess and so was eager to see him act, this was going to be my first Vikram movie, so I was surely enthusiastic about it. He didn't disappoint me either, I thought apart from the superb VFX effects and some breath-taking action sequences, it was Vikram's enthralling performance as the disfigured hunchback that kept me interested in the movie. He gave the role his all. Otherwise the plotline was very poorly written. They had a beautiful love story built up but I think the script went haywire by the interval. And the revenge part too didn't look that convincing. The characters were too poorly sketched to have any impact. Moreover so poor was their acting that none of the antagonists could hold the viewer's attention. I also felt the chemistry between Vikram and Amy to be quite cold.

The story is about a countryside body-builder Lingesan (played by Vikram) who aspires to be the next Mr. India by winning the body-building championship and so he duly prepares for the competition. He is also obsessed with a model named Diya (played by Amy Jackson). Meanwhile Diya (Amy Jackson) is constantly harassed by her fellow colleague John (played by Upen Patel) with whom she shares a lucrative modelling assignment. So to resist his advances she approaches Lingesan to act in an ad film with her and he reluctantly agrees because he has to forego his dream of participating in the Mr. India championship that year. For the ad shoot, both of them leave for China. To make the ad work, Diya pretends to have fallen in love with Lingesan so that he would let go of his inhibitions and there would be a natural chemistry between them. He also undergoes a complete makeover for the ad film and while shooting, the two fall in love. The ad film too gets successful and the brand climbs up the ladder.

Thus Lingesan earns the ire of five enemies - a fellow contestant from the body-building competition whom he had defeated, the reigning supermodel John who loses all his ad contracts to Lingesan, a gay make-up artiste whose advances Lingesan rejects, the brand owner whose next ad campaign Lingesan refuses to act in and so also his doctor friend who had all the while been eyeing to marry Diya. So they all team up and get the doctor to inject Lingesan with an I virus to terribly deform him. Thereafter it gets all yawningly predictable. How Lingesan avenges his deformation and wins back his love is what follows.

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Tevar - A review

First things first, though Tevar had all ingredients needed for a masala entertainer but this script has been done to death so many times in Bollywood before that there is nothing new to offer. The movie would have probably worked if it had come in the early 2000s. I wonder why would a debutant director trying to make his way into the top league in Bollywood, want to take up a subject that is as old as some 10 years or so? Tevar is a remake of the Telugu hit movie Okkadu that came way back in 2003. Thus the plot is outdated, and so the almost three hours long movie gets really boring post interval. Unnecessary and inconsequential songs only stretch the movie even further. The movie left me terribly disappointed, as much by the plotline as by the leading actors Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha. This movie required a persona of a star like Salman to carry off the style which Arjun Kapoor still lacks, he is too young and new in his career to be able to create that image, so fails badly though he tries hard at it. Probably he is trying too hard to shed his image of a chocolate boy hero and instead to transit to an action hero. Sonakshi Sinha on the other hand yet again plays an inconsequential role. I have lost count of such roles that she has been playing in the recent times. I wonder why she keeps choosing such scripts while she is still trying to find her feet in Bollywood.

The story is set in Agra and neighbouring Mathura and revolves around a young boy named Pintu Shukla (played by Arjun Kapoor) who does nothing but playing kabaddi (but he is surely well-known in the city for his kabaddi skills). His father (played by Raj Babbar) happens to a senior Police officer, the SP and keeps warning him not to get involved in any trouble whatsoever or else he would put him behind bars someday but Pintu can't help himself from getting into something or the other. It so happens that oneday while he had gone to Mathura with his friends to attend a marriage, he bumps into Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha) who was being dragged away by a goon, Bahubali Gajender Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), from the bus stop, because she was trying to flee to Delhi from where she could have left for the US. Bahubali Gajender Singh had fallen heads over heels for Radhika and wanted to marry her. Radhika wasn't interested and when her brother, who happened to be a newsreporter tried to warn Gajender to stay away from her, he gets killed instead. Seeing Radhika in trouble, Pintu, without knowing who Gajender actually was, beats him up and thus gets chased by his men. The movie is all about what follows next but then isn't it along the predictable lines, that we have already seen so many times before?

Speaking of performances, only the two seasoned actors, Manoj Bajpayee and Raj Babbar manage to hold your attention. It's only because of their acting that the movie is somewhat "jhellable". Manoj Bajpayee once again plays the role of a baddie, that of a rustic goon to perfection and comes up with a flawless performance. You would sit up on your seat with attention every time he comes on screen. His terrific dialogue delivery and mannerisms of a UP waley bhaiya deserves to be seen. Raj Babbar too delivers a class act. But because of a stale script and the weak plotline their performances go waste. By the time the movie draws to an end, we already know what’s going to happen. The music by Sajid - Wajid and Imran Khan is also mediocre. The only noteworthy song I found somewhat worth listening was "Superman, Salman Ka Fan". All other songs felt very thanda. So the movie can surely be given a miss.

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Be Clean-shaven and Get Lucky

Theme: Luck or Confidence?- Will you leave your fate in the hands of destiny or will you step up and say yes to a well-groomed face to be at your best everyday?)

This is my blog submission for the #WillYouShave activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette.

We all know how important are the first impressions because only a good first impression will determine whether we will get through in the job interview or will have our love proposal accepted by the girl or her family or whether someone will be friends with us. So we need to put our best foot forward and make every possible effort to create a favourable impression on others with our personality traits, while not letting our grooming traits cause anyone to form a negative opinion of us. Only then shall we be able to become unique. One of the most important factors that adds a charm to our personality is cleanliness and that includes a clean shaven face as well. A man needs to be well-groomed, clean and neat on most days like not only should he have well-maintained hair, clean nails and should be smelling good but he also needs to be clean-shaven. Because once a bad impression about us has been made, it becomes very difficult to change it. The first impressions are what paves the way in which people perceive us. So it is extremely important not to commit a mistake because of our grooming habits. Thus men should shave every day.

[caption id="attachment_60" align="alignright" width="300"] (Photo used from Gillette website)[/caption]

Gone are the days when men with a stubble were considered studs and sexy. In the present age, almost every girl prefers a clean shaven man and finds them more charming than an unshaved one. Girls often express their disapproval about unshaved men, they don't find those men appealing at all for they feel men with an unshaved face looks like he hadn't taken a bath since days. He doesn't look fresh.

Well, let me share with you how I almost got rejected by my first crush because I wasn't clean-shaven. I too fell in love, that too at the first sight of Karuna (whom I went on to marry later on). Right from the time I saw her for the first time at school, I was head over heels. I felt like my world had suddenly changed and so did I. She was my classmate, but she was in the commerce stream and I was in science. Though that never mattered much to me, but it was definitely an impediment for me to get to talk to her. There were very few opportunities to meet as well. Except during our maths class i.e.. We used to have a combined class of students from both science and commerce streams. Since I was good in studies and maths had always been my forte, I was Madhu ma'am's (our maths teacher) favourite student. That came as a blessing for me, because whenever Karuna needed any help, Madhu ma'am would recommend me saying that I could help her. All thanks to Madhu ma'am, that is how my friendship with Karuna grew, we started talking more often, and eventually exchanged numbers and started meeting too. Even before one could realise we were in love with each other, though I had already lost my heart to her the first time that I had seen her.

Our courtship continued well beyond our 12th standard, into our college lives. But I felt it was time to take our relationship to the next level, I had to propose her. What could have been a better occasion than her birthday. Though I had rehearsed my lines quite a few times but I was pretty nervous from inside. What if she says No? I couldn't have taken a chance. So I took every care to look my best, more so, to have a clean-shaven look, Because she had once said that to me, that she always preferred clean-shaven men. I called her up, asked her out for a date and took her the Garden Inn restaurant, which was coincidentally her favourite. She had no inkling of what was in store for her, whereas I had started feeling anxious. But taking a deep breath, I bowed down before her and taking her hands into mine and with a ring, I said those magical words to her, "I love you, Karuna. Will you marry me?" She was taken by surprise obviously, but was equally happy too. With a loud yes, she sealed my love.

Later on, she disclosed that had I been in my usual scruffy look which I felt looked cool on me, she could have rejected me. Phew. So my advice to all guys out there, do not take your looks and the ladies in your lives for granted. Girls always prefer clean-shaven men, so do make sure that when you are with them, you look well-groomed, prim and proper.

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Zid - A review

The latest movie that I saw was a shabbily made psychotic thriller, Zid, which is about an obsessed lover, Maya (played by Mannara Chopra, Parineeti Chopra's cousin). With a gripping plot in place, the movie had some mettle initially and it did keep me hooked until the interval but thereafter the story became quite predictable and poor acting coupled with some mediocre screenplay made it plain boring and could induce only yawns. Its anti-climax made things even worse. Zid was apparently inspired by the English movie "The Good Neighbour" but it hardly had anything in common with the English movie. Instead I felt like Zid was more of a hotch-potch of "Poison Ivy" and "Wild Things".

Karanvir Sharma plays the character of Rohan Achrekar, a crime reporter for a Goa daily. He has an estranged girlfriend Priya (Shradha Kapoor) who doesn't respond to his calls and emails and so he decides to move on with his life. He starts by changing his house and so looks for a new house to take his mind off the bad memories of his recent breakup. Veteran actor Mohan Kapoor who plays his editor's role, suggests him an outhouse in the woods and Rohan complies. While going to the place, he sees a beautiful girl by the beach and clicks her photos from the boat. Little does he know that the same girl (Mannara Chopra) would turn out to be his house's owner, Maya. In no time, they become good friends. Meanwhile Mannara gets smitten by Rohan and starts obsessing about him. Then it so happens that while returning home from a party on a stormy night, their car hits someone on a scooter. Being scared they both run away from the spot leaving the girl to die but later on it turns out that the girl whom they had left to die was none other than Priya's sister Nancy. More murders follow and also grows Maya's obsession for Rohan.

Regarding the performances, Karanvir Sharma was okay (though he needs some polishing) but Mannara Chopra didn't look the part at all. Apart from her erotic dreamy sequences, she looked very cold and could hardly impress. Regarding the character of a female obsessed lover, I can think of a better example than Urmilla Matondkar who had played the role to perfection in "Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya". This movie too required that sort of a performance. Sadly Mannara could enact that well and lacked intensity. The movie's narrative rested on the lead actress's performance but Mannara instead looked very synthetic with her expressions, acting and dialogue delivery. Mannara does look good onscreen but she lacks the charisma of her famous cousin Parineeti. May be she will attain that with experience. Shradha Das hardly had any screen space but she still did good even in her minuscule role.

The background score was no doubt chilling but the stereotypical depressing setting of gloomy and ever-raining days and nights, coupled with dark settings actually put me off. The screenplay too lacked pace and intensity that's needed in a thriller movie and there was hardly any suspense. So the movie couldn't impress me at all.

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